Worried about a Cascadia earthquake, a nuclear war or about climate change? Phffft! Asian longhorned ticks – sometimes called “clone ticks” because they can reproduce without mating – have killed five cows in North Carolina, by draining them out of blood. Each cow was infested by hundreds of ticks. And experts now fear for humans!
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On July 3, 2019, the Stromboli volcano erupted violently, killing one tourist and burying villages and hamlets in ash. The following video catches the exact moment of the second, stronger explosion, from a sailboat… WOW! Meanwhile, the Stromboli volcano continues erupting. On that tragic afternoon of July 3, 2019, two violent volcanic explosions shook the
Over the last several months, cities and counties across California have been releasing homeless counts. The results are grim and San Francisco is no exception. Homelessness in a city that’s become a caricature of wealth inequality in the U.S. has increased by about 30% from 2017. The population of homelss in San Francisco has increased
MH370 left Kuala Lumpur Airport on March 8, 2014, destined for Beijing, China with 239 passengers on board. However, the jet last communicated with air traffic control at 1.19am, before mysteriously vanishing over the South China Sea. Radar and satellite data shows how the aircraft suddenly changed course and flew back across Malaysia before turning south of Penang
Flesh Eating Bacteria sounds like an urban legend. Let me assure you that it is not. Man contracts flesh-eating bacteria during beach trip with family, dies 48 hours later. Picture via Facebook A Florida woman has been warning people on Facebook about a flesh-eating bacteria that her father contracted while swimming — which took his
A brush fire of 1,200 hectares burns out of control through island’s central valley. Thousands of people on Maui have been ordered to evacuate two towns in the path of a spreading wildfire. Hawaii wildfire forces thousands to evacuate Maui towns as it goes out of control. Picture by Matthew Thayer/AP The 1,200 hectare (3,000
On July 12, 2019, the Alaska Volcano Observatory raised the Aviation Color Code to YELLOW and the Alert Level to ADVISORY at Shishaldin Volcano. This change is based on increased seismic activity over the past few weeks, accompanied by elevated surface temperatures at the summit in satellite data. A pilot also observed incandescence in the summit crater
“If we naruto run, we can move faster than their bullets. Lets see them aliens.” Naruto is a reference to a popular Japanese anime character. So far, 639,000 people have confirmed their attendance on Facebook – almost exactly the population of Las Vegas. The idea also attracted significant interest from people posting on the #area51raid
In an incredible first, scientists have captured the world’s first actual photo of quantum entanglement – a phenomenon so strange Einstein famously described it as ‘spooky action at a distance’. The image was captured by physicists at the University of Glasgow in Scotland, and it’s so breathtaking we can’t stop staring. It might not look
SpaceX is about to perform its most ambitious test-launch yet of a shiny Mars rocket prototype in south Texas. Workers have descended upon the developing coastal launch site over the past 8 months to build and prepare the stout, three-legged prototype for testing. It’s built out of stainless steel, has the shape of a badminton
Malaysia Airlines flight 370 disappeared en route from Kuala Lumpur to Beijing with 239 people on board. When it disappeared from air traffic control radar it was flying over the South China Sea near Vietnam. Mike McKay, an oil rig worker from New Zealand, spotted what he thought was MH370 in the area. According to
Caring about the climate crisis can often feel like a lonely and helpless burden, but it doesn’t have to be that way. Simply talking about the issue with your friends and family can actually make a big difference, according to a new study. The advice might sound like a political minefield, especially if you
Something strange is happening 130 milling light-years away in spiral galaxy NGC 3147: there’s a thin disc of material surrounding its small and ‘starving’ black hole that’s a complete surprise to astronomers. Discs like the one spotted in NGC 3147 – made up of gas, dust and other debris pulled into the black hole’s
The weather is going crazy again with snowfalls reported across Eastern Europe and up to Turkey between July 8 and 11. Insane, isn’t it? Romania snow july 2019: This mountain should be green this time of the year. Picture by prinvacanta.ro Romania: First summer snowfall on Pietrosul Rodnei Peak in 15 years A sudden drop
The San Andreas Fault in the Southern California desert gets most of the local earthquake press and the starring roles in summer blockbusters. But scientists are getting better at mapping the fault lines beneath Los Angeles that have the potential to inflict as much — if not more — devastation. 5 fault lines run below Los Angeles and could have
A large nuclear-powered attack submarine of the Soviet Navy during the final years of the Cold War sank in the Norwegian Sea on April 7, 1989 with its nuclear reactor and two nuclear warheads still on board. Now, scientists have measured that it’s seeping radioactive cesium in the icy waters of the Norwegian Sea. Just
Way back in 1811 and 1812, a series of over 1,000 earthquakes rocked the Mississippi River between St. Louis and Memphis. One was so powerful that it caused the river to run backwards for a few hours. The infamous New Madrid earthquakes of 1811-1812 rang church bells in Boston, which is 1,200 miles from St.
