If we want to lower our carbon emissions, persuading people to switch to a vegan diet – or at least reduce their meat consumption – is a good place to start. Vegan diets have around half the climate footprint of the average diet, and if the world was to shift to a vegan diet, food-related […]
Bronze Age Families Appear To Have Practiced Both Monogamy And Polygamy
A Bronze Age family that lived 3,800 years ago in the Southern Urals may have taken a flexible approach to marriage, with most men allowed just one wife while a select few enjoyed the company of multiple women. Analyzing the genomes of 32 ancient relatives who were all interred in the same burial mound, researchers […]
African Wild Dogs Could Be Facing Total Population Collapse This Century
Climate change and a global rise in temperature are often synonymous with species like polar bears, who face drastic problems due to lack of sea ice at the temperature extremes in the poles. However, a new study by experts at the Zoological Society of London (ZSL) has placed African wild dogs on the brink of a […]
Glitter In Our Waters Is Seriously Impacting The Growth Of Vital Organisms
Glitter is everywhere: clothing, holiday decorations, and bodily crevices that aren’t appropriate to mention. Inevitably, it’s made its way into waterways, where new research suggests it impairs the growth of key aquatic bacteria. Some scientists have already called for glitter to be banned, as it’s made up of non-biodegradable microplastics. Too small to be filtered […]
Would It Be Safe To Drink The Fukushima Release Water?
Japan has announced it will begin releasing the treated water from the Fukushima Daiichi nuclear power plant later this week. The water, which was originally contaminated after the 2011 earthquake destroyed the reactor, is scheduled for release on Thursday, August 24, 2023, and will be the first step in a phased process that has become […]
Chia Seeds Confirm Alan Turing’s Predictions On Patterns In Nature
We often think of patterns and visualize something with geometric regularity, but those are not the only patterns that exist. There are plenty of patterns in nature that are hardly geometrical but are clearly distinctive – think of the spots on a giraffe (although they now come in plain too!). We might not instinctively understand […]
The Human Y Chromosome Has Just Been Sequenced For The Very First Time
It’s among the smallest of human chromosomes, but the complex structure of the Y chromosome has made it notoriously resistant to efforts to fully decipher it. Now, the first-ever complete sequence of the Y chromosome has been revealed, bringing us one step closer to solving a plethora of unanswered questions. “Now that we have this […]
The 6 Degrees Of Separation Finally Gets An Explanation
In 1929, Hungarian author Frigyes Karinthy wrote the short story Chains, containing a concept you’re probably familiar with thanks to the star of My Dog Skip and Footloose. In the story, a group is chatting when the narrator has a minor revelation about how the world has shrunk due to quickening communication and transport. During […]
Curiosity Is Approaching Mars’ Very Own “Bermuda Triangle”
Some Mars rovers have friends, while others have foes, and unfortunately for NASA’s Curiosity, it falls into this latter bracket. The rover’s nemesis comes in the form of Gediz Vallis Ridge, which has been dubbed Mars’ “Bermuda Triangle” due to several thwarted efforts to reach it. Now, Curiosity is set to make another, hopefully less […]
Incredible “Bubbletron” Particle Accelerators Might Have Existed In The Early Universe
Particle accelerators are either built, like at CERN, or happen naturally around extreme cosmic objects. A new study suggests that the first particle accelerators might have happened at the very beginning of the universe, a mere fraction of a second following the Big Bang. They were caused by bubbles created by the rapidly changing universe, […]
A Mysterious Cosmic Metal May Solve The Rare Earths Crisis
Rare earth metals are set to take center stage in the “green revolution” as they provide high-performance magnets used in renewable infrastructure like wind turbines, high-tech appliances, and electric cars. However, getting our hands on these much-sought-after materials is not always easy. Fortunately, there might be a solution in the form of a mysterious metal […]
“Human Or Not”: Millions Of People Just Participated In An Online Turing Test
Artificial intelligence (AI) has already passed a hefty test, proving they are better than humans at passing those online “I am not a robot” CAPTCHA tests. But can they pass the Turing test? The Turing test (which renowned mathematician and computer scientist Alan Turing originally and much more modestly called The Imitation Game) involves separating […]
Turtles Are Unexpected Time Capsules Of Earth’s Nuclear Bomb History
When humans were busy pummeling the Earth with atomic bombs in the latter half of the 20th century, turtles and tortoises across the world were quietly (and very slowly) getting on with their lives. Unbeknownst to them, the legacy of the dreadful explosions was becoming deeply imprinted into their shells. New research has studied the […]
India Becomes Fourth Nation To Successfully Land On The Moon
India did it. The lander and rover of the Chandrayaan-3 mission reached the surface of the Moon, landing as expected on Wednesday, August 23 at 12:34 pm UTC (8:34 am EST). This makes India the fourth nation to successfully soft land on the Moon, after the Soviet Union, the United States, and China. Chandrayaan-3 has […]
We Might Know What People In Ancient Rome Smelled Like
In Roman Spain, some 2,000 years ago, people may have been dousing themselves with the musky scent of patchouli, recent research hints. The study marks the first time that the composition of a Roman perfume has been identified, offering us a rare whiff of a bygone empire. The perfume, which has solidified after two millennia […]
Can You Cry Underwater?
Curious Kids is a series for children of all ages. If you have a question you’d like an expert to answer, send it to [email protected]. Can you cry underwater? – Rosie, age 17, Bedford, New Hampshire Your eyes are constantly coated by tears, made of oil, water and mucus. Advertisement When someone is emotional, their […]
Fiber Is Your Body’s Natural Guide To Weight Management – Rather Than Cutting Carbs Out Of Your Diet, Eat Them In Their Original Fiber Packaging Instead
Fiber might just be the key to healthy weight management – and nature packages it in perfectly balanced ratios with carbs when you eat them as whole foods. Think unprocessed fruits, vegetables, whole grains, beans, nuts and seeds. Research suggests that carbohydrates are meant to come packaged in nature-balanced ratios of total carbohydrates to fiber. […]
First-Ever “Seeds” Of Supermassive Black Holes May Have Been Discovered
Supermassive black holes can weigh millions if not billions of times more than the Sun. They lay at the center of galaxies where they accumulate mass over billions of years. But how did they start? Astronomers are not so sure. They could begin as relatively small black holes formed in supernovae, and then somehow accumulate […]
Spotless Giraffe Born At Tennessee Zoo Thought To Be Only One In The World
Nature is pretty good at coming up with clever color patterns to help animals hide from or deter predators, keeping them camouflaged against a backdrop of rainforest trees or tall grasses. Sometimes, however, genetic mutations can throw a spanner in the works, creating unusual variations of typical animal colors. Now, a new giraffe calf has […]
Mysterious Cyberattack Shuts Down Yet More Telescopes For Weeks
A cyberattack on the National Optical-Infrared Astronomy Research Laboratory (NOIRLab) research center for ground-based astronomy has left several large telescopes unable to operate for weeks. The attack took place on August 1, when NOIRLab say they detected a “cyber incident” in their computer systems, requiring them to suspend astronomical observations at the Gemini North telescope […]
