Scientists just found a new way to split water into hydrogen and oxygen that’s cheap and effective – and it could mean we’re able to produce an abundance of clean hydrogen fuel in the future. Hydrogen is a fantastic source for clean energy, but the challenge is making enough of it to be efficient and
admin
Astronomers have found a giant exoplanet larger than Jupiter, but with extremely low mass – a composition that gives this mysterious ‘puffy planet’ a density very similar to styrofoam. The team who found KELT-11b, which orbits a star located about 320 light-years from Earth, says this “extraordinarily inflated” world is the third-lowest density planet with a
Hundreds of large flashes have been filmed reflecting off our planet, and they’ve helped NASA solve a mystery that stumped the likes of Carl Sagan more than two decades ago. These flashes are so large, you can see them from space, and they were originally thought to be caused by sunlight reflecting off the surface
If you could travel back in time 41,000 years to the last ice age, your compass would point south instead of north. That’s because for a period of a few hundred years, Earth’s magnetic field was reversed. These reversals have happened repeatedly over the planet’s history, sometimes lasting hundreds of thousands of years. We know
Researchers have added to a growing body of evidence linking criminal psychopathy and changes in the prefrontal cortex of the brain. After scanning the brains of 124 inmates in the US, the team found that psychopathic traits such as a lack of empathy and impulsive antisocial behaviour were associated with larger than average grey matter
In the middle of the South Pacific, there’s a remote, uninhabited island, virtually hidden more than 5,000 kilometres (3,100 miles) from the closest major population centre. You’d think that this isolated sanctuary would be pretty unspoilt, but Henderson Island, which is so remote it’s only ever visited by scientists every five to 10 years, is in
On Wednesday, the Weather Channel posted a video of a digging clam to its Facebook page with the caption, “This bizarre video of a clam digging in sand has gone viral.” Never has an invertebrate prophecy been so self-fulfilling. The digging clam wracked up about 5 million views and counting. Commenters took to the clam with gusto, debating what sort of
Almost 500 years ago, Italy’s Campi Flegrei supervolcano erupted, spewing molten rock and thick plumes of smoke into the atmosphere for eight days straight, and literally forming a new mountain from the chunks of Earth it drew from below. Now, researchers are warning that this vast, fiery cauldron could be ready to blow once more,
In classical computing, information is stored in bits that are read by physical phenomena such as electricity. You might recognise them as 1s and 0s, also called binary code. In quantum computing, it’s stored in quantum bits, or ‘qubits’. However, computers aren’t the only way we can store information: chemistry is also capable. Scientists at the
You’re probably familiar with the creeping sensation you get when you think someone’s watching you. You don’t know why, but suddenly you’re convinced that someone is looking your way, even if you’re alone in your house… But is this just a trick our brain plays on us, or are we actually sensing something that’s really
No one can ever say for sure what the future will bring, but a new video has summed up all the science-backed predictions that we can reasonably make about how Earth will change over the next 1 billion years, and our poor little brains are reeling. The reality is that it’s highly unlikely that anyone
Symbolically at least, the MP3 is now officially dead, after the German research institution that helped to develop the famous (and equally infamous) standard announced that all licensing for the file format had been terminated. While any MP3s in your possession will still play fine on any devices that support the audio format – no
Despite the NSA confirming the existence of Skynet, we all should be grateful that technology has not yet advanced to the stage where a liquid metal T-1000 terminator can shape-shift its way into your home and demand to see John Connor. But scientists in China are making a solid effort make a less sinister version
For the first time ever, physicists have managed to directly detect a hydrogen bond within a single molecule – meaning we can now observe the smallest and most abundant element in the Universe in ways that scientists could only ever theorise about. The experiment also reveals just how sensitive our imaging devices have become –
An unprecedented ransomware attack spread across the globe on Friday and into the weekend, amounting to what may be the largest online extortion scam the internet has ever seen. So far, the ‘WannaCry’ ransomware worm has infected an estimated 230,000 computers in 150 countries, causing chaos and shutting down hospital systems, transport networks, manufacturing plants,
Scientists think they’ve filled an important gap in whale evolution – the fossilised remains of a specimen that lived around 36.4 million years ago, and is thought to be one of the first whales to use large, sieve-like combs called baleen instead of teeth to filter their food. Today, baleen whales (or mysticeti) are among the
