There’s an enormous variety of life thriving deep beneath Earth’s surface. A new analysis of two major groups of subsurface microbes has now revealed that their evolutionary path to life in the dark has been more curious than we expected. In our planet’s first 2 billion years of existence, there was no oxygen in
If a tree falls in a forest and no one is there to hear it, does it make a sound? Perhaps not, some say. And if someone is there to hear it? If you think that means it obviously did make a sound, you might need to revise that opinion. We have found a
More than half the ice shelves ringing Antarctica that prevent huge glaciers from sliding into the ocean and lifting sea levels are at risk of crumbling due to climate change, researchers said Wednesday. Melt water running into deep fissures caused by warming air is undermining the structural integrity of these natural barricades, they reported
Spend some time in someone else’s body, and your sense of self and your memory starts to shift, new research shows – almost as if your brain is adapting to better fit its new form. It’s a fascinating insight into the link between the physical and the psychological. Researchers haven’t actually worked out how
What happens to materials in Earth’s crust when a meteorite slams into them? Specifically, what happens to the quartz found in many different rock types? Scientists thought they already knew the answer – but new lab tests suggest we might have to think again. In the absence of any imminent meteorite strikes, researchers used
Of the many high expectations we have of quantum technology, one of the most exciting has to be the ability to simulate chemistry on an unprecedented level. Now we have our first glimpse of what that might look like. Together with a team of collaborators, the Google AI Quantum team has used their 54
For a single cell, the human body is a gargantuan maze of tissues, chemicals and capillaries, crammed full with trillions of other cells all bustling about like commuters at the world’s busiest train station. Somehow, amidst all this hubbub, most cells still manage to reach their destinations. How do they do it? Many cells have a
Water covers 70 percent of the Earth’s surface and is crucial to life as we know it, but how it got here has been a longstanding scientific debate. The puzzle was a step closer to being solved Thursday after a French team reported in the journal Science they had identified which space rocks were responsible,
As a source of clean energy, wind farms come with many benefits – but they can be a danger to local birds. A new study suggests a small tweak to the turbine design could make a big difference in terms of avian safety, and all it takes is a paint job. In an experiment run
An 80-million-year-old embryo has revealed some unexpected features of the most titanic animals to ever have walked the Earth. Sauropods, such as Brontosauruses, which lumbered their way through the Jurassic and Cretaceous ages, are well known for their impressive size and long necks. But very little is known about their young. “The preservation of
Just before a tiny pup died during the last ice age, it ate a piece of meat from one of Earth’s last woolly rhinos. Researchers made this discovery while doing a necropsy (an animal autopsy) on the mummified remains of the ice age puppy. After finding an undigested slab of skin with yellow fur in the puppy’s stomach, researchers
Sometimes our eyes play tricks on us, and sometimes, we play tricks on them. Optical illusions have entranced neuroscientists for decades, but these false messages have probably been going on much longer than we’ve been studying them. New research has found the eyes of fruit flies are just as easily fooled by static visual
Where do dreams come from? It’s an age-old question, something people have been wondering and theorising about for millennia. Whereas ancient civilisations may have interpreted dreams as having supernatural or spiritual origins, in modern society, we’re more likely to analyse our dreams in terms of our waking life, looking for meaningful connections linking the content
At some point in Earth’s 4.5-billion-year history, its entirely liquid iron core cooled enough to form a solid ball in the centre. Today, our planet’s core consists of a solid iron inner core surrounded by a molten iron outer core, but pinning down exactly when this change occurred has proven quite difficult. Estimates range
Our planet’s water supply is an incredibly valuable resource that we need to protect, and worrying new figures show between 30-50 percent of it is being stolen – meaning that water isn’t paid for or counted. This theft occurs when people and companies obtain water illegally – often for agricultural purposes. That could mean
A chance discovery during a hike in Grand Canyon National Park in 2016 ended up revealing strange footprints left by something that also walked there once, long, long ago. So long ago, in fact, that these ancient tracks – left approximately 313 million years ago – represent the earliest footprints ever found in this epic,
For half a century scientists feared that the Somali elephant shrew had vanished from the face of the Earth. No one had seen so much as a whisker. But the tiny mammal with its probing trunk-like nose was quietly thriving in the arid, rocky landscape of the Horn of Africa, researchers said Tuesday. The