One Youtuber discovered what looks like a strange circle in the middle of a Nevada desert, leading to theories that it is a UFO located inside the top secret military base. Area 51 – a high security US military post – has long been associated with alien activity, and this discovery will not do anything
NASA’s Curiosity Rover has been exploring Mars since it landed inside the Red Planet’s Gale Crater in August 2012. The NASA Mars rover has since then covered 12.99 miles (20.91km) for its primary objective to identify biosignatures of basic molecular life. But an intelligent alien life conspiracy theorist now believes Curiosity has uncovered conclusive photographic
Alien hunters claim to have found “mechanical devices” on Mars which are “clear indications” that intelligent extraterrestrials live, or lived, there. While browsing NASA images, eagle-eyed conspiracy theorists spotted two strange objects in the dusty terrain. One of the objects looks like a jar which has fallen on its side, but the object also looks
The life of an asteroid is lonely. The rocks spend eons drifting through the cold vacuum of space. But on Wednesday, the asteroid Ryugu welcomed a special visitor: Japan’s Hayabusa-2 probe successfully landed on the asteroid’s surface at 21:06 ET (01:06 UTC on Thursday). The Japan Aerospace Exploration Agency (JAXA) launched Hayabusa-2 into space
The Malaysia Airlines 370 plane went missing in March 8, 2014, en route from Kuala Lumpur to Beijing with 239 people on board. While many still speculate over what happened on board, French investigators believe a murder-suicide is the most plausible explanation for the crash. Captain Zaharie Ahmad Shah was reportedly depressed at the time.
A team of Russian and Norwegian scientists just made a grim, timely discovery. Just one week after a nuclear-powered Russian submarine caught fire, killing 14 sailors, researchers sent a remote submarine to collect samples around the sunken wreckage of another nuclear sub, which caught fire in 1989 leading to the deaths of 42 crew members.
More than 10,000 earthquakes have hit California and Nevada in the last 7 days. Picture via USGS The ground is constantly shaking in southern California right now, and this has many concerned that another large earthquake may be coming. I have been keeping my eye on Cal Tech’s recent earthquake map, and as I write this
In the event of a zombie apocalypse, it’s imperative that you have a plan. If you’re influenced by the movies, then you might be inclined to take your chances and head for the nearest pub or shopping mall in order to outwit a growing horde of bloodthirsty zombies. Your average shopping mall is equipped with
We already know what a wondrous material graphene can be – filtering water, dyeing hair, super-strengthening substances – but now scientists have figured out a way to produce it much more cheaply: with the help of bacteria. When mixed with oxidised graphite, which is relatively easy to produce, the bacterium Shewanella oneidensis removes most of the
NASA’s Solar and Heliospheric Observatory (SOHO) is an audacious attempt by the US space agency to understand both the internal structure and outer atmosphere of the Sun. Since it began orbiting our star, NASA’s space telescope has since 1996 been a categoric success, from understanding the Sun’s complicated gas currents hidden beneath its surface, to
When you think of loud sounds you probably imagine earsplitting screams or whole-body-vibrating booms. Not necessarily the abrupt pop that belongs to a tiny 29-millimetre marine worm (Leocratides kimuraorum). But when marine biologist Ryutaro Goto from Kyoto University and colleagues measured the sounds made by these polychaete worms they came in at a whopping
The world is about to undergo a drastic transformation that will see cities around the globe inherit the disparate climates of places hundreds of miles away, new research shows. By 2050, scientists say over three-quarters of the world’s cities will have had their climate systems rearranged as part of this rapid metamorphosis. Most concerning
Thanks to gravitational wave astronomy, we are getting a better understanding of what happens when black holes collide. But the closely orbiting black holes only generate ripples in space-time strong enough to be detected from just before they smash. What happens before then? We can only extrapolate. But a new discovery could change all
It’s been half a century since the magnificent Apollo 11 Moon landing, yet many people still don’t believe it actually happened. Conspiracy theories about the event dating back to the 1970s are in fact more popular than ever. A common theory is that film director Stanley Kubrick helped NASA fake the historic footage of
Feasts are rare on the barren landscape of the ocean depths. So researchers couldn’t believe their luck when they recently stumbled on a feeding frenzy of deep-sea sharks chowing down on a fallen swordfish off the US coast. But they never imagined they would also capture footage of one of those sharks becoming the
