A drill ship is setting off to investigate a sunken lost continent east of Australia
An expedition has been launched to help solve the mysteries of Zealandia, an underwater continent to the east of Australia. The drill ship JOIDES Resolution is visiting Townsville today before…
Ultrathin device generates power from even the most subtle human movement
Scientists have created an ultrathin energy harvesting device that generates electricity from human motion. The material could be placed in the fabric of clothing to charge your smartphone, fitness tracker…
Scientists Have Used CRISPR to Edit a Human Embryo in the US for the first time
Researchers in Portland, Oregon have, for the first time, edited a human embryo in the US. This work adds to the promise of CRISPR, and it stands as an important…
Talking to Yourself in The Third Person Can Reduce Stress And Negative Emotions
Talking to yourself in the third person can help you keep your emotions in check, based on new research that aims to find simple and effective ways to reduce the…
Half our body’s atoms could have come from outside the galaxy
New research suggests up to half the matter in the Milky Way – including the atoms that make up all of us – could have come from outside our own…
Near death experience study explores the common ground in what is felt and seen
For a select few who have stood on the brink of clinical death, the process of dying is often accompanied by feelings of peace, bright lights, and a sense of…
Why looking for aliens is good for society (even if there aren’t any)
The search for life elsewhere in the universe is one of the most compelling aspects of modern science. Given its scientific importance, significant resources are devoted to this young science…
New tardigrade study reveals where these mystery microbeasts came from
A fresh analysis of the tardigrade’s genome has revealed new secrets about the world’s toughest animal, while casting doubt on a previous conclusion. By comparing the genes of taken from…
The most intense cosmic explosion out there has been captured as it happened
The most powerful kind of cosmic explosions known to science are called gamma-ray bursts – aka ‘death from space’ – galactic events so fierce their awesome intensity is only surpassed…
WATCH: David Attenborough Explains How These Weird Australian Octopuses Hunt On Land
Octopuses are super weird creatures. They are total escape artists, have three hearts just because, and they can regenerate limbs if they happen to need it. But until watching this…
NASA is building a prototype deep space habitat – from an old cargo container
An aluminium cargo container, built more than 15 years ago to move large equipment to space, will be transformed into a prototype of a space habitat where astronauts would live…
David Attenborough Explains How These Weird Australian Octopuses Hunt On Land
Octopuses are super weird creatures. They are total escape artists, have three hearts just because, and they can regenerate limbs if they happen to need it. But until watching this…
Google has started adding imagination to its DeepMind AI
Researchers have started developing artificial intelligence with imagination – AI that can reason through decisions and make plans for the future, without being bound by human instructions. Another way to…
Scientists are pushing wild climate hacking scenarios to save the planet
While the planet is working on cutting emissions to curb climate change, some scientists are saying we can also help our planet out by directly messing with our atmosphere. Collectively…
Physicists make a glowing fireball from a magnet and a plasma chamber
Scientists have observed how a magnetic dipole field can create what looks like a glowing, localised fireball inside a plasma chamber. By placing a regular dipole bar magnet near the…
Here’s how to make batteries that last (almost) forever
When a battery runs low it usually needs to be manually recharged, but new approaches are being developed to help this energy source last indefinitely. Self-sustaining batteries are needed for…
There are seven times more massive comets in our Solar System than we thought
New research shows that the outskirts of our Solar System are littered with many more large comets than has been previously estimated. These massive icy wanderers can take hundreds or…
Researchers are competing to see who can make the best household robot
How far away is a robot that could help you around the house with domestic tasks such as putting away the groceries, cleaning up messes and answering simple questions? Although…
For the first time, a US company is implanting microchips in its employees
We’re always hearing how robots are going to take our jobs, but there might be a way of preventing that grim future from happening: by becoming workplace cyborgs first. A…
The Moon is seriously loaded with water, more than we ever expected
There’s way more water locked inside the Moon than we previously thought, according to a new analysis of satellite data. This unexpected finding about our planet’s grey companion is giving…
10 farming myths to think about on your next grocery run
Most of us don’t spend our days ploughing fields or wrangling cattle. We’re part of the 99 percent of Americans who eat food, but don’t produce it. Because of our…
There’s another huge plastic garbage patch in the Pacific Ocean
Experts have long thought it was out there, but now we’ve got confirmation – there’s a second garbage patch of plastic out in the Pacific Ocean, which may cover as…
NASA wants your origami skills to help it design a spacecraft radiation shield
There’s no denying that the ancient art of origami paper folding has given the world reams of brilliant miniature sculptures, and now NASA wants to take that intricate craftiness off-planet.…
Physicists just generated a particle that acts as its own antiparticle
It’s been exactly 80 years since the theoretical physicist Ettore Majorana predicted that there were neutrally charged particles that were indistinguishable from their own antiparticle. None have been spotted in…
A neuroscientist just tricked 4 dodgy journals into accepting a fake paper on ‘Midi-Chlorians’
If we ever needed a timely reminder that in the world of academic publishing not all scientific journals are created equal, we now have it. To test just how low…