Drone footage has captured something no one’s ever seen before – wild narwhals using their bizarre tusks to hunt Arctic cod by hitting and stunning them, making them easier to consume. The behaviour addresses a biological mystery that’s spanned decades – why these rare and elusive whales have evolved an extra-long left canine tooth that
Dutch innovator Boyan Slat’s audacious plan to clear plastic from the marine area known as the Great Pacific Garbage Patch is undergoing some major design changes. But the 22-year-old tells Business Insider that the first cleanup array is set to launch sooner than expected. “Instead of late 2020, the cleanup will now start in just 12 months from now,
Famous physicist Albert Einstein, assassinated Japanese prime-minister Hisashi Hamaguchi, and English engineer Charles Babbage all have at least one thing in common; pickled brains – all cut out of their skulls and preserved after their deaths so researchers could study their genius. The brain of 17th century French philosopher René Descartes is now dust, but
Were you to look up in the sky roughly 2 million years ago you would have seen a star die in a spectacular blaze of glory. It’s long been debated whether this supernova explosion would have been close enough to impact life on Earth, and now physicists have shown that while it most likely wouldn’t
The video opens with a close-up shot of a great white shark swimming solo in a turquoise ocean. But when it zooms out, the camera reveals the bustling coast of a Southern California beach. “You are paddleboarding next to approximately 15 great white sharks,” comes a voice from the local Sheriff’s Department. “The sharks are
Before being assembled into something recognisable at a museum, most dinosaur fossils look to the casual observer like nothing more than common rocks. No one, however, would confuse the over 110 million-year-old nodosaur fossil for a stone. The fossil, being unveiled today in Canada’s Royal Tyrrell Museum of Paleontology, is so well preserved it looks like
Supermassive black holes normally sit at the centre of galaxies, pulling in matter and devouring stars that get too close, but now astronomers are tracking one that seems to be speeding across space. Experts think this black hole might be recoiling – that’s the official term for when two black holes collide and merge, and
A dead unknown sea animal has been found washed up on an island in Indonesia. The bloodied creature lay in shallow waters on the shores of Seram Island. Local man Asrul Tuanakota made the discovery on Tuesday evening. It is thought to be 15 metres long and 6 to 7 metres wide. While local media
Confidential details of a top-secret encryption-breaking supercomputer were left completely exposed on an unsecured computer server belonging to New York University (NYU), according to a new report. While it’s not uncommon for even critical-level infrastructure to suffer potentially catastrophic security breaches, what makes this event different is that there was seemingly no foul-play or attempts
It’s very early days, but two papers published today have detected hints of elusive dark matter within data collected at the International Space Station (ISS). Dark matter is the hypothetical substance that makes up 26.8 percent of the known Universe, and explains why our Universe holds together. For decades, scientists have struggled to detect it,
Six engineering undergraduate students at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT) have designed a portable device that converts text to braille in real-time. Their first prototype was created in a 15-hour hackathon in early 2016. Since that time, the device, called Tactile, has undergone extensive development. Now, it’s the size of a candy bar and completely portable. The
Unexpected findings about the atmosphere of a distant Neptune-sized world have surprised scientists, acting as a reminder that as we discover more about planets beyond our Sun, the lessons we’ve learned from our own Solar System certainly don’t always apply. In this case, HAT-P-26b – located some 437 light-years away from Earth – is what’s
Physicists at CERN have reported an unexplained phenomenon in their giant ion collider device – for the first time ever, particles called ‘strange hadrons’ have been observed in rare proton collisions. These strange hadrons aren’t new – we find them in quark-gluon plasma, which is the incredibly hot and dense state of matter thought to
For centuries, people have puzzled over how our Universe began. But the heat just got turned way up on a debate that’s quietly been raging between cosmologists, with 33 of the world’s most famous physicists publishing a letter angrily defending one of the leading hypotheses we have for the origin of the Universe. The letter is in response
A new global analysis of the distribution of forests and woodlands has ‘found’ 467 million hectares of previously unreported forest – an area equivalent to 60 percent of the size of Australia. The discovery increases the known amount of global forest cover by around 9 percent, and will significantly boost estimates of how much carbon
You’ve probably heard countless renditions of how the Universe and everything in it came to be, but you haven’t heard it like YouTuber Bill Wurtz tells it. It’s hard to look away, I can’t explain it, so you’ll just have to watch it and appreciate how delightfully bananas the whole thing is. After some scary realness about
