Climate scientists have signed an open letter to the Nordic Council of Ministers, warning of catastrophic consequences that could impact “the entire world for centuries to come” if the slowing of the Atlantic Meridional Overturning Circulation (AMOC) is not addressed. The world’s oceans are constantly circulated by currents, with those from the surface down to […]
26 Years After It Died, This Blue Whale’s Skeleton Is Still Oozing Oil
New Bedford Whaling Museum in Massachusetts might be home to five impressive whale skeletons, but the blue whale in particular might leave its mark on you. Literally – its skeleton is dripping oil, and it hasn’t stopped doing that for over a quarter of a century. The blue whale in question is KOBO, standing for […]
Breakthrough Listen Responds To Claims They Have Detected An Alien Signal
A filmmaker claims that scientists hunting the skies for signs of intelligent alien civilizations have found an alien technosignature, to be revealed to the public very shortly. So, is this the real deal? Have we found aliens? Is it time to crack each other’s heads open and feast on the goo inside? In 2019, Australia’s […]
Electric Eels Are 80 Percent Dedicated To Electricity And Poop From Their “Necks”
Just when you thought eels couldn’t get any weirder, we’ve got shocking news. It turns out electric eels’ ability to generate enough electricity to “light” a Christmas tree isn’t the only thing that makes electric eels slippery freaks – once you take a look at their anatomy, they make even less sense. There are three […]
Why Are People Being Asked To Put Bowls Of Salt In Their Windows This Winter?
People in the United Kingdom are being urged to place bowls of salt in their windows this winter, in an attempt to prevent damp conditions and mold. But is that really good advice? When water vapor in your home or vehicle hits a cold surface, such as your windows, it changes back into a liquid […]
New Carbon Capture Design Is Major Step Forward In Removing CO2 From The Air
Releasing carbon dioxide and greenhouse gases is easy, but it takes work to capture them again. Removing carbon from the air is a way to reduce the effects of the climate crisis, but a lot of the technology is still at the design stage or is not efficient enough to balance out the emissions. A […]
After 188 Years The World’s Longest Venomous Snake Is Officially Four Species, Not One
There are always more species to be discovered. Whether it is a bizarre-looking worm lizard or something that has been hidden in a drawer for decades, the implications for naming something new can include helping with conservation as well as other benefits. Now the king cobra has received the same treatment, with researchers putting in […]
Huge Lithium Reservoir Found Under Arkansas Spells Hope For Renewable Future
A new USGS survey, made possible through machine learning and environmental testing, has led to the discovery of an estimated 5 to 19 million tons of lithium reserves under southwestern Arkansas. It’s an amount that, if recoverable, would triple the US’s stockpile and make it a global leader in access to the mineral – not […]
Why Is Africa Splitting In Two?
You can stamp all you like but the ground beneath your feet still ain’t solid, not really. We all live our lives atop a complex network of puzzle pieces that, thanks to Earth’s hot gooey center, are constantly shifting, generating earthquakes, building mountains, and tearing continents apart – which, by the way, is currently happening […]
Record For Largest Known Prime Number Broken By Amateur Mathematician Using Free Software
The largest prime number ever discovered has been found by an amateur mathematician using Great Internet Mersenne Prime Search (GIMPS). Prime numbers, as you likely learned in school, are numbers that can only be divided by one and themselves. There are an infinite number of them, with all numbers greater than 1 being either a […]
Lost Silk Road Mountain Cities Mapped Using LiDAR Carried By Drones
Two cities that flourished as part of the Silk Road have been mapped though drone-borne LiDAR, revealing them as two of the largest cities on the mountainous part of that world-changing path, or indeed anywhere at such altitude. The Silk Road helped make the modern world, allowing not just goods but technologies and ideas to […]
Formaldehyde, Trocars, And Cotton Wool: What Is Embalming?
The decomposition ecosystem makes quick work of our corpses when we die, letting loose a rich diversity of microbes and luring in flies from miles away. It’s a handy process for getting rid of carcasses out in the wild, but it can cause problems depending on the kind of funeral you’re after. Humans have a […]
First “Black Hole Triple” Challenges Models Of How Giant Stars Die
An X-ray binary system composed of a black hole and a star in the process of being consumed turns out to have a third member circling. Unless some unlikely scenarios occurred, the existence of what the discoverers are calling a “black hole triple” indicates a previously unseen method for making black holes. Since we can’t […]
Haunting Near-Death Experience Accounts Reveal Seven Major Themes
We humans really did something when we learned how to resuscitate people who had gone into cardiac arrest, because (by our understanding of biology at the time, at least) it meant we had learned how to bring people back from the dead. They may have been without a heartbeat for only a matter of seconds, […]
Chinese Lander Found Signs Of Magmatic Structures On The Far Side Of The Moon
At the start of June 2024, China’s Chang’e 6 lunar probe successfully touched down on the far side of the Moon, landing softly near the lunar south pole. Its main mission, which it performed alongside various side quests, was to study and return the first-ever samples from the Moon’s far side. It did so, bringing […]
R/P FLIP, An Eccentric Engineering Marvel, Saved From Imminent Destruction
R/P FLIP, quite possibly one of the strangest maritime engineering feats ever built, has been saved from the scrapyard at the eleventh hour. Also known as the FLoating Instrument Platform, FLIP is 108-meter (355-foot) long oceanic research platform that can be partially flooded and flipped by 90 degrees, allowing it to stand vertically in the […]
What’s The Sun’s Low Entropy About? Life, The Universe, And Some Other Things…
Entropy is one of those concepts that is so fundamental that it needs to be explained far and wide in accessible terms, but has consequences that baffle us when we think about it for a while. It is the measure of disorder of a system, and in an isolated system – such as the universe […]
How Holographic Dark Energy Could Lead To The End Of The Universe
A team looking into dark energy and the holographic principle have modeled what the end of the universe may look like, assuming that the universe is a hologram after all. As with a lot of the stranger hypotheses about the universe, the holographic principle has its roots in the theoretical study of black holes. Tackling […]
Intelsat 33e Anomaly: Satellite Lost In Orbit Causes Widespread Disruption
A communications satellite has been lost in Earth’s geostationary orbit, breaking up into several pieces of debris after an “anomaly” occurred over the weekend. Intelsat 33e, also known as IS-33e, was reported to be out of service on Saturday, October 19, leading to a loss of power and service to customers across Europe, Africa, and […]
A Colossal 119-Meter Giant Stretches Across The Atacama Desert, The Largest Of Its Kind
The Atacama Desert in Chile is a harsh environment. Yet, once upon a time, humans were traipsing across the landscape committing enormous drawings to the earth – drawings that would endure for thousands of years. Today we know them as geoglyphs, and while they’re found in various sites across the globe, Atacama is home to […]
