Data from the James Webb Space Telescope (JWST) has shown that an exoplanet around a star in the constellation Leo has some of the chemical markers that, on Earth, are associated with living organisms. But these are vague indications. So how likely is it that this exoplanet harbours alien life? Exoplanets are worlds that orbit […]
Jamais Vu: The Science Behind Eerie Opposite Of Déjà Vu
Repetition has a strange relationship with the mind. Take the experience of déjà vu, when we wrongly believe have experienced a novel situation in the past – leaving you with an spooky sense of pastness. But we have discovered that déjà vu is actually a window into the workings of our memory system. Our research […]
NASA Opens Lid Of Asteroid Sample Capsule, Preserved Proteins Found After Millions Of Years In Dinosaur Feather, And Much More This Week
This week we turn to science for the answer to how long couples should wait before getting intimate, rare red auroras caused by the Sun ripping holes in Earth’s magnetic field, and the zoo hypothesis attempts to explain why aliens haven’t made contact. Finally, we speak to wildlife filmmaker Bertie Gregory about the highlights from […]
Top Chinese Scientist Says India Did Not Land At The Lunar South Pole
In August, India became the fourth nation to touch down on the Moon, and the first to land near the lunar south pole. Since touching down, the lander and rover have conducted experiments to measure the temperature at the landing site and analyze the composition of the lunar soil, before – perhaps for good – […]
Exceptional 3,000-Year-Old Arrow With A Quartzite Head Recovered From Melting Ice
Archaeologists with the Secrets of the Ice project have discovered an ancient arrow that was preserved in ice for 3,000 years. The specimen displays its quartzite head, the fibers used to fasten it to the shaft, and the arrow’s feather fletching. It is a remarkable find. The Secrets of the Ice project is run by […]
How An Engraving Of A Bicycle Ended Up In An Ancient Indian Temple
If you’ve spent too long on YouTube or have a relative who has a soft spot for forwarding misinformation on WhatsApp, you may have come across a strange carving of a person riding a bicycle in an ancient Indian temple. According to various posts, the sculpture shows that humans in ancient India were riding around […]
Highest-Energy Detection Of Quantum Entanglement Achieved Yet
CERN’s ATLAS experiment has measured the quantum entanglement of top quarks, the most massive fundamental particles, at the highest energy yet, 12 orders of magnitudes (one trillion times) higher than standard entanglement experiments. Quantum entanglement is a property that we do not experience at our level of reality. It is very much in the domain […]
Cosmic Web Seen Directly For First Time Without Needing The Light Of Quasars
Every galaxy and cluster of galaxies is connected to the others by the cosmic web. Streams of gas stretch across the universe, where the most massive clusters form nodes. The structure is extremely faint and everything known about it comes from using quasars as a light source. The gas in the cosmic web filters some […]
Ancient Roman Political Slogans And A Final Sacrifice Found In Pompeii House
Archaeologists in Pompeii have discovered political inscriptions on the walls of a house in Pompeii. Inscriptions of this type, first carved and then painted in red (porpora), are common on the outside walls of houses and shops in the ancient city, and even on millstones. However, this is the first time they have been found […]
Motty Was The World’s Only Known Inter-Species Elephant Hybrid
Motty is the only confirmed example of a hybrid between the African elephant (Loxodonta africana) and the Asian elephant (Elephas maximus). While the young calf unexpectedly died less than two weeks after his birth, he managed to secure the unusual position of Guinness World Records’ “world’s rarest elephant”. Motty was born on July 11, 1978, at […]
The Dark Reason Why You Never See Narwhals In An Aquarium
There’s an extremely slim chance you have ever seen a narwhal in an aquarium – and for good reason. In North America, there have been only two attempts to keep narwhals in captivity, both of which ended in calamity and tragedy. Narwhals are a truly unusual species of toothed whales that live in the icy […]
Microbiologist Reveals The Things (And Places Where) They Never Eat
Every year, around 2.4 million people in the UK get food poisoning – mostly from viral or bacterial contamination. Most people recover within a few days without treatment, but not all are that lucky. As a microbiologist, I’m probably more acutely aware of the risk of food-borne infections than most. Here are some of the […]
Nova, Supernova, Hypernova, Kilonova – What’s The Difference?
The word nova comes from “nova stella”, Latin for “new star”, the name Tycho Brahe gave to the sudden appearance in 1572 of a light in the sky where none had been seen before. For centuries thereafter every sudden appearance of a new star in the sky was called a nova. Since we have learned […]
Why Do Killer Whales Attack And Kill Porpoises Without Eating Them?
It is not always easy to understand animal behavior, especially when it involves other species. For decades, researchers have observed orca (killer whales) attacking and even killing porpoises in the Pacific Northwest. But bafflingly, these expert hunters don’t eat their victims. So what’s going on here? Southern Resident orca are a genetically and culturally distinct […]
America’s First Cowboys Were Likely Enslaved Peoples, New Analysis Reveals
Contrary to popular portrayals in Hollywood movies, it seems the identities of the first cowboys of America were far more diverse than previously assumed. In fact, the evidence suggests the first examples of these Western icons were actually from Mexico and the Caribbean, and most of them were enslaved peoples. Prior to 1492, so the […]
Narluga Are The Unlikely Hybrids Of Narwhals and Beluga Whales
A narluga is a hybrid born as a result of inter-species nookie between a narwhal and a beluga whale. This unusual mash-up of species has never been documented alive, but scientists know they exist thanks to a skull found by Inuits in the Arctic and DNA evidence. Narwhals and belugas are the sole living members […]
Ancient Egyptians Used To Joke That A Pyramid Was Built By A Prostitute
Contrary to what archaeologists, historians, and conspiracy theorists may tell you, the pyramids were erected as a stiff monument to the prostitutes that once graced the banks of the Nile – at least, that’s the punchline to a smutty joke that Ancient Egyptians used to tell. Though not remembered for their sense of humor, the […]
Long-Lost Chambers Found Within 4,400-Year-Old Egyptian Pyramid
New rooms have been discovered in an ancient Egyptian pyramid, confirming the suspicions of archaeologists who first excavated the magnificent site almost 200 years ago. The rooms were recently discovered at the Pyramid of Sahura, built around 4,400 years ago for the Egyptian pharaoh Sahure of the Fifth Dynasty. The structure has been undergoing a […]
Watch How The Hammerhead Shark Gets Its Hammer In First-Of-Its-Kind Video
With their broad snouts and widely spaced eyes, hammerhead sharks are one of the strangest animals in the ocean. We have some idea, evolutionarily speaking, why they look the way they do, but quite how their distinctive hammers form has always been a mystery. Now, for the first – and possibly last – time, researchers […]
We Now Know Who Carved The Famous Jelling Viking Runestones
Today we recognize that handwriting is unique to each person. From the way we form our letters to the amount of pressure we place on pen and paper, the details of our individual writing can be used to identify us. The same, it seems, is true for ancient runesmiths, which has allowed archaeologists to finally […]
