Next time you go diving or snorkeling, have a close look at those wondrously long, bright green ribbons, waving with the ebb and flow of water. They are seagrasses – marine plants which produce flowers, fruit, and seedlings annually, like their land-based relatives. These underwater seagrass meadows grow in two ways: by sexual reproduction,
Month: May 2022
“You can’t manage what you can’t measure”, according to a famous business mantra often attributed to management guru Peter Drucker. This can help explain why carbon emissions are under more scrutiny than ever as we ramp up our efforts to avoid the catastrophic effects of climate change. For example, the “carbon footprint” – a
There’s a revolution underway in astronomy. In fact, you might say there are several. In the past ten years, exoplanet studies have advanced considerably, gravitational wave astronomy has emerged as a new field, and the first images of supermassive black holes (SMBHs) have been captured. A related field, interferometry, has also advanced incredibly thanks to
Somewhere out in the cosmos, there’s the physics equivalent of a unicorn. Catching even a glimpse of this oddity that looks like the isolated tip of a magnet would be like a beacon in the night, pointing the way to grand, unifying theories of absolutely everything. Yet aside from one tiny exception in the early
The tiny floating organisms that supply our world with as much as a fifth of its oxygen will be in dire straights as our oceans acidify, new research suggests. The creatures, called diatoms, will be deprived of the silica building blocks they need to construct their protective shells, which come in all sorts of dazzling
Future fusion reactions inside tokamaks could produce much more energy than previously thought, thanks to groundbreaking new research that found a foundational law for such reactors was wrong. The research, led by physicists from the Swiss Plasma Center at École Polytechnique Fédérale de Lausanne (EFPL), has determined that the maximum hydrogen fuel density is
Experts are warning that the Eastern US should prepare for another barrage of tropical storms this year. The 2022 Atlantic hurricane season is likely to be more active than average for the seventh year in a row, according to the latest prediction from the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration (NOAA). There is a 70 percent chance
The ocean is swimming in sound, and a new artificial intelligence tool could help scientists sift through all that noise to track and study marine mammals. The tool is called DeepSqueak, not because it measures dolphin calls in the ocean underworld, but because it is based on a deep learning algorithm that was first used
Is your tiny robot really all that small if it’s bigger than the width of a coin? A team of scientists has built what is now the smallest-ever remote-controlled walking robot, coming in at a mere half a millimeter (less than a fiftieth of an inch) wide. Exceedingly tiny robots have a whole host
Fast radio bursts are one of the biggest cosmic mysteries of our time. They’re extremely powerful but extremely brief explosions of electromagnetic radiation in radio wavelengths, discharging in milliseconds as much energy as 500 million Suns. For years, scientists puzzled over what could be causing these brief outbursts, detected in galaxies millions to billions
As far as we know, it’s not possible for a person to move at twice the speed of light. In fact, it’s not possible for any object with the kind of mass you or I have to move faster than the speed of light. However, for certain strange particles, traveling at twice the speed
Scientists keep on pushing the efficiency of solar panels higher and higher, and there’s a new record to report: a new solar cell has hit 39.5 percent efficiency under the standard 1-sun global illumination conditions. That 1-sun marker is simply a standardized way of measuring a fixed amount of sunlight, and almost 40 percent
When something’s messing with your insides and you feel like you’re going to hurl, the last thing you probably want to do is eat. Deer, caribou, and other ungulates (hoofed animals) experience a similar problem when infected by non-deadly parasites. It utterly sucks for them, but it turns out infections that put them off their
Scientists have documented a worrying trend in the rainforests of Australia: Tree lifespans have halved in the last 35 years, and it appears to be due to the effects of climate change on the ecosystems. With these forests acting as significant carbon sinks, the consequences for the planet could be devastating, creating a feedback
A plastic container thrown into landfill can take hundreds of years to break down naturally, but a newly discovered enzyme could eat up the waste in less than a day. The highly efficient polyester hydrolase, known as PHL7, was recently found in a German cemetery munching through compost. In the lab, researchers found it
Cryptocurrencies like Bitcoin were meant to be used as digital cash. Instead, they’ve become popular as speculative investments. As well as being resource-intensive and inherently wasteful, cryptocurrencies are also incredibly volatile. Prices for the largest cryptocurrencies, Bitcoin and Ethereum, have both dropped by over 55 percent in six months, leading some to suggest that regulation is
Conventional solar technology soaks up rays of incoming sunlight to bump out a voltage. Strange as it seems, some materials are capable of running in reverse, producing power as they radiate heat back into the cold night sky. A team of engineers in Australia has now demonstrated the theory in action, using the kind
A particle accelerator that slams electrons together here on Earth has achieved temperatures colder than those of outer space. Using the X-ray free-electron laser at the Department of Energy’s SLAC National Accelerator Laboratory – part of an upgrade project to the Linac Coherent Light Source (LCLS), called LCLS II – scientists chilled liquid helium to minus 456 degrees
