Here’s the true story behind the collapse of the mysterious Easter Island culture
For a long while it wasn’t clear whether the island’s native population originated in Polynesia or South America. And how can we explain its apparent paradox: the design, construction and…
Here’s the sound US diplomats heard before suffering mysterious brain injuries in Cuba
The Associated Press has obtained and released audio of mysterious sounds that some US diplomats and families heard in Cuba before suffering hearing loss, mild traumatic brain injury, nervous system…
An astronaut explains how it’d feel to ride Elon Musk’s giant, super-fast ‘airplane’
In early October, SpaceX founder Elon Musk debuted a new plan for colonising Mars with 1 million people. The centrepiece of Musk’s roughly 42-minute talk was the “Big F-ing Rocket“,…
Yellowstone’s supervolcano could give less warning of an eruption than we thought
Beneath Yellowstone National Park, a beast slumbers. Recent rumblings might be of interest to volcanologists, but for those fearing a cataclysmic eruption it seems as if we have little to…
This amazing new material changes shape just like an octopus
If you’re going to make camouflage, may as well copy from the best, and one of the best the world has to offer is our peculiar eight-armed pal the octopus.…
BREAKING: Astronomers just set a new record for measuring distances across our galaxy
Being unable to see the wood for the trees is a fairly common idiom, though we could just as easily say we can’t see the Milky Way for the stars.…
Millions of dollars worth of gold and silver is ending up in sewers in Switzerland
We’ve all flushed something down the toilet we wish we hadn’t, but apparently there’s more of a goldmine down there than you might have suspected – quite literally. Scientists have…
Anthrax outbreak suspected to have killed more than 100 hippos in Namibia
More than 100 hippos have been killed in a suspected outbreak of anthrax in a remote national park in Namibia. The first victim of the outbreak in Bwabwata National Park…
Researchers just shattered the record for the shortest-ever pulse of light
At just 53 attoseconds, a single flash of an X-ray laser has become the shortest light pulse of its kind in the history of optics, smashing the previous record by…
Are blood sniffing police dogs as good as we think?
It’s difficult to contemplate the tragedy of losing a loved one and never knowing what happened to them. Every year, an estimated 38,000 people go missing in Australia. While almost…
There’s another big gravitational wave announcement on the way
Brace yourselves: it looks like there’s another big gravitational wave announcement coming. LIGO and Virgo have announced that they’re going to be holding a big press conference on Monday, 16…
Worrying new research finds that the ocean is cutting through a key Antarctic ice shelf
A new study published Tuesday has found that warm ocean water is carving an enormous channel into the underside of one of the key floating ice shelves of West Antarctica,…
Here’s what Americans are most scared of in 2017 and no, it’s not spiders
For the fourth year running, Chapman University in California has run its Survey of American Fears, polling 1,207 adults from across the US about what they’re most scared of and…
Astronomers just found an epic ring around an exotic dwarf planet in our Solar System
Beyond the orbit of Neptune there are hundreds or even thousands of mysterious dwarf planets, most of which we know almost nothing about – but there’s a lot to learn…
No, this company isn’t really scattering your loved one’s ashes in space
Want to have your ashes scattered in space? It’s a beautiful concept, but this might not be the solution you’re looking for. And, perhaps, we should also be careful about…
Turns out the Great Barrier Reef can actually heal itself, but we have to help it
The Great Barrier Reef is suffering from recent unprecedented coral bleaching events. But the answer to part of its recovery could lie in the reef itself, with a little help.…
World’s newest ridiculously big radio telescope has made its first discovery
A little over a year since its completion, China’s 500-metre Aperture Spherical Telescope (FAST for short) has just made its first confirmed discovery. Astronomers used the giant dish to spot…
There’s a new quantum material that mimics human brains in an unexpected way
Scientists have discovered a quantum material that could represent the future of artificial intelligence – not because it retains vast amounts of data, but precisely because it doesn’t. The human…
You must see this epic photobomb captured as the ISS was transiting the Sun
A photo taken at the European Space Agency’s Madrid astronomy club revealed an awesome surprise – a photobombing bird flying through a shot of the International Space Station. Capturing the…
This house had 30,000 aggressive bees living inside its walls
The honey bees had taken up residence inside the walls of the house. A homeowner in Hillside, New Jersey, near Newark, told CBS New York it was “really noisy” with…
Incredible images from space show the true devastation of California’s wildfires
It’s peak wildfire season in California, where more than a dozen blazes ignited on Sunday. Officials have yet to determine the origin of these fires, most of which are in…
NASA is running out of the most precious ingredient needed for future space missions
Classroom models lie – our Solar System isn’t a bunch of bright, closely nestled orbs. Instead, other planets are separated from Earth by unfathomable distances – and are often too…
Are women less selfish? Here’s what that study actually found
Men and women get slightly different boosts of that neurological happy-drug dopamine when they perform altruistic acts, according to a new study. Before we jump feet-first into any “men are…
A 17-year-old teen just achieved a scientific first with this weird electric phenomenon
The electric honeycomb, or rose window instability, is a curious phenomenon. It occurs when a high-voltage corona charge – the ionisation of air surrounding a conductor – is applied from…
Astronomers have finally found most of the Universe’s missing visible matter
In our eagerness to identity the Universe’s occult phenomena of dark energy and dark matter, we often forget that most of its better defined particles also seem to be MIA.…
Massive ‘life-saving’ helium field just turned out to be far bigger than we’d hoped
New analysis of a gargantuan helium deposit discovered in Tanzania last year has revealed that there may be much more of the gas than initial surveys revealed. At the time,…
There’s enough wind energy across oceans to power the entire human civilisation
New research published on Monday finds there is so much wind energy potential over oceans that it could theoretically be used to generate ‘civilisation scale power’ – assuming, that is,…
This ancient Martian lake offers more clues for how life first started on Earth
Mars may be an arid wasteland today, but that wasn’t always the case – and scientists have discovered evidence that a huge sea existed on southern Mars some 3.7 billion…
BREAKING: Physicists just smashed a quantum light measurement limit
Scientists have set a new record in optical measurements using photons, achieving a level of precision that before now was only possible in the world of theory. In a first-of-its-kind…
More than a million birds die every day in Australia, because cats
Cats kill more than a million birds every day across Australia, according to our new estimate – the first robust attempt to quantify the problem on a nationwide scale. By…
Study reviews 1,154 climate science results, finds no evidence of publication bias
It is rare to encounter a scientific fact that stirs widespread debate and distrust quite like the matter of climate change. Despite consensus among climate specialists about a theory that…
Quantum observation can make energy flow against the current, new study shows
One of the most peculiar aspects of quantum theory is the observer effect, the idea that the very act of observing and measuring something – just observing and measuring, nothing…