Could aliens be hibernating through the worst time in the Universe?
As the Fermi paradox states, the Universe is a vast, unknowable space, filled with trillions upon trillions of potentially habitable planets, so… where are all the aliens? In the latest…
US Airlines have launched a trial to replace your ticket with your face or fingerprint
Headed on a trip? You may soon be able to ditch your boarding pass in favour of your fingers or face. On Wednesday, Delta announced a new biometric identification pilot…
An additional sixth sense has been detected on the tongue
It’s a question that goes back to Aristotle himself: Does water have a flavour, or is it devoid of taste? For millennia, scientists have been trying to figure out if…
A Microsoft billionaire just unveiled the biggest plane ever built
The initial construction of the massive airplane Paul Allen has been quietly building in the California desert is complete, and the vehicle, which would be the world’s largest airplane with…
7 cosmic phenomena physicists might ‘hear’ in gravitational waves
For the third time in two years, physicists have detected ripples in the fabric of spacetime, called gravitational waves, that Albert Einstein predicted the existence of more than 100 years…
Here’s what Earth might look like in 100 years – if we’re lucky
President Donald Trump on Thursday announced his intent to withdraw the US from the Paris climate accord. “We’re getting out, but we will start to negotiate to see if we…
Microgravity can permanently mutate bacteria to make them faster breeders
Certain types of bacteria can mutate to reproduce more quickly when exposed to microgravity, and that’s not great news for our space tourist dreams, seeing as we humans are teeming…
CERN just fast-tracked plans to build a particle collider three times as big as the LHC
The Large Hadron Collider (LHC) still has plenty of good work left to do in the field of particle acceleration, but scientists are already starting work on its replacement, set…
From botnet to malware: a guide to decoding cybersecurity buzzwords
Words like worm, trojan horse, and zombie may seem like the stuff of science fiction, but they’re part of the reality of life online. Now that we communicate, work and…
Get ready: Space-mining might be only a decade away
Is water the new oil of space? It may be to Middle Eastern oil states such as Saudi Arabia and the United Arab Emirates, who are looking at space as…
The world’s most powerful X-ray laser just gave rise to a ‘molecular black hole’
Imagine you took all sunlight that hits our planet at any given moment, and focussed it on one (unfortunate) piece of Earth the size of a thumbnail. Now times that…
Chimps and humans console victims in surprisingly similar ways
A security camera recorded four black-clad gunmen as they rushed into a Netherlands supermarket. The camera watched them wave a gun in the face of a female employee. It watched…
The World’s Largest Floating Solar Plant Is Finally Online
The world’s largest floating solar power plant is now online in China. Built by Sungrow, a supplier of PV inverter systems, the 40MW plant is now afloat in water 4…
It’s happening: LIGO just detected gravitational waves for the THIRD time
The Laser Interferometer Gravitational-wave Observatory (LIGO) has done it again, detecting gravitational waves rippling away from a cosmic collision between a pair of black holes. Only this time, the pair…
This internal ‘master clock’ could be in control of all our circadian rhythms
Scientists studying the pattern of circadian rhythms have found that one central body clock could be controlling several others at the same time. By examining fruit flies – which, like…
Ice cores dating from the Black Death challenge the concept of ‘natural’ lead levels
The Black Death tore through Europe in the years 1346–1353, killing as many as 200 million people as the deadliest plague known to humans carved its path through history. Now,…
New evidence reveals black hole event horizons are all too real
Scientists have found new evidence to support the idea that matter vanishes completely when it falls into a supermassive black hole, suggesting Einstein was right about these unquenchable voids lurking…
8 genetic mutations that can give you ‘superpowers’
More than 99 percent of your genetic information is exactly the same as every other person on the planet. Your genes determine your skin colour, sex, and hair colour and…
Changing meal times can alter your body clock
Changing your meal times could be enough to reset one of your internal body clocks, researchers have found, giving us new insight into the relationship between when we eat and…
Scientists claim to have invented the world’s first quantum-proof blockchain
Researchers in Russia say they’ve developed and tested the world’s first blockchain that won’t be vulnerable to encryption-breaking attacks from future quantum computers. If the claims are verified, the technique…
The Solar Industry Is Creating Jobs 17 Times Faster Than the Rest of the US Economy
A new report released by the International Renewable Energy Agency (IRENA) reveals that solar jobs in the US (and other nations) are expanding quickly. As of November 2016, the American…
This video shot from inside a human larynx is incredible and kinda horrifying
If you’ve never felt weird about speaking, singing, yelling, or even breathing through your mouth, be prepared to feel really grossed out by all of those things when you see…
Physicists are probing the centre of our galaxy to find the missing fifth force of nature
Our current understanding of the Universe states that it’s governed by four fundamental forces: gravity, electromagnetic, and the strong and weak nuclear forces. But there are hints of a fifth…
The Great Barrier Reef can no longer be saved by current efforts, Scientists Warn
The Great Barrier Reef can no longer be saved by existing plans to protect the ecological site, experts have warned, saying that efforts should shift to a lesser, backup plan…