There’s a key aspect of quantum computing you may not have thought about before. Called ‘quantum non-demolition measurements’, they refer to observing certain quantum states without destroying them in the process. If we want to put together a functioning quantum computer, not having it break down every second while calculations are made would obviously
As air pollution decreases in the western Northern Hemisphere, several new climate simulations suggest tropical cyclones in the Atlantic may increase. The forecast is troubling, though not necessarily a surprise. When tiny aerosols like dust, soot, and sulfates are airborne, they create smog that can dim sunlight and cool Earth’s atmosphere and surface. Broadly
All heatwaves today bear the unmistakable and measurable fingerprint of global warming, top experts on quantifying the impact of climate change on extreme weather said Wednesday. Burning fossil fuels and destroying forests have released enough greenhouse gases into the atmosphere to also boost the frequency and intensity of many floods, droughts, wildfires, and tropical
Modern technology pulses with a heartbeat measured in microseconds. From global positioning systems to communications networks, it’s vital every component falls into near-perfect synch. Based on standards determined by a specialized task group, signals sent through optic fiber or down from an orbiting satellite tend to ensure time-sensitive technology matches moments down to the
In a ghastly vision of a future cut off from sunlight, the machine overloads in the Matrix movie series turned to sleeping human bodies as sources of electricity. If they’d had sunlight, algae would undoubtedly have been the better choice. Engineers from the University of Cambridge in the UK have run a microprocessor for more
Large fish in the open sea have declined by at least 90 percent over the past century due to overexploitation. To pull fish like tuna, swordfish, and marlin back from the brink, scientists argue we need to protect their migration superhighways known as ‘blue corridors’. A recent study on the Pacific Ocean has mapped
Every time you take a step, space itself glows with a soft warmth. Called the Fulling–Davies–Unruh effect (or sometimes just Unruh effect if you’re pushed for time), this eerie glow of radiation emerging from the vacuum is akin to the mysterious Hawking radiation that’s thought to surround black holes. Only in this case, it’s
There is an even chance that global temperatures will temporarily breach the benchmark of 1.5 degrees Celsius above pre-industrial levels in one of the next five years, the United Nations warned Tuesday. The 2015 Paris Agreement on climate change saw countries agree to cap global warming at “well below” 2 °C above levels measured between
Thousands of wild bird species are growing ill or dying from habitat loss, climate change, and overexploitation, according to new research. A new estimate from researchers around the world has found 48 percent of living bird species are known or suspected to have declining populations. That’s more than 5,000 species that face a risky
We already have quantum computers of a sort, but at the moment they’re not practical or reliable or large-scale enough to fully realize the massive potential of the technology. To get closer to that end goal, scientists are working towards what they say could be the ideal building block for a quantum computer. These
The oceans that surround us are transforming. As our climate changes, the world’s waters are shifting too, with abnormalities evident not only in the ocean’s temperature, but also its structure, currents, and even its color. As these changes manifest, the usually stable environment of the ocean is becoming more unpredictable and erratic, and in
The human brain is said to be the most complex biological structure ever to have existed. And while science doesn’t fully understand the brain yet, researchers in the expanding field of neuroscience have been making progress. Neuroscientists have made substantial inroads towards mapping the complex functions of the brain’s 85 billion or so neurons
Throughout our planet’s history, Earth has fluctuated between a hothouse and an icehouse. Today, our home is supposed to be in a period of global cooling, but human emissions of greenhouse gasses are reversing that natural trend at a rapid and unprecedented rate. One of the last times Earth went from an icehouse to
A swarm of 10 bright blue drones lifts off in a bamboo forest in China, then swerves its way between cluttered branches, bushes, and over uneven ground as it autonomously navigates the best flight path through the woods. The experiment, led by scientists at Zhejiang University, evokes scenes from science fiction – and the
In a warmer world, rising sea levels could render many coastlines, beaches, and reef islands uninhabitable, or destroy them altogether. The 1.09℃ Earth has warmed since pre-industrial times has already heightened seas by 20 centimeters. But curiously, research shows some coastlines and even low-lying coral reef islands are actually growing rather than eroding in
Climate change is throwing Earth’s water cycle severely out of whack. According to new satellite data, freshwaters are growing fresher and salt waters are growing saltier at an increasingly rapid rate all around the world. If this pattern continues, it will turbocharge rainstorms. The findings indicate a severe acceleration of the global water cycle –
As you’ve no doubt noticed, there’s a worryingly large amount of plastic pollution, and scientists are working hard to find ways to use plastic without causing so much long-term damage to the environment around us. A new study outlines the use of a specially created enzyme variant that vastly reduces the time it takes