Everything is bigger in Texas – including its oil fields. The Lone Star State is the beating heart of America’s oil empire, pumping out 6.3 million barrels of crude oil every day. To understand how it became an oil-producing powerhouse, you need to look back millions of years ago – and then fast-forward to the […]
Mexican “Storm God” Altar At Tikal Confirms Invasion Of Maya Empire
Famous for its iconic pyramid and temples, the ancient Maya city of Tikal is no stranger to imperial conflict, having provided the setting for the Rebel Alliance base in Star Wars: Episode IV. However, new research suggests that the jungle-covered site may once have been conquered by another Mesoamerican superpower from central Mexico. Located in […]
Trees Store The Memory Of Reckless Gold Mining In The Peruvian Amazon Rainforest
Gold mining is putting an immense strain on the Amazon rainforest, but the trees might have a secret weapon up their bark. Just as tree rings can record the passage of time and shifts in climate, new research shows they can also help to track down destructive gold mining practices. Here’s how it works: human-made […]
Dangerous Asteroid Has A 1-In-25 Chance Of Hitting The Moon – “If It Hits, It Will Be Pretty Spectacular!”
For weeks, near-Earth asteroid 2024 YR4 has dominated the news. From the moment of its discovery in late December until the end of February, it became the space rock with the highest risk of impact on our planet. Preparation to protect ourselves kicked in, and a global effort of observations delivered the happy news that […]
“Planetary Health Diet” Has Similar Health Outcomes And Sustainability To The Mediterranean Diet
In 2019, experts from multiple countries and disciplines worked together to create a diet that would be both good for us and good for the planet. They called it the Planetary Health Diet. Despite, the commonsense choices in this food program, the health benefits have been untested until now. Researchers compared it with the famous […]
There’s Gold To Be Found On New Zealand’s Beaches, Teeny Tiny Flecks Of Precious Gold
New Zealand’s South Island is home to many treasures. Some vast, like Milford Sound, some small, like the blue mushroom to be found there, and some treasures that are literal gold, albeit very, very tiny. Yes, the beaches here are sometimes littered with the stuff, but do we casual beach strollers stand any chance of […]
The Sixth Taste? Scientists Think They Found An Addition To Sweet, Sour, Salty, Bitter, And Umami
Sweet, savory, sour, bitter, and umami are the five classic tastes our tongues are trained to detect. But lurking on the edge of this flavorful lineup is a lesser-known sensation: ammonium chloride. Best known as the tongue-tingling punch behind salty licorice, this sharp taste might just deserve a spot among the basic five. Taste is […]
What Is The Highest City In The World?
How many meters above sea level do you live? Buckingham Palace sits at only 16 meters (52 feet) above sea level, while Paris sits 50 meters (164 feet) above. By contrast, the top of Japan’s Mount Fuji sits 3,776 meters (12,388 feet) above sea level and is still less high than the highest city of […]
Updated Scans Of The Titanic Confirm Heartbreaking Story Of Doomed Ship’s Final Hours
Scans of the wreck of the Titanic appear to show evidence for heartbreaking reports from the ship’s final few hours. The wreck of the Titanic, which sank in April 1912, is slowly disintegrating and may soon disappear, the inevitable result of rust, sea salt, bacteria, and a plethora of deep-sea creatures. “The future of the […]
Physicists Have Figured Out The Secret To The Perfect Pour-Over Coffee
If you’re quite happy with a cup of instant – or worse still, prefer tea – we’ll be honest, this one’s probably not for you. But if you own coffee scales, can argue passionately about the importance of grind size, and time your espresso pull to the second, you may be interested to learn that […]
“Living Skin”: New Category Of Microbes Found To Dominate Earth’s Critical Zone
A new study has found an entire new primary category of microbes hidden within Earth’s Critical Zone, sometimes referred to as the planet’s “living skin”. Back in the 16th century, Leonardo da Vinci once said, “We know more about the movement of celestial bodies than about the soil underfoot,” and that’s a sentence which – […]
Dire Wolf “De-Extinction” Facilitates Non-Invasive Cloning Of The World’s Most Endangered Wolf
Colossal Biosciences have introduced a new kind of wolf to the world, but had you been alive over 12,500 years ago you might’ve seen a similarly enormous predator stalking across the Americas. They have functionally de-extincted the dire wolf by genetically modifying a gray wolf, giving life to three puppies that share some of the […]
Lightshow On Uranus Unlocks Its Rotation Secret – Its Day Is 28 Seconds Longer
Uranus is so weird. Its magnetic field doesn’t go through the center of the planet, it rotates on its side, and it is fairly featureless. Some of the peculiarities might be due to a colossal impact in its past. Still, they make it difficult to assess even simple properties like the length of a day […]
A $3.5 Billion Cryptocurrency Collapse Was Preceded By Suspicious Mathematical Patterns
In the volatile world of cryptocurrencies, crashes are common. However, one of the largest was not just a random event, new research indicates, nor a result of the inherent instability of a product without underlying value. Instead, a handful of apparently coordinated individuals brought two of the largest digital coins down. The identities of this […]
Why Do Runners Race In An Anti-Clockwise Direction?
If you’ve ever watched any track and field events, horse racing, indoor cycling, or (shudders) baseball, you may have noticed that they all run in a counter-clockwise direction. Why is this, and why does it appear to be the standard worldwide? While the tradition has not been continuous – for instance, Oxford and Cambridge runners […]
What Living Underground Can Do To The Mind And Body
Would you live underground? As the world heats up, there are some people who think that humans becoming a subterranean species is an inevitability – that moving under the Earth’s surface will be the only way to survive the effects of climate change. Of course, there are others who’d live underground just to escape their […]
Exercise Polaris: The WHO Just Ran A 2-Day Pandemic Preparedness Exercise
Last week, the World Health Organization (WHO) ran a two-day pandemic preparedness exercise dubbed Exercise Polaris. The exercise was the first test for a new global coordination mechanism to tackle health emergencies and simulated an outbreak of a fictional viral disease. When COVID-19 was declared a pandemic five years ago, it sometimes felt like we’d […]
Pyramid-Building Pharaoh Khufu Was Buried With Two Enormous “Solar Boats” – And We Still Don’t Know Why
In 1954, Egyptian archaeologist Kamal el-Mallakh made a remarkable discovery when excavating beneath the southern side of the Great Pyramid of Giza. Within two huge rock-cut pits, carefully sealed with limestone blocks, lay a pair of spectacular ships resembling the mythical “solar barges” that the sun god Ra was believed to have traveled on as […]
Quantum Cat Shown To Also Exist In Hotter States In World First
The quantum cat state is probably one of the most famous – the idea that a quantum system can exist in the superposition of two different states. It was exemplified by Erwin Schrodinger’s famous thought experiment where an imaginary cat is trapped in a box with a vial of poison activated by a quantum process. […]
Dead Stars Dancing in Our Galactic Backyard Will Eventually Make A Supernova
Two white dwarfs are trapped in a decaying orbit that will eventually turn them into a Type Ia supernova. It’s a common enough story in the universe, but this pair is around 160 light years from Earth. That’s outside most estimates of the danger zone, but within some more cautious ones, and would certainly make […]
