In the centre of the South Pacific, there’s a place as far away from land as anyone on Earth could ever hope to get. The ocean is different there. These distant waters lie at the heart of the South Pacific Gyre, the centre of which holds the ‘oceanic pole of inaccessibility’: the ocean’s remotest extreme,
Malaysia Airlines Flight 370 went missing on March 8, 2014, en route from Kuala Lumpur to Beijing with 239 people on board. It is still a mystery what exactly happened to the plane, but it is believed that the plane was hijacked – and by someone who really knew what they were doing. The official
The controversial concept of an afterlife’s existence has fascinated philosophers and scientists alike for millennia. From ancient tribes to the modern Western world, people regularly perform rituals and discuss beliefs around life after death. Now, Reverend Dr Terri Daniel, an interfaith clinical chaplain and bereavement counsellor, claims she has made contact with the afterlife. I
In the Bible, the’ “Calming of the Storm” miracle is told in the Gospels of Matthew, Mark and Luke, detailing the story of how Jesus Christ was woken during a “furious tempest” by his disciples. Jesus is reported to have said “Peace! Be still” to which the wind eased and the waves calmed, before they travelled to
A new technique using the Hubble Space Telescope and a feature of general relativity has revealed the smallest clumps of dark matter ever identified – up to 100,000 times less massive than the Milky Way galaxy’s dark matter halo. And these (relatively) teeny tiny clumps of dark matter nicely agree with one of the
According to Charles Darwin, helping others just doesn’t make sense. Yet we’ve seemingly seen altruism time and again in the animal kingdom: in primates, in canines, in cetaceans, pinnipeds, even vampire bats. Now, for the first time, it’s been demonstrated in birds. The kind bird is one of the titans of avian intelligence, the African
Playing with a tiny human is one of those small pleasures in life where you really feel like you’re connecting with a person. It’s not just in your mind, either. We now have evidence that the rise and fall of their brain activity matches yours when you play together. A study conducted by researchers
A few simple genetic changes is all it takes to prolong a worm’s life span by 500 percent, a new study has found. That’s much longer than we ever expected, and scientists working the problem think results such as these might help us to understand our own ageing process a little better. That’s because
According to AFP, protesters in Iran dubbed the US the “axis of any evil” and called for “death to America”. In another quatrain, Nostradamus wrote: “Too late both the flowers will be lost, The serpent will not want to act against the law: “The forces of the Leaguers confounded by the French, Savona, Albenga through
Sometimes seemingly small changes can have a huge impact. In a new observational study, researchers in the United States have found a link between a mere $1 increase in minimum hourly wage and decreased suicide rates. While suicide rates are generally falling in the rest of the developed world, the US have seen a
Told by Matthew, Mark and Luke in the Gospels, the story claims Jesus crossed the Sea of Galilee by boat, when suddenly a furious storm swamped their vessel. Jesus is said to have been woken by his disciples and immediately instructed the water “Peace! Be still” to which the wind eased and the waves calmed. According to the Gospel of Mark,
We are, by now, pretty familiar with the concept of the Goldilocks zone. Also known as the habitable zone, it’s the distance from a star at which liquid water can be present on the surface on a planet – not so hot as to be vaporised, nor so cold as to be frozen. These
We can only guess at the kind of day one iguana-like lizard was having 100 million years ago in what is now Myanmar. All we have to go on is its tiny back leg and some slime mould it shook loose, perhaps in an effort to escape death by tree sap. The fossilised remnants
The famous black hole at the heart of the M87 galaxy is emitting jets of material that travel at near the speed of light. The black hole at the heart of the Messier 87 galaxy bears the name M87*, and astronomers have been observing it for a long time. Last year, the Event Horizon Telescope
Adorable cephalopods have been made even more adorable with tiny 3D glasses. But scientists weren’t trying to get the cuttlefish to enjoy Jaws 3-D; rather, the stereoscopic red-and-blue eyewear is designed to help us understand how the animals’ 3D vision works. And, it turns out, even though the eyes of cuttlefish (Sepia officinalis) are
Today, the vast majority of scientists agree that humans are causing unprecedented changes to our planet. Yet whether that warrants delineating an entirely new epoch is something geologists continue to disagree on. Some think the impact of humans is now so great, it exceeds the natural processes of the Holocene, while others argue there’s
One of the world’s most famous runestones is now believed to have been erected by Vikings fearing a repeat of a previous cold climate crisis in Scandinavia, a new study said Wednesday. The Rok stone, raised in the ninth century near the lake Vattern in south central Sweden, bears the longest runic inscription in