India is getting ready to launch its first-ever lunar lander on Sunday 14 July. As part of the Chandrayaan-2 mission, the lander will be riding on top of the country’s most powerful rocket, the Geosynchronous Satellite Launch Vehicle Mark III. The plan is to both launch an orbiter module and a 56-pound (25 kilogram)
Earth’s magnetic field protects and makes our planet habitable by stopping harmful high-energy particles from space, including from the Sun. The source of this magnetic field is the core at the centre of our planet. But the core is very difficult to study, partly because it starts at a depth of about 2,900 kilometres
A weird-looking foot preserved in 99 million-year-old Burmese amber has revealed a new species of ancient bird with one insanely long middle toe. The newly-named Elektorornis chenguangi is a small bird distinct from all others, either extinct or living – simply because of its hindlimb. The third digit on its foot, researchers say, is twice
More often than not, today’s academic writing is full of dry and serious jargon-heavy language. So when you find a paper that breaks all the rules and makes you laugh, you’ll want to shout it from the top of a mountain. That’s essentially what University of Western Australia obstetrics and microbiology researcher Lisa Stinson
For some people, making decisions can feel paralysing, while for others it barely even registers. New research suggests the level of stress we feel when making choices relates to what kind of decision-maker we are. As you might expect, those who veer towards a quicker and more decisive way of picking between several options
A skull fragment found in Greece has inspired a startling hypothesis about when our species first arrived in Europe and immediately generated excitement and skepticism among experts who study how and when Homo sapiens dispersed from Africa. Researchers say the fossilized skull, found in the late 1970s in a cave in southeast Greece and
Area 51 has long been thought of by conspiracy theorists as a place where the US government is hiding intel on alien activity, and it all began when an apparent weather balloon crashed into the nearby town of Roswell in 1947. Many believed the weather balloon – the official stance by US authorities – was
If you listen to any number of love songs, dating “experts”, or plunge head first into a romance novel, you’re likely to think it’s in our destiny to find that special someone – your soul-mate. But how do you know if you’ve found “the one”? Will the birds sing? Will you see fireworks or
How can you know that any animal, other human beings, or anything that seems conscious, isn’t just faking it? Does it enjoy an internal subjective experience, complete with sensations and emotions like hunger, joy, or sadness? After all, the only consciousness you can know with certainty is your own. Everything else is inference. The
A compact device that uses waste heat shed by solar cells to purify water could one day change the lives of hundreds of millions of people around the globe. The new spin on old technology from King Abdullah University of Science and Technology in Saudi Arabia promises to ease increasing pressures on the nexus point
Nothing lasts forever. While we may think of the ground beneath our feet as part of an enduring landscape, the short-lived existence of a temporary island off the coast of Pakistan tells a much different story. Zalzala Koh, aka ‘Earthquake Mountain’, was birthed in 2013 during a powerful 7.7 magnitude earthquake that killed over
As NASA marks 50 years since the first people stepped foot on the Moon on July 20, 1969, some are claiming there is more than meets the eye. Conspiracy theorists first began claiming that NASA knew of aliens on the Moon when the space agency supposedly deleted 40 rolls of film from the Apollo 11
Denis Rebrikov wants to use CRISPR to create more gene-edited babies – and he already knows who their parents might be. In June, the Russian biologist told Nature he planned to gene-edit human embryos and then bring them to term. To date, only one person – Chinese scientist He Jiankui – has ever openly produced
You’ve heard of moonmoons – that’s what scientists want to call the satellite of a moon. But are you ready for ploonets? You’d better be, because we’re here to tell you about this hypothetical new class of cosmic objects. It is exactly what it sounds like: a sort-of cross between a moon and a
On 31 January 1971, the Apollo 14 mission launched from Earth and spent nine days in space. Along with the necessary space gear, scientific equipment, and two golf balls, the Kitty Hawk command module was also housing 500 seeds. You might be surprised to know that those seeds live on today, despite enduring space radiation,
California is a land shaped by seismic activity. A history of earthquakes is written in its landscape in the form of rifts, folds, and cracks. But major tremors also tend to leave less dramatic fingerprints. While two of the most recent earthquakes to strike the state’s south damaged infrastructure and land, they also warped the