Firefighters on Sunday battled some of California’s largest-ever fires that have forced tens of thousands from their homes and burned one million acres, with further lightning strikes and gusty winds forecast in the days ahead. Thousands of lightning strikes have hit the state in the past week, igniting fires that left smoke blanketing the
The mantis shrimp is quite a fearsome foe. While they’re neither shrimp nor mantis, this marine crustacean, measuring about just 10 centimetres (4 inches) long, has incredible eyes that can see cancer, and a club-like hand that can throw the fastest punches in the ocean. We’re talking 23 metres per second, and creating 1,500 newtons
Scientists from Leeds and Edinburgh universities and University College London analysed satellite surveys of glaciers, mountains, and ice sheets between 1994 and 2017 to identify the impact of global warming. Their review paper was published in the journal Cryosphere Discussions. Describing the ice loss as “staggering,” the group found that melting glaciers and ice sheets could
The world’s oceans have turned into a veritable sponge for our emissions, and new climate models suggest we’ve soaked them right through. Since the 1950s, our planet’s vast bodies of water have absorbed roughly 93 percent of the energy entering the climate system, and while most of that heating has been observed near the ocean
For all the little creatures out there, falling water can be a big hazard. When water drops are a large percentage of your body size, you need clever adaptations to survive even commonly occurring phenomena such as rain. So even greater volumes of falling water, like a waterfall, may as well be a wall to
If you’re a fan of science fiction, chances are you encountered a few franchises where humanity has spread throughout the known Universe. The ships that allow them to do this, maybe they use a warp drive, maybe they “fold space,” maybe have a faster-than-light (FTL) or “jump” drive. It’s a cool idea, the thought
In 2020, we’re sadly used to hearing how disinformation campaigns are being waged to influence people’s thinking, spread fake news, and further political agendas But the same tactics aren’t solely a threat in terms of long-term social manipulation, scientists warn. In a new study, researchers demonstrate that weaponised disinformation campaigns could also hypothetically be exploited
The internet has transformed most areas of our lives over the last few decades, and the technology keeps improving: researchers just set a new record for data transmission rates, logging an incredible speed of 178 terabits per second (Tbps). That’s around a fifth faster than the previous record, set by a team of researchers
Next week for the first time on record, two hurricanes could hit the Gulf of Mexico at the same time. Twice before, in 1959 and 1933, two tropical storms have entered the Gulf at the same time. But never before have both been hurricanes. It might not go that way. Only one of the storm
Radiation that would reduce the DNA inside our own cells into genetic confetti is no match for the microscopic tough-guy known as a tardigrade, and we just got closer to understanding just how these critters are so tough. Their protection works in part due to the shielding provided by a special ‘damage suppression’ protein
For the first time, pressure over 100 times that found in Earth’s core has been generated in a lab, setting a new record. Using the highest-energy laser system in the world, physicists briefly subjected solid hydrocarbon samples to pressures up to 450 megabars, meaning 450 million times Earth’s atmospheric pressure at sea level. That’s
Greenland’s massive ice sheet saw a record net loss of 532 billion tonnes last year, raising red flags about accelerating sea level rise, according to findings released Thursday. That is equivalent to an additional 3 million tonnes of water streaming into global oceans every day, or six Olympic pools every second. Crumbling glaciers and
The International Space Station (ISS), in Earth orbit at hundreds of kilometres altitude, is not perfectly airtight. Every day, the cabin loses a minute amount of air, monitored carefully so that a liveable atmospheric pressure can be maintained, and to identify leaks. Now the latter has come to pass, just two years after the
Prehistoric sculptures depicting human-like faces have some scientists thinking certain expressions might well be universal across time and culture. New research has found ancient Maya people and other Mesoamerican civilisations, such as the Olmec, were sculpting scenes of pain, elation, sadness, anger, strain and determination in ways that are still recognisable to us up to
Humanity will have burned through all the natural resources that the planet can replenish for 2020 by Saturday, according to researchers who said the grim milestone is slightly later than last year after the pandemic slowed runaway overconsumption. So-called Earth Overshoot Day – the date when humanity has used all the biological resources that
The sound of a key sliding into a lock could be enough information to potentially create a copy of that key and open the lock – that’s the conclusion of researchers who’ve been investigating “acoustics-based physical key inference”. It makes sense, if you think about it: the clicks and clacks of a key pushed
The lives and deaths of animals that lived more than 2,000 years ago are coming to light. A cat, a snake, and a bird that were mummified in ancient Egypt have undergone non-invasive, high-resolution 3D X-ray scans, helping us to understand how they were kept, and the complex mummification procedures practised thousands of years ago.