More than half of Australia is choking on smoke, and skies across the country glow orange as bushfires continue to ravage the continent. Since the start of the bushfire season in September, an estimated 25.5 million acres have burned, according to Reuters, and at least 25 people have died. More than 1 billion animals are
If, by chance, you happened to miss seeing the glorious first quarter Moon of 2020, astrophotographer Andrew McCarthy’s got you covered. In one of his most detailed images to date, the Moon enthusiast has managed to capture Earth’s only natural satellite in absolutely brilliant detail. All it took was a blend of 100,000 photos
It’s been nearly nine years since the Fukushima Daiichi nuclear disaster, and the natural world has wasted no time in reclaiming its space. Despite pervasive radiation, a new study suggests a sheer lack of human intervention is more than enough for wildlife populations to thrive. In the five years following human evacuation, the Fukushima
Some radiation therapy patients report seeing flashes of light in front of their eyes during treatment – even when their eyes are closed. Now this long-standing mystery may have been solved, thanks to this weird effect being caught on camera for the first time. What’s happening, according to a new study, is that enough
Fears about the future of the world continue to linger following the assassination of Iranian general Qasem Soleimani and Wednesday morning’s retaliation by Iran. An Iranian missile strike on US army bases in Iraq triggered world leaders to urge for de-escalations following the assassination sanctioned by US President Donald Trump on January 3. It has
After keeping a dead star under close observation for over two decades, astronomers have finally caught it acting out. A pulsar called PSR J0908-4913 (J0908 for short) has, for the first time, been seen glitching – a peculiar and poorly-understood “hiccup” in rotation speed that some pulsars undergo. This not only adds to the
The Ancient Galilee Boat, also known as the Jesus Boat, is an ancient fishing boat that dates back to the first century and was found in 1986 during a drought of the lake by brothers Moshe and Yuval Lufan, fishermen from western shores of Israel. After announcing their find, the vessel sent Christians into a frenzy,
In 1879, astronomer Benjamin Gould identified what looked to be a ring in the sky, measuring about 3,000 light-years across, made of dust and gas and young stars – interconnected stellar nurseries. Now, a new discovery has shattered our understanding of this structure, which has been known for 150 years as Gould’s Belt. According
SpaceX on Monday launched its third batch of 60 mini-satellites into orbit, part of its plans to build a giant constellation of thousands of spacecraft that will form a global broadband internet system. The cluster of 60 satellites separated successfully from a Falcon 9 rocket above the ocean between Australia and Antarctica an hour
NASA’s planet hunter satellite TESS has discovered an Earth-sized world within the habitable range of its star, which could allow the presence of liquid water. Another first for the Transiting Exoplanet Survey Satellite is its discovery of a world orbiting two stars, evoking the planet Tatooine from Star Wars but unlikely to be hospitable to
An ordinary-looking star system, barely visible in the night sky, appears to have a very bright future in store – and if astronomers’ predictions are right, some of us might even be around to see it. Today, V Sagittae is so faint it’s hard to find up there, even with a mid-sized telescope. But
Malaysia Airlines Flight 370 went missing on March 8, 2014, en route from Kuala Lumpur to Beijing with 239 people on board. Some experts believe the plane may have been hijacked and that it ended up at the bottom of the southern Indian Ocean. However, the wreckage was never recovered and it remains a mystery
Elvis, often referred to as “the King of Rock and Roll,” died from a cardiac arrest at his home in Memphis at just 42 years old. His passing, which brought a shock to the world, was said to have been influenced following years of prescription drug abuse. However, many refuse to accept this as the truth,
Scientists may have solved one of the great Leonardo da Vinci painting mysteries – why the glass orb in the Salvator Mundi painting (dated to around 1500 CE) shows no signs of the refraction and reflection of light that might be expected. The answer, according to computer models run by a team from the
Alien life conspiracy theorist Scott Waring took to his etdatabase.com blog to speculate about the bizarre claim about Comet Halley, also known as 1P/Halley. He said: “Guys, I hate to break it to you, but Halley’s Comet is an alien spaceship. “The apparent space anomaly is actually flying front to back. “And this is a
Our magnificent gravitational wave astronomers have done it again, adding to the detection collection a new collision between two neutron stars. On 25 April 2019, two neutron stars around 520 million light-years away came together and merged into a single object. It’s called GW190425, and although it’s only the second such collision astronomers have
