Last September, DART hit asteroid Dimorphos, the small companion of asteroid Didymos. The impact was a test of planetary defense, showing that we can truly shift the orbit of a celestial body. But it was also a chance to study what an impact on an asteroid looks like. And astronomers did not waste time in […]
Animation Shows The Most Powerful Cosmic Events If They Were Visible To Our Eyes
A new animation allows us to get the gist of how sparkly the night sky would look to us in gamma rays thanks to the data collected by NASA’s Fermi Space Telescope in just one year. The visible light that humans can see with our unaided eye is but a small slither of the electromagnetic […]
Vesuvius Challenge – Decipher These 2,000-Year-Old Scrolls And Win $1 Million
Fancy yourself a code breaker or a technological wiz? If so, you could win $700,000 if you can solve a 2,000-year-old mystery. The former GitHub CEO Nat Friedman and a group of scientists are giving away prizes worth a total of $1,000,000, at the time of writing, to anyone who can successfully decipher scrolls recovered […]
Researchers Have Found Where The Energy Goes In Quantum Turbulence
Turbulence in a fluid due to the rotation of a body has applications across all realms of science and engineering. It doesn’t matter if you’re focusing on a neutron star or on an airplane engine: turbulence is there, often messing up your nice “simple” equations. There is turbulence also at the quantum level and, like […]
Emergency Alert Test To Ping Every Phone In The UK, Temporarily Blocking Apps
A new emergency alert system is being tested by the UK government on April 23. The alert sound has been shared on Twitter, and it will temporarily block the phone’s functionality until the owner has acknowledged the notification. “A new system that will give the Government and emergency services the capability to send an alert […]
New IPCC Climate Report: “We Are Up The Proverbial Creek, But We Do Have A Paddle”
The climate crisis is getting deeper and deeper – but humanity still has a number of options left on the table, according to the latest Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) report released today. The report can be summed up very simply: the planet is facing big trouble, but solutions are still available. Advertisement “If […]
It’s The Spring Equinox, But Does That Really Mean Equal Day And Night?
Depending on where you are, it’s the equinox today or tomorrow, but what does that really mean? It’s easy to define the solstices; they represent the longest day or night of the year depending on your hemisphere. On the other hand, the definition of the equinoxes is that the equator is pointed directly towards the […]
The Devil’s Kettle: For Decades, Nobody Knew Where This Underground River Led
In Judge C. R. Magney State Park, Minnesota, there is an unusual feature known as the Devil’s Kettle, where the Brule River splits in two around a large rock. While the bulk of the water goes over a waterfall and continues downstream, a significant amount of it travels down into a hole and then…. sort […]
Newly-Discovered Volcanic Plume-Dwelling Bacteria Boost Prospects For Life Within Icy Moons
Members of the Sulfurimonas group of bacteria have found a way to thrive in the smoky plumes at the bottom of the ocean, even without other sources of food. These bacteria have a genome beautifully adapted to living in an environment too oxygen-rich for their relatives. These plumes could have counterparts in the depths of […]
1900s “One Night Cough Syrup” Scares The Internet With Wild Ingredients
Medicine in the 1900s was questionable. It pretty much consisted of hard drugs delivered far beyond reasonable dosages, and for almost any ailment, cocaine or opioids were just the thing you needed. Whether they worked is a long conversation (they didn’t), but one thing is for sure – they looked like a good time. Perhaps […]
Yes, You Can Have An Allergic Reaction To Semen
Getting busy in the bedroom may come with some more unexpected risks, one of which is an allergic reaction to semen. Semen is comprised of many components, including sperm cells themselves (aka spermatozoa), water, lipids, carbohydrates, and salts. So, it may not be a surprise that the human body can have an allergic reaction to […]
Hessdalen Lights: The Unexplained Lights That Hover Above Norway
Since at least the 1930s, residents of and visitors to the valley of Hessdalen, Norway, have reported strange balls of light in the sky above. While it’s easy to dismiss reports as UFOlogy nonsense (especially when some write “papers” questioning whether the lights could actually be wormholes) and some sightings are actually of explainable phenomena […]
Scientists Have Found Heatwaves At The Bottom Of The Ocean, And That’s Extremely Bad News
The Blob – not the carnivorous ameboid alien antagonist from a schlocky 1950s sci-fi, but something much worse – made headlines between 2013 and 2016 as a massively devastating marine heatwave in the northeastern Pacific. As the waters off the western coast of the US warmed, ecosystems were upended, coral reefs were bleached en masse, […]
What Are Raccoon Dogs? Meet The New Face Of The COVID-19 Outbreak
Raccoon dogs may have played a pivotal role in the COVID-19 pandemic. The suggestion follows the release of genetic sequences yielded from surface swabs taken at the Huanan Seafood Wholesale Market in Wuhan, China, back in 2020. The market has previously been suggested as the starting point for SARS-CoV-2, the pathogen that causes COVID-19, but […]
Thylacines May Have Been Walking The Earth As Late As The 1980s
The last known thylacine died in 1936 and was thought to have taken the species with it. Now, new research is claiming that the extinction of the Tasmanian tiger may not have happened until the 1980s, possibly even reaching the millennium. Thylacine (Thylacinus cynocephalus) are held up as one of the great examples of human-driven […]
NASA’s “Return To Venus” Mission May Have Just Become Collateral Damage
It was a dramatic week for Venus last week at the Lunar and Planetary Science Conference held in Texas. It was revealed that there are likely still active volcanos on Venus, which got people really excited about NASA’s imminent return to Earth’s hellish twin. But then it turned out that almost all the funding for […]
South Park Creators Use ChatGPT To Co-Write Episode About AI
Never one to shy away from hot-button topics, it looks like the creators of South Park have used ChatGPT to write parts of a recent episode that pokes fun at the much-hyped artificial intelligence (AI) chatbot. Released on March 9, 2023, the fourth episode of season 26, titled Deep Learning, sees students at South Park Elementary […]
New Schizophrenia Risk Genes Identified By Largest Study Of Its Kind
A new study has discovered a previously unknown link between two genes and schizophrenia, while also showing that a third gene may be linked to autism. This is the largest study of its kind, which also revealed how schizophrenia risk is conferred across ethnicities. The implications could be important for our understanding of brain disease […]
How Your Native Language Changes The Structure Of Your Brain
Native speakers of German and Arabic have distinctly different brains, with increased connectivity in areas needed to handle the specific natures of their respective languages. The work not only explains why people may find it particularly difficult to learn a language with highly different structures from their native tongue, but it also boosts the credibility […]
Ozempic Helps Weight Loss By Making You Feel Full. But Certain Foods Can Do The Same Thing – Without The Side-Effects
You’ve probably heard about the medication Ozempic, used to manage type 2 diabetes and as a weight loss drug. Ozempic (and the similar drug Wegovy) has had more than its fair share of headlines and controversies. A global supply shortage, tweets about using it from Elon Musk, approval for adolescent weight loss in the United […]
