A severe thunderstorm cloud that formed over the Pacific Ocean in 2018 reached the coldest temperatures ever recorded, according to a new study. The very top of the storm cloud reached a bone-chilling minus 167.8 degrees Fahrenheit (minus 111 degrees Celsius), colder than any storm cloud measured before. Thunderstorms and tropical cyclones, a circular
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The extent of Australasian influence into the ancient bloodlines of early South American cultures looks to be even greater than scientists thought, according to new research. In 2015, a pair of scientific studies identified an intriguing link: evidence of Indigenous Australian, Melanesian, and South Asian genetics embedded in modern Native American populations living in the
For well over a thousand years, cherry blossoms in Japan have held the scent of spring and reflected the transient beauty of nature itself. Today, these falling flowers also carry the gravity of climate change. In 2021, after an unusually warm spring, Kyoto has burst into color far sooner than expected. To date, this is
Could humans ever evolve venom? It’s highly unlikely that people will join rattlesnakes and platypuses among the ranks of venomous animals, but new research reveals that humans do have the tool kit to produce venom – in fact, all reptiles and mammals do. This collection of flexible genes, particularly associated with the salivary glands in humans, explains how
In a new first for genetic engineering, scientists have developed a single-celled synthetic organism that grows and divides much like a normal cell, mimicking aspects of the cell division cycle that underlies and generates healthy living cellular life. The achievement, demonstrated in an engineered unicellular bacteria-like life form called JCVI-syn3A, is the result of
The vast majority of animals considered ‘wild dogs’ in Australia are actually pure dingoes or canines that are mostly dingo in terms of their genetic makeup, new research suggests. Scientists collated the results from DNA tests of over 5,000 wild canids across Australia and found that only about 1 percent were actually feral dogs
One of the world’s largest container ships, named Ever Given, has been wedged across the Suez Canal since it was blown off course by high winds in the early hours of March 23, blocking one of the busiest maritime trade corridors in the world. The incident has created a logjam of hundreds of tankers,
Even when male and female patients show similar levels of suffering in their facial expressions, physical pain among women is not taken as seriously, a new psychology study suggests. Not only does the average observer tend to underestimate the intensity of chronic shoulder pain in women compared to men, but the findings reveal observers
If fossil fuel companies in the United States were made to pay for the real environmental and health costs of their products, a new model suggests it would set them back roughly $62 billion dollars every year. Today, that huge sum of money is implicitly subsidized by taxpayers. “Fossil fuel companies benefit in a
Scientists have figured out a way to stop cannibalistic moths from selfishly eating their siblings. All that’s required is the space to get to know one another. The Indian meal moth, or the pantry moth (Plodia interpunctella), is usually a voracious vegetarian, chowing down on flours, cereals, rice, and other packaged foods as a young
The new £50 bank note that’s just been unveiled in the UK features the face of Alan Turing on one side – and in tribute to the legendary mathematician and codebreaker, UK intelligence agency GCHQ has set a series of tricky puzzles linked to the note. According to GCHQ, the 12 riddles should take
Bloodsucking insects, trapped in amber for millions of years, extracted for their blood-filled bellies, with the blood analyzed for ancient DNA. At first glance, the scientific explanation for the revival of dinosaurs in Jurassic Park doesn’t sound too far-fetched. It was considered a genuine possibility at the time the book was written. There’s just one problem
The United States is home to nearly 2,000 active landfills. Each day, these enormous piles of garbage can leach well over 2 million liters of liquid per site into the soil, contaminating local water with potentially toxic substances. These liquid-based pollutants are an immediate threat to both the environment and human health, yet figuring
We now know how gold crystals start to form at the atomic scale. For the first time, scientists have observed – and filmed! – the first milliseconds of gold crystal formation and found that it’s much more complicated than previous research suggested. Rather than a single, irreversible transition, the atoms come together and fall apart
Bacteria collected from more than a mile below the surface of the Pacific Ocean may have just blown one of immunology’s longest-held assumptions clean out of the water. The bacteria are so alien to humans that our immune cells do not even register that they exist, making them completely invisible to our immune systems. This totally contradicts
