Scientists Develop an ‘Elevator’ to Generate Kelp For Biofuels 4x Faster Than Normal
In the struggle to slow the runaway freight train of humanity’s destructive impact on Earth, scientists are increasingly looking at the role our oceans can play. Teaming up with industry,…
This Switch Takes Us an Important Step Closer to a Quantum Internet
Efforts to build a super-fast, super-secure quantum internet are steadily progressing, and scientists have now figured out how an important part of that network could function: an integral switch that…
Octopuses Not Only Feel Pain Physically, But Emotionally Too, First Study Finds
An important new study suggests octopuses are likely to feel and respond to pain in a similar way to mammals – the first strong evidence for this capacity in any…
According to One Key Measure, China Just Increased Its Innovation Lead Over The US
China, which last year overtook the United States as the world’s top filer of international patents, a key measure of technical innovation, increased its lead significantly in 2020, the UN…
The Latest Chatbots Are Capable of ‘Resurrecting’ The Dead
It was recently revealed that in 2017 Microsoft patented a chatbot which, if built, would digitally resurrect the dead. Using AI and machine learning, the proposed chatbot would bring our…
Physicists Just Found 4 New Subatomic Particles That May Test The Laws of Nature
This month is a time to celebrate. CERN has just announced the discovery of four brand new particles at the Large Hadron Collider (LHC) in Geneva. This means that the…
South-West Iceland’s Been Hit by 17,000 Earthquakes This Week. It May Be About to Erupt
More than 17,000 earthquakes have been recorded in the south-west of Iceland, in the Reykjanes Peninsula, during the past week. People living in the area have been advised to be…
How Did This Skull End Up All Alone in a Cave in Italy? We Finally Have an Answer
It was found in 2015 – an isolated clue to a macabre mystery set in motion thousands of years in the past. This ancient puzzle consisted of just a single…
Scientists Detect Signs of a Hidden Structure Inside Earth’s Core
While most of us take the ground beneath our feet for granted, written within its complex layers, like pages of a book, is Earth’s history. Our history. Now researchers have…
Watch a Super-Elusive Moonflower Cactus Bloom in This Gorgeous, Rare Time Lapse
The Amazon moonflower (Selenicereus wittii) has one of the most elusive blooms in the plant kingdom. Each year, for just one night, this rare and unusual cactus opens its sepals…
First Results From California’s Universal Basic Income Trial Show Employment Rose
Michael Tubbs didn’t see much risk in giving money to his city’s poorest residents, no strings attached. The former mayor of Stockton, a city in California’s Central Valley, is a…
We Just Found The Largest Luminous Glowing Shark Species in The World
Three species of shark that inhabit the twilit depths of the ocean just turned out to have been bioluminescent this whole time. The kitefin shark, the blackbelly lanternshark, and the…
Strange Earthquakes in Utah Reveal Volcanic Activity Hidden Below The Desert
It might not look like it, but the arid expanses of Utah conceal an ancient volcanic complex, and this hidden underground system is still active far below the desert’s surface,…
Awkwardly, Research Shows 98% of Conversations Don’t End When We Want Them To
Everyone’s familiar with the sensation of being trapped in a conversation for too long – be that over the garden fence or by the office water cooler. On the other…
Dropping Oxygen Will Eventually Suffocate Most Life on Earth
For now life is flourishing on our oxygen-rich planet, but Earth wasn’t always that way – and scientists have predicted that, in the future, the atmosphere will revert back to…
Renaissance-Era Letter Sealed For Centuries Just Virtually Unfolded And Read For The First Time
More than 600 years ago, someone intricately folded, sealed and posted a letter that was never delivered. Now, scientists have digitally “unfolded” this and other similarly locked letters found in…
A Cephalopod Has Passed a Cognitive Test Designed For Human Children
A new test of cephalopod smarts has reinforced how important it is for us humans to not underestimate animal intelligence. Cuttlefish have been put to a new version of the…
Landmark Study Shows Soil Pesticide Reduces Wild Bee Reproduction by 89%
When you think of bees, a hive humming with activity probably comes to mind. But most of the world’s 20,000 bee species don’t call a hive home. These wild species…
The Oldest Known Mummification ‘Recipe’ Has Been Unearthed, And It’s Intense
While we can learn a lot about mummification from ancient examples of the practice, questions remain about exactly how the Egyptians prepared their dead for the afterlife. In an exciting…
In a Momentous Discovery, Scientists Show Neanderthals Could Produce Human-Like Speech
Our Neanderthal cousins had the capacity to both hear and produce the speech sounds of modern humans, a new study has found. Based on a detailed analysis and digital reconstruction…
Slime Mold Doesn’t Have a Brain, But It Can ‘Remember’ Where to Find Food
It may be a single-celled organism, but the slime mould Physarum polycephalum has some pretty fascinating tricks up its pretty yellow sleeves. Now new research has found that it seems…
Your Indifferent Cat Won’t Choose Your Friend Over Your Enemy, Research Finds
There’s an old stereotype about the difference between cats and dogs. Dogs are loving and fiercely loyal, they say, while cats are aloof and indifferent. Most cat people probably disagree…
