When men and women in heterosexual relationships complain their partners do not understand their pain, they might be right. A study of pain receptors in rodents and primates has found that in every case, male and female members of the species are primed by different molecules. Advertisement Physical pain, be it excruciating or merely unpleasant, […]
Could The Long-Extinct Bush Moa Be Brought Back From The Dead?
Given that they’re, y’know, dead, it’s hard to discern much about the life of extinct creatures like the little bush moa, a turkey-sized emu lookalike that strutted around New Zealand until the 13th century. But using the 21st century power to study ancient DNA, a new study has provided more clues about how the bush […]
Megathrust Earthquakes And The World’s Largest Tsunamis: What Is The Cascadia Subduction Zone?
Some of the world’s largest earthquakes and tsunamis have originated from the Cascadia Subduction Zone, a 1,127-kilometer (700-mile) stretch that runs from northern California up to British Columbia. Here, the Pacific Ocean floor is subducting under North America – and when the fault periodically locks and releases, it can unleash devastating megathrust earthquakes and record-breaking […]
The World’s Deepest Lab Hunts For Dark Matter 2.4 Kilometers Underground
Around 2,400 meters (7,874 feet) below the Jinping Mountains in China’s Sichuan Province, the world’s deepest laboratory is quietly unraveling the mysteries of the universe. Advertisement The China Jinping Underground Laboratory (CJUL) became fully operational in December 2023, swiping the title of the “world’s deepest lab” from another dark matter lab called SNOLAB, located around […]
Finland To Offer Bird Flu Vaccines To At-Risk Groups In Possible World-First Move
Finland may be about to become the first country in the world to start dishing out preventative bird flu vaccines to some citizens. It’s being reported that the first shipments of vaccine secured by the European Union (EU) will be heading there, so that those most at risk of exposure to the virus can be […]
The Top 5 Animals Most Likely To Survive Global Disaster
Indulge me, if you will, in a little hypothetical situation. The Earth has suffered a major catastrophic event, human life as we know it has been wiped from the face of the planet and only a few species of living things remain, but which species are up to the task of surviving such an apocalypse? […]
This AI Can Interpret The Meaning Of Dog Barks
Dog whisperers can now join the list of professionals whose jobs are at risk of being stolen by artificial intelligence (AI), as it may have just entered the world of animal communication. Using machine learning software, researchers were able to successfully decode the meaning of dogs’ vocalizations, paving the way for new technologies that may […]
People Are Just Now Learning What “Google” Actually Means
Google has achieved what few brands have, making their company name become the default verb for what their product does. Rather than saying “search it” it’s common to say “Google it” even if the person you are talking to is the type who will Google it on Bing. Advertisement Google didn’t start out as Google. […]
A Siberian Graveyard Reveals 800 Years Of Human-Mammoth Interactions
A so-called “mammoth graveyard” in Arctic Siberia has a lot to teach us about how humans and hairy elephant cousins related in the last days of the latter’s existence. Unfortunately, some of the best evidence has been stolen by ivory hunters. Advertisement It is astonishing that humans managed to live in Siberia above the Arctic […]
No Object Can Travel Faster Than Light, So Why Doesn’t That Apply To Warp Drives?
The speed of light in a vacuum is the absolute speed limit of the universe. As you accelerate towards it, any object with mass suddenly finds it has a lot more of it, and so it takes more and more energy – eventually infinite amounts of energy – in order to move towards it. Advertisement […]
Memento Mori: Is It Healthy To Remember We’re Going To Die?
It could be argued that death has become sanitized in some parts of the modern world, a far-removed concept few of us have to face until it happens to someone close, and even then we typically experience grief from a distance to the actual dead. In the Victorian era, the advent of photography brought in […]
“Walking” Tree That Looks Like An Ent Just Won New Zealand Tree Of The Year
Awards season in Hollywood might be over, but the most important competition of the year has just announced its winner – and it looks straight out of Tolkien’s Middle-earth. Advertisement The competition in question is New Zealand’s Tree of the Year, and the winner is a uniquely shaped northern rātā, one of the country’s tallest […]
Iceland Is About To Make A Big Announcement On Its Whaling Industry
Iceland’s whaling industry is about to face an important decision that could decide its future. Advertisement On Tuesday June 11, the country’s Food Minister Bjarkey Olsen Gunnarsdóttir will announce whether or not it will re-issue a license for Hvalur hf, the only Icelandic whaling company left in business, according to Icelandic broadcasting network RÚV. Advertisement […]
England’s Famous Roman Baths May Have Unexpected Medical Qualities
The thermal waters of the iconic Roman Baths in the English city of Bath may hold the key to combating antimicrobial resistance, new research has revealed. After isolating around 300 different microbes living within the famous attraction’s cozy pools, the study authors discovered that 15 of these are capable of inhibiting some of the world’s […]
The Largest Feathered Dinosaur Was A 9-Meter-Long Bipedal Predator
That birds are dinosaurs is an idea that was suggested, in not so many words, as far back as the mid-19th Century, but their ancestry was delivered in a sucker-punch of a fossil when the world discovered Archaeopteryx in 1861. Since then, evidence of feathered dinosaurs has cropped up in several groups across the planet, but […]
Water Ice Found Unexpectedly On Highest Volcanos In The Solar System
Planetary scientists have discovered something truly unexpected happening above Mars’s highest peaks. The volcanos from the Tharsis region there show traces of frost, but it’s not frozen carbon dioxide like elsewhere on Mars. This frost is actually water ice. Advertisement Mars has a thin atmosphere made of mostly carbon dioxide, and these extinct volcanos […]
What Is Gamer’s Thumb?
Video games and e-sports continue to rise in popularity across the world, which has led to more and more people of various ages taking up controllers. However, with this surge in popularity and adoption could come some lesser-known problems. For most of us, our gaming habits do not necessarily impact our health – but that […]
Humanity Could Make Our Own Dyson Swarm, But It Would Come At A Great Cost
In our hunt for technologically advanced alien civilizations out there in the universe, it is useful to think about what sort of signs of life we ourselves give off, such as radio signals and biosignatures. Advertisement It’s perfectly logical to do so, but it’s not altogether ideal. As we’ve seen over the last few hundred […]
Gravity Without Mass Is A New Explanation For The Failure To Find Dark Matter
A new explanation for why we have not found dark matter proposes that it doesn’t exist. Instead, the author thinks we have been misunderstanding gravity. He’s not the first to suggest that, but the new proposal, of gravity without mass created by topological defects in space-time, is particularly novel. Advertisement Dark matter was first proposed […]
African Elephants Call Each Other By “Names”, Just Like Humans Do
Names are universal throughout human cultures and across different languages. They form a huge part of our identity and help us communicate with each other, but personal names are considered a uniquely human thing. Now, new research has suggested that wild African elephants could address each other with individual specific calls – the equivalent of […]