Back when mega wombats, sheep-sized echidnas, and marsupial lions roamed the ancient lands of Australia, there also lived a gigantic flightless bird. Known by some as the ‘demon duck of doom’, Dromornis stirtoni is described by paleontologist Trevor Worthy as an “extreme evolutionary experiment”. “It would appear these giant birds were probably what evolution produced
At the core of just about every plant, algae, and blob of green pond scum on Earth sits a molecular engine for harvesting sunlight. Its only emissions are oxygen – a gas we can all be incredibly thankful for today. If not for the evolution of this vastly common form of photosynthesis (also known
Selective breeding by humans has led to some incredibly odd and unfortunate pets over the years, and the sauteur d’Alfort rabbit is among the strangest of the lot. This rare breed of bunny does not hop or walk like any other rabbit or hare in existence. When the sauteur is ready to go, it kicks
Peer long enough into the heavens, and the Universe starts to resemble a city at night. Galaxies take on characteristics of streetlamps cluttering up neighborhoods of dark matter, linked by highways of gas that run along the shores of intergalactic nothingness. This map of the Universe was preordained, laid out in the tiniest of
A mysterious neurodegenerative disease has been killing bald eagles and other animals at lakes across the United States. And after 25 years of sleuthing, researchers have finally figured out its cause. The disease, known as vacuolar myelinopathy (VM), was first discovered in 1994 when a large number of bald eagle carcasses were found near DeGray Lake
Figuring out when the earliest human species first developed and used stone tools is an important task for anthropologists, since it was such an important evolutionary step. Remarkably, the projected date of early stone technology just got pushed back by tens of thousands of years. Using a recently introduced type of statistical analysis, researchers
The flickering colors of a sleeping octopus seem to indicate something akin to an REM sleep state, scientists have found. In fact, as octopuses snooze, they distinctly cycle between two major sleep states, quiet and active. This discovery suggests not only that an active sleep state evolved separately in vertebrates and cephalopods, but also that,
Climate change has wrought major changes to ocean stability faster than previously thought, according to a study published Wednesday, raising alarms over its role as a global thermostat and the marine life it supports. The research published in the journal Nature looked at 50 years of data and followed the way in which surface
In 2002, one of the most prestigious restaurants in New York City served four Wall Street workers its most expensive bottle of wine: a US$2,000 Mouton Rothschild from 1989. After it was decanted, the host of the group, a self-reported wine connoisseur, twirled his glass, took a sip and began praising the wine for its purity. Blissfully
What is it about humans that separates us from non-human primates, our closest living relatives? One of the biggest differentiators, scientifically speaking, is the size of our much larger brains – and now, we’ve found a key secret behind that unrivaled growth. In new research comparing different types of brain organoids – miniaturized masses
Like a tourist on a cruise ship, the by-the-wind sailor jellyfish (Velella velella) spends its days drifting aimlessly through the open sea, gorging itself on an endless buffet of complementary morsels. The jelly straddles the ocean’s surface with a rigid sail poking just above the water and an array of purple tentacles dangling just underneath. As
A new telescope below the surface of the world’s deepest lake has commenced a hunt for the Universe’s most elusive particles. These tiny particles, neutrinos, have almost no mass and no electrical charge, which makes them challenging to observe. Most neutrinos that exist today formed during the Big Bang, so studying them can offer
The class of marine animals known as cephalopoda – which today includes squids, octopuses, and cuttlefishes – could have been around on Earth 30 million years earlier than previously thought, according to new research. What’s more, if we do need to reset the timings on the appearance of cephalopods, then the whole evolutionary history of
Island Southeast Asia has one of the largest and most intriguing hominin fossil records in the world. But our new research suggests there is another prehistoric human species waiting to be discovered in this region: a group called Denisovans, which have so far only been found thousands of kilometres away in caves in Siberia and
They are among the largest and strangest of all structures on Earth: huge, mysterious blobs of dense rock lurking deep within the lowermost parts of our planet’s mantle. There are two of these gigantic masses – called the large low-shear-velocity provinces (LLSVPs) – with one buried under Africa, the other below the Pacific Ocean.
