The thick-shelled river mussel (Unio crassus) has been observed doing something that scientists have never seen before. Incredible footage captured by an international team, led by Professor David Aldridge of the University of Cambridge, shows a female mussel squirting a jet of water through the air and back into the river where these mollusks make […]
At Last, We Have A Scientific Definition For Whether You Are A “Grower” Or A “Shower”
Scientists have finally provided a definition of whether erections can be deemed “growers” or “showers”, and found several differences between these penis types. If you’re wondering why right about now, there is actually a noble cause. They hope it might help with making surgical decisions. Advertisement “It is important to be able to predict if […]
Why Does Music Bring Back Memories? What The Science Says
You’re walking down a busy street on your way to work. You pass a busker playing a song you haven’t heard in years. Now suddenly, instead of noticing all the goings on in the city around you, you’re mentally reliving the first time you heard the song. Hearing that piece of music takes you right […]
How Can You Test If Gold Is Pure? Some Methods Are More Destructive Than Others
When it comes to gold, how pure is pure? And how does anybody know? As recent revelations about the Perth Mint have shown, gold buyers and sellers take purity very seriously. Questions have been raised over impurities found in some A$9 billion worth of gold sold to the Shanghai Gold Exchange. Advertisement While the gold […]
Is The Honeybee’s Iconic Waggle Dance Learned Or Innate? New Research Provides The Answer
As we progress through life, we learn many essential behaviours from more experienced people around us. For example, through observing adults, we go from being babbling babies, to using single words, to speaking in full sentences. This is an example of social learning. And it turns out it isn’t unique to our species. Advertisement Honeybees […]
TWIS: 50-Meter-Wide Asteroid May Hit Earth In 2046, Hidden Underground Chamber Discovered Beneath Leicester Cathedral, And Much More This Week
This week, dysania could explain some people’s physical inability to get out of bed in the morning, a new geological model enables us to look back over the Earth’s last 100 million years, and we reveal why airplane shutters have to be up during takeoff and landing. NASA Can’t Rule Out A 50-Meter-Wide Asteroid Hitting […]
Eating This Hallucinogenic Fish Can Make You Trip For Days
Psychedelic toad slime may be all the rage these days, but it’s thought that people have been tripping on fish since Roman times. In particular, a species of sea bream called salema porgy has gained a reputation for its fishy side-effects, and is known in Arabic as “the fish that makes dreams”. Found throughout the […]
Kew’s “Noah’s Ark” Seed Vault Hits 40,000 Species From Around The World
Safe from extinction, 40,020 different plant species are now housed inside Kew’s Millennium Seed Bank (MSB) in Wakehurst, Sussex, UK. As of March 1, the MSB has banked more than 2.4 billion individual seeds. This vitally important conservation project holds the Guinness World Record for the