Astronomers have detected a star with such curious composition they conclude it must have been enriched by a supernova that didn’t accord with our current understanding of exploding stars. Their efforts to reconstruct this event reveal we’ve probably been missing something big about the behavior of the first generation of giant stars. In 1999, the […]
Where Does Oil Come From? No, it Isn’t Dinosaurs
You’ve probably been told at some point that oil is made from dinosaurs, thinking that when you are at a gas station you are pumping refined velociraptor directly into your Volvo. As widespread as the belief is, it’s not true. Oil is not made from the decomposed bodies of ancient dinosaurs. “For some strange reason, […]
The Oxygen Bottleneck: Astronomers Find Huge New Problem For Alien Civilizations
A potential problem for any intelligent aliens that could be out there that may prevent them from developing technology has been highlighted by a recent paper: the oxygen bottleneck. Free atmospheric oxygen is, of course, one of the key signs of potential life to look out for. The only planet where we know there is […]
Humans Make The Animal Sounds In Most Nature Documentaries – How And Why?
Wildlife documentaries like the BBC’s recent series, Planet Earth III, are renowned for offering breathtaking images of animals in their natural habitats. You’d be forgiven for thinking these shows offer an unmediated portrayal of these animals – an objective window into their lives as they hunt, rest, and rear their young. But this isn’t quite […]
China Unveils Coin-Sized Nuclear Battery That Lasts For 50 Years
A Chinese startup has developed a tiny nuclear battery that it claims can generate electricity for 50 years without the need for charging. Just the size of a small coin, the company suggests that this technology has the potential to power a smartphone in the future (although there’s a lot of work ahead before that […]
First Ever Proof Of Non-Human Animals Using Old Memories To Solve Problems
For the first time, a non-human animal has demonstrated the ability to recall events from their past and use them to answer an unexpected question. The breakthrough comes after the possibility was first explored six years ago and could potentially unlock new treatment avenues for patients with memory loss. Episodic memory is the string of […]
What Happened When The Hubble Telescope Stared At “Nothing” For 100 Hours
In 1994, the director of the Space Telescope Science Institute in Baltimore, Maryland, pointed the Hubble Space Telescope at a dark and seemingly empty patch of sky for 100 hours. When Hubble was launched in 1990, like with the JWST, its capabilities weren’t immediately clear. Ahead of being turned on, astronomers attempted to analyze what […]
Millions Of Mysterious Seafloor Pits May Have Been Formed By Life
The world’s seafloor is scattered with millions of mysterious pockmarks. It’s commonly held among scientists that these small pits were formed by fluids or methane gas leaking from the depths of Earth’s sediments, but a new study puts forward the idea that they were created by life. And when we say “life,” we’re not just […]
Perpetual Stew, Or Why It’s Safe To Eat A 79-Year-Old Soup
In Krung Thep Maha Nakhon (Bangkok), there is an award-winning restaurant called Wattana Panich, where you can order and then eat a beef and goat soup that is 49 years old. The soup, which is described as “delicious and aromatic” as well as having a “real depth of flavor that’s hard to explain”, has been […]
Key Molecules To Origins Of Life May Have Been Bubbling Away In Ancient Hot Springs On Primordial Earth
How did life start? It’s a question that has intrigued humans ever since we became conscious of ourselves and our place in the world. Now, researchers from Newcastle University in the UK may have an answer. By investigating the conditions that may have allowed living systems to emerge from inert geological materials 3.5 billion years […]
Doomed Private Moon Lander Now On Path To Crash Back To Earth
Private American space company Astrobotic has announced its doomed lunar lander is now on a path back towards Earth. Peregrine has been leaking fuel since last week, and any hopes for a “hard” landing on the Moon have been dashed. Instead, Astrobotic is aiming for a controlled burning up in Earth’s atmosphere. After a successful […]
The Origin Of The Most Mysterious Moon Rocks Has Been Explained
Many lunar deposits are curiously high in titanium, with TiO2 accounting for up to 18 percent of some samples by weight. As interesting as that may be to future miners, this fact has also intrigued planetary scientists, who for more than 50 years have been unable to explain how these rocks could form – let […]
Cicadapocalypse Returns To The US With First Double Brood Emergence In 221 Years
2024’s Apocalypse Bingo Card can put a big fat cross through “insect invasion” as America is scheduled to have the first double brood emergence of cicadas in 221 years. How can we know that? Because these peculiar insects have a passion for prime numbers. Periodical cicadas don’t emerge often – once every 13 or 17 […]
Watch Plants Chat About Their Neighbours’ Peril Using Hidden Airborne Communication Pathways
Money talks, people talk – and now, according to new research, the plants are talking too. While we knew that plants had been chatting away to each other since 1983, one team has taken a closer look at the chemicals involved in this communication. When a plant is damaged by an animal or a careless […]
565-Million-Year-Old Fossils Capture Key Event In Earth’s Evolutionary History
Fossils from the Llangynog Inlier of south Wales have been dated with unprecedented accuracy. As these fossils represent some of the oldest specimens of large multicellular life and match those from other parts of the world, this dating helps narrow down the point when life transformed from something we could barely see into an abundance […]
There’s Only One Place In The World Where You Can Legally Hunt Dinosaurs
If you want to hunt dinosaurs, Vernal in Utah is the only place in the world where you can do it legally. That’s because they offer official dinosaur hunting licenses, but if you get one, we still can’t guarantee you any success. Vernal began issuing dinosaur hunting licenses back in 1951, reports The Museum of […]
How Does NASA’s Supersonic Airplane Avoid The Sonic Boom?
Supersonic air travel holds the promise to get us across the world faster, but it comes with a big and loud drawback: Sonic booms. Supersonic planes are not allowed to travel over land because the boom they create is loud and disruptive. NASA has been working for decades to design an aircraft that can avoid […]
The Quantum Cheshire Cat Effect Might Not Be Real After All
In Alice in Wonderland, the Cheshire Cat can disappear leaving only its grin behind. Physicists consider something analogous might exist in quantum mechanics when a particle can be separated from its properties, and the two travel on different paths. This quantum Cheshire cat effect explained that and other weird events like particles swapping disembodied properties. […]
Incredible Footage Of A Deep-Sea Squid Brooding Thousands Of Eggs
Parental duties in the animal kingdom cover a whole range of options, from those that lay eggs and then sacrifice a normal sleep to care for their young, to those that give birth to live young that can move about within a few hours. Most nature shows feature animals growing up and learning the ropes, […]
This Is Your Yearly Reminder That Blue Monday Is Not A Thing
A version of this article was first published in 2018 and we are pretty much resharing it as it was because the whole corporate invention of “Blue Monday” continues to be peddled as “science”, and there are only a limited number of ways to say this is bullsh*t. It’s the third week of January and […]