Update (24 March 2021): The Large Hadron Collider beauty (LHCb) experiment is still insisting there’s a flaw in our best model of particle physics. As explained below, previous results comparing the collider’s data with what we might expect from the Standard Model threw up a curious discrepancy by around 3 standard deviations, but we needed a
The further back in time you go, the sparser the archaeological record grows. Many materials used by humans – wood, leather, fabric – simply don’t last and are swallowed by Earth under the implacable march of time. The Shigir Idol, in that context, is a marvel. This wooden figurative statue with a number of mask-like
The plain wooden toothpick is among the simplest of all manufactured objects and is considered the oldest instrument for dental cleaning, one that spans more than just human species. Several higher primates use similar items to rub or pick their teeth, and growing archaeological evidence from throughout Europe suggests Neanderthals also had a habit of scraping
Maps usually exist for the purpose of charting landscapes of the known. In times of crisis, though, maps of the unknown may be just as vital a resource. That’s the thinking behind a new scientific effort to map all the places on Earth where undiscovered species are most likely to be living today. Against
A biblical text dismissed as a forgery in the 19th century is not only authentic but is actually a predecessor to the Book of Deuteronomy, a scholar now says. Not everyone agrees. The Book of Deuteronomy describes some of the events in Israel’s early history and tells of several laws passed down by God, including the
Through painstaking work, scientists have found evidence of a quasiparticle that was first imagined as a hypothesis almost 50 years ago: the odderon. The odderon is a combination of subatomic particles rather than a new fundamental particle – but it does act like the latter in some respects, and the way it fits into the
We all have our ‘good days’ and ‘bad days’. But what’s actually going on inside our heads to explain the difference between these sorts of personal and persistent emotional experiences? Part of the reason behind long-lasting negative moods appears to have now been identified in a new study, with scientists finding that activity within
It can’t beat us. Yet. But an artificial intelligence (AI) program developed by scientists at IBM is so good at debating against humans that it may just be a matter of time before we can’t compete. Project Debater, an autonomous debating system that’s been in development for several years, is capable of arguing against
Archaeologists have discovered the 6,000-year-old skeleton of a child in the “Cave of Horrors” in Israel’s Judean Desert alongside ancient Dead Sea scrolls as well as the world’s oldest basket. The “Cave of Horrors” takes its name from the 40 skeletons found there during excavations in the 1960s. Researchers found the child’s remains preserved naturally mummified
A volcano that spewed glowing red lava near Iceland’s capital Reykjavik after awakening for the first time in 900 years appeared to be subsiding on Saturday, posing no danger to people, experts said. Streams of red lava bubbled and flowed out of a fissure in a valley in Geldingadalur, close to Mount Fagradalsfjall on
Skin – the largest organ in the human body – envelops us from head to toe, letting us touch, feel, and interact with the outside world. But there’s one part of that organ even more attuned to touch than any other. A new study has revealed just how receptive the sensory neurons in our fingers
Greenhouses fitted with semi-transparent solar cells can generate electricity without affecting the growth and health of the plants inside, according to a new study, suggesting we could build energy-neutral greenhouses without harming crops. Researchers tested groups of red leaf lettuce under different types of glass and different wavelengths of light, keeping all other variables
As the enormous weight of Alaska’s glaciers rapidly melts away, the land underneath is rising upwards once again, like a feathery pillow after pressure is removed. According to a new model, that rebounding motion could be causing local tectonic plates to strain at their seams, making it easier for earthquakes to occur. Comparing ice
After years of cracking and crumbling, a humongous iceberg finally broke away from Antarctica’s Brunt Ice Shelf last month and began drifting out to sea. Like a retractable skylight, the event gave us a rare glimpse at a previously unreachable seafloor absolutely teeming with life. For five decades, the ocean below this massive chunk of
Sperm whales taught each other how to avoid harpoons after hunting for them began 200 years ago, according to a new study. Published by the Royal Society on Wednesday, the research was based on newly digitized logbooks from American whalers, which recorded details of their expeditions in the North Pacific during the 19th century, such as the number
Fishing trawlers that drag big nets along the ocean floor potentially release more carbon dioxide into the atmosphere as the world’s commercial aviation industry. The first study to estimate the real carbon footprint of bottom trawling globally has found this type of fishing releases roughly 1.47 billion tonnes of aqueous CO2 from the marine soil
Life can get a little blue beneath the ocean’s surface. Warmer colors quickly fade the deeper you go, leaving a meager palette of just a few short wavelengths to light up the landscape. To stand out in the gloom, many marine animals have evolved ways to make their skins and shells radiate hues of
In the delicately tangled web of an ecosystem, snapping certain anchor lines can bring the whole thing tumbling down faster than severing other threads. Now, researchers have found that the species we see as most valuable and worth protecting often aren’t the ‘threads’ most critical to maintaining the complex ecological webs we rely on.