Mas Subramanian, a chemist and Oregon State University professor, became known in 2009 when his lab discovered the first new blue pigment, called YInMn Blue, in 200 years. Now, Crayola is making the blue into a crayon. As NPR notes, the scientific breakthrough was a happy accident. In 2009, a student in his lab combined yttrium, indium, and manganese oxides (a
Humans have a centuries-old reputation as poor smellers. Though we can see more colours than the average mammal, our noses are simply no match for the questing snouts of rabbits and hounds. Sure, the aromas of coffee and pie are great. But intelligent humans outgrew the need to sniff our way through life. Or so
Upcoming missions to Mars have grabbed plenty of headlines in recent years, but before we set off for the Red Planet, a lot more research is needed – and that’s why NASA has a new plan for sending astronauts into orbit around the Moon. It’s been a while – we last set foot on the
For the first time, scientists have subjected quantum entanglement to extreme levels of acceleration, and there’s nothing fragile about this “spooky action at a distance”– it’s way more robust than we thought. In recent experiments, entangled particles held firm even while being accelerated to 30g – 30 times Earth’s acceleration – and the results could
The world’s most accurate timekeepers have brought their powers to bear on the next leap in quantum research – moving from quantum control of single atoms to entire molecules. This step up in manipulating something more complex than atoms could offer new options in how we might store or convert quantum information, or even allow
Do you wear runners, drink coffee or own a mobile phone? The chances are that these products cruised to you on a ship. In 2015, the global merchant fleet carried a record 10 billion tonnes of cargo, a 2.1 percent increase from the previous year. However, while it’s an essential part of international trade, shipping
There are now 22 of them, and we still have no idea what they are, what they mean, or where in the Universe they come from – fast radio bursts, those brilliant bursts of energy that last mere milliseconds, but are a billion times more luminous than anything we’ve seen in our galaxy. The latest
If there were awards for most powerful and persistent active volcano in the Solar System, first place would go to the awesomely named Loki Patera on Jupiter’s moon, Io. Two years ago, researchers took advantage of a rare astronomical event to create a detailed map of this king of volcanos, finding a wave of fresh
Even as the Trump administration weighs withdrawing the United States from the Paris climate agreement, a new scientific paper has documented growing fluxes of greenhouse gases streaming into the air from the Alaskan tundra, a long-feared occurrence that could worsen climate change. The new study, published in the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences, suggests that frozen northern
Last night, Elon Musk announced via Twitter that orders would begin today (10 May, 2017) for his revolutionary solar roof hardware. In another tweet, he promised that ordering would be available in most countries throughout the world. He also clarified that people could expect to see delivery begin in the United States in late 2017,
Time seems to pass faster or slower depending on the language you speak, new research has revealed, because of the way your native tongue speaks about time. In English, you might talk about a “long” day, whereas in Greek, you might talk about a “full” day – and those slight variations seem to alter our
Humans are still evolving, So, where will evolution take us in 1,000 years? Chances are we’ll be taller. Humans have already seen a boom in height over the last 130 years. In 1880 the average American male was 5’7″ (170 cm). Today, he’s 5’10” (177 cm). We may also merge with machines that can
Disaster struck early in the morning of 24 January 1961, as eight servicemen in a nuclear bomber were patrolling the skies near Goldsboro, North Carolina. They were an insurance policy against a surprise nuclear attack by Russia on the United States – a sobering threat at the time. The on-alert crew might survive the initial
An adult orca found dead on the Scottish island of Tiree last year wasn’t just notable for being one of the last surviving members of her species in the UK – she also died burdened by some of the highest levels of toxic pollutants ever found in a marine mammal. The 20-year-old Lulu died by
Desperate times call for desperate measures, and it doesn’t get more desperate than the Emirates Iceberg Project – a new plan to lug giant ice cubes halfway across the world to combat drought in the United Arab Emirates. The project, which was announced last week by Abu Dhabi-based firm, the National Advisor Bureau Limited, involves
Researchers have developed a new kind of transistor laser that can switch between two stable energy states – electronic and photonic – which could one day enable data transfer 100 times faster than conventional digital devices. The transistor prototype features what’s called bistability – the capability for a single switch to alternate between optical and