NASA Perplexed by Strange Geological Stripes Appearing in Russia
Near the Markha River in Arctic Siberia, the earth ripples in ways that scientists don’t fully understand. Earlier this week, NASA researchers posted a series of satellite images of the…
Scientists Find 140,000 Virus Species in The Human Gut, And Most Are Unknown
The coronavirus pandemic has had the world fixated on viruses like no time in living memory, but new evidence reveals humans never even notice the vast extent of viral existence…
Scientists Use Weather Radar Tech to Watch Storms of Microbes Brew Inside Cells
Scientists are using a radar-like weather system to watch as a storm of pathogens brew inside living tissue. The strategy is entirely novel, according to the authors, and relies on…
Ancient Roman Chariot Used in Parades Unearthed ‘Almost Intact’ Near Pompeii
An ornate Roman chariot has been discovered “almost intact” near Italy’s buried city of Pompeii, the archaeological park announced on Saturday, calling it a discovery with “no parallel” in the…
NASA Deliberately Made Eerie Glowing Clouds… to Study Eerie Glowing Clouds
If you’re in the right place at the right time, and you turn your eyes to the sky, you just might catch sight of something eerily beautiful: Wisps of cloud,…
Dust From Asteroid That Ended Dinosaur Reign Closes Case on Impact Extinction Theory
Having dominated the planet’s surface for hundreds of millions of years, dinosaur diversity came to a dramatic conclusion some 66 million years ago at the hot end of an asteroid…
Mega Iceberg About The Size of Los Angeles Just Broke Off From an Antarctic Ice Shelf
A giant iceberg, more than 20 times the size of Manhattan, just split off from Antarctica’s Brunt Ice Shelf. This dramatic breakup comes after a major crack formed on the…
Cross-Cultural Study Finds Atheists And Believers Have Similar Moral Compasses
Throughout the world and across various different cultures, it’s often assumed atheists are untrustworthy and lack the same guiding principles as those who believe in a god of some kind.…
Decades-Long Experiment Finds Strange Mix of Antimatter in The Heart of Every Proton
Like the Universe’s tiniest matryoshka dolls, atoms are typically modelled as particles within particles – a nuclei built of protons and neutrons, which in turn contain trios of fundamental particles…
You’re Not Imagining It. Climate Change Is Making Allergy Seasons Start Earlier
Pollen grains from flowering plants were meant to fly, sometimes travelling hundreds of kilometres on the wind. Now it appears that the climate crisis has accelerated that travel, making allergy…
For The First Time, Physicists Have Filmed The Oscillation of a Time Crystal
For the first time, physicists have captured an enigmatic state of matter on video. Using a scanning transmission X-ray microscope, the research team has recorded the oscillations of a time…
We Finally Know Why Dinosaurs Were Either Humongous or Tiny, Unlike Modern Animals
A team of US scientists has demonstrated that the offspring of huge carnivorous dinosaurs like Tyrannosaurus rex, who grew from the size of house cats to towering monsters, reshaped their…
We Finally Know The True Age of These Huge, Mysterious Jars Scattered in Laos
In total, there are thousands of them – a giant landscape of strange, hollowed jars, carved from ancient stone. Some have lids. Most are open to the sky. These surreal…
10,000-Year-Old Dog Remains From Alaska Hint at a Beautiful Tale of Migrating Together
A tiny, ancient bone fragment found in Southeast Alaska is a lot more than meets the eye. It belonged to a dog that lived in the region 10,150 years ago,…
Scientists May Have Just Solved The Long-Standing Mystery of Earth’s ‘Missing Ice’
It should be simple. When temperatures on Earth get hotter, huge amounts of water ice trapped in giant glaciers begin to thaw, releasing water into the oceans, and causing sea…
A Major Ocean Current Could Be on The Verge of a Devastating ‘Tipping Point’
The Atlantic Meridional Overturning Circulation (AMOC) sea currents are vital in transporting heat from the tropics to the Northern Hemisphere, but new research suggests climate change might knock the AMOC…
Gorgeous Egyptian Art From 4,600 Years Ago Reveals an Extinct Goose
Artwork that had adorned the walls of an Egyptian prince’s tomb for more than four millennia has been found to contain images of a bird completely unknown to modern science…
Guess Which Animal Is in Australia’s Oldest Rock Painting, Dating Back 17,000 Years
In Western Australia’s northeast Kimberley region, on Balanggarra Country, a two-metre-long painting of a kangaroo spans the sloping ceiling of a rock shelter above the Drysdale River. In a paper…
9+ Wonderful Images to Remind Us Just How Far Technology Has Come
Sometimes, while waiting for quantum computers to become ubiquitous, or wondering whatever happened to flying cars, it’s easy to forget just how far technology has come over the past 50…
Extremist Brains Perform Poorly at Complex Mental Tasks, Study Reveals
People with extremist views aren’t only identified by their political, religious, or social beliefs, according to new research. Those ideological convictions run deep, scientists say – so deep, in fact,…
Physicists Just Reached a New Speed Limit For Moving Quantum Information
Scientific progress towards a quantum computing future has so far involved lots of different breakthroughs in lots of different (but related) fields, and there’s now a new one to report:…