While bacteria are often associated with icky germs, they really are so much more than that. They help us digest things, feed trees nitrogen, play a huge role in cycling Earth’s nutrients, and survive staggering extremes. Recently, we discovered some of these incredibly tough and tiny packages of life can even live off air alone.
A gigantic fleet of floating rocks, spewed up from an underwater volcano in the Pacific Ocean, floated across the waves for thousands of miles. Eventually, it made it all the way to Australia, then started on a new project: revitalising the world’s largest (and very threatened) coral reef system. This unlikely chain of events may
In 1604, a white dwarf star went supernova. This is quite normal behaviour for a white dwarf star; but this one, at a distance of just 20,000 light-years from Earth, was visible to the naked eye, and documented by astronomers around the world, including German astronomer Johannes Kepler. Kepler’s Supernova, as it came to
There’s a lot going on in the centre of our galaxy. The Milky Way’s core is home to a supermassive black hole as massive as 4 million Suns called Sagittarius A*, and the environment around it is intense. Blowing out from this region is a nuclear galactic wind. It’s carved out two huge gamma-ray
Having strong, biased opinions may say more about your own individual way of behaving in group situations than it does about your level of identification with the values or ideals of any particular group, new research suggests. This behavioural trait – which researchers call ‘groupiness’ – could mean that individuals will consistently demonstrate ‘groupy’
Life was trying, but it wasn’t working out. As the Late Devonian period dragged on, more and more living things died out, culminating in one of the greatest mass extinction events our planet has ever witnessed, approximately 359 million years ago. The culprit responsible for so much death may not have been local, scientists
In the north of the Arabian Peninsula, bordering the Nefud Desert, archaeologists have recently catalogued vast stone monuments dating back 7,000 years. Shaped like long rectangles, the ‘mustatil‘ structures are a mystery – but new evidence suggests they were possibly used for ritual or social purposes. Mustatils are amongst the earliest forms of large-scale
A California resident has tested positive for plague, marking the state’s first human case of the disease in five years, according to health officials. The case was confirmed on Monday (August 17) in a resident of South Lake Tahoe, according to a statement from the El Dorado County Department of Health and Human Services. The individual is
A car-size asteroid flew within about 1,830 miles (2,950 kilometers) of Earth on Sunday. That’s a remarkably close shave – the closest ever recorded, in fact, according to asteroid trackers and a catalogue compiled by Sormano Astronomical Observatory in Italy. Because of its size, the space rock most likely wouldn’t have posed any danger to people
A pair of Danish computer scientists have solved a longstanding mathematics puzzle that lay dormant for decades, after researchers failed to make substantial progress on it since the 1990s. The abstract problem in question is part of what’s called graph theory, and specifically concerns the challenge of finding an algorithm to resolve the planarity
Just as you thought it was safe to go back to ignoring Betelgeuse, the red giant star started acting up again. After its first round of dimming, and then brightening, Betelgeuse has now started to dim once again. Moreover, this new dimming is inconsistent with Betelgeuse’s current brightness variation cycle – so, once again,
California’s Death Valley recorded what may be its hottest ever temperature on Sunday (August 16) – a blazing 130 degrees Fahrenheit (54.4 degrees Celsius). If that National Weather Service (NWS) measurement holds up, it will have been the hottest August temperature recorded there by 3 F (1.7 C), the hottest temperature recorded in Death Valley
Around 15,000 light-years away, an active black hole seems to be periodically lighting up an otherwise unremarkable cloud of gas with gamma rays. But there’s a catch. The gas cloud is around 100 light-years from the black hole – and exactly how the cloud is pulsing in time with it is a mystery. It’s
NASA is actively monitoring a strange anomaly in Earth’s magnetic field: a giant region of lower magnetic intensity in the skies above the planet, stretching out between South America and southwest Africa. This vast, developing phenomenon, called the South Atlantic Anomaly, has intrigued and concerned scientists for years, and perhaps none more so than
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