A mysterious repeating radio signal from space revealed last year is now the fifth fast radio burst to be tracked back to its source galaxy. It’s a location unlike any of the others, and astronomers are having to rethink their previous assumptions about how these signals are generated. The origin of this repeating signal
The catastrophic bushfires raging across much of Australia have not only taken a huge human and economic toll, but also delivered heavy blows to biodiversity and ecosystem function. Already, scientists are warning of catastrophic extinctions of animals and plants. Humans have seldom if ever seen fires like these, but we do know that wildfires
To protect its hosts, Airbnb is now using an AI-powered tool to scan the internet for clues that a guest might not be a reliable customer. According to patent documents reviewed by the Evening Standard, the tool takes into account everything from a user’s criminal record to their social media posts to rate their likelihood
The climate changes we humans have inflicted on the planet are now so deeply embedded, they are showing up in our daily weather. Researchers from Switzerland and Norway now claim to have detected the “fingerprint” of climate change in every single day of weather in the global record since 2012. The distinction between climate
There’s nothing quite like staring into a celestial abyss to put your life in perspective. Perhaps that’s what we all need in 2020. On the brink of a new year, NASA’s Hubble Space Telescope snapped a swirling mass of star dust and gas, known as spiral galaxy ESO 021-G004, and the resulting image is so gob-smacking,
Particle accelerators like the Large Hadron Collider (LHC) are incredibly useful – and usually incredibly huge – instruments for studying some of the fundamentals of particle physics. But now scientists have managed to squeeze one on to a silicon chip. It’s nowhere near as powerful as the bigger versions, as you might expect, but the
US Presidential hopeful Amy Klobuchar has revealed how she will reveal what the US government knows about UFOs if elected. The Democratic Minnesota Senator confirmed the promise to look into UFO files in an interview with the Conway Daily Sun. She said: “I think we don’t know enough … I don’t know what’s happened, not
In recent years, anthropologists around the world have discovered new human ancestors, figured out what happened to the Neanderthals, and pushed back the age of the earliest member of our species. Taken together, these breakthroughs suggest that many of our previous ideas about the human origin story – who we are and where we
Public attention on the disastrous bushfire crisis in Australia will rightly continue for weeks to come. But as we direct resources to coping and recovery, we should not forget other weather and climate challenges looming this summer. The peak time for heatwaves in southern Australia has not yet arrived. Many parts of Australia can
Despite the similarities our world has with Venus, there is still much don’t know about Earth’s “sister planet” and how it came to be. Thanks to its super-dense and hazy atmosphere, there are still unresolved questions about the planet’s geological history. For example, despite the fact that Venus’ surface is dominated by volcanic features, scientists
Australia’s raging bushfires are so bad that satellites thousands of miles above Earth can easily spot their flames and smoke from space. The fires likely started naturally, though experts think human-caused climate disruption has exacerbated hot, arid conditions that fuel the growth of such blazes. Current estimates suggest eastern Australia’s bushfire crisis has scorched more
You’ve heard of hot Jupiters. You’ve heard of mini-Neptunes. You’ve heard of super-Earths. But have you heard of Eyeball Planets? Yep – planetary scientists think there might be a type of exoplanet out there that looks disturbingly like a giant eyeball. Just sitting there. Staring. But it’s actually not as weird as it sounds
You’ve heard of hot Jupiters. You’ve heard of mini-Neptunes. You’ve heard of super-Earths. But have you heard of Eyeball Planets? Yep – planetary scientists think there might be a type of exoplanet out there that looks disturbingly like a giant eyeball. Just sitting there. Staring. But it’s actually not as weird as it sounds
Homo sapiens have been treading this planet for around 350,000 years now. With our primate hands and our primate brains, we have expanded our curiosity beyond Earth’s blue skies, into the unimaginably vast reaches of space. Our discoveries over the millennia have been incredible – we’ve peeled back the aeons and stared at the
Elvis would have reached the milestone of 85 on Wednesday, but instead passed away on August 16, 1977, following a cardiac arrest in his bathroom. The My Way singer had a long history of prescription drug abuse, which is said to have played a part in his sudden death. However, exactly how a 42-year-old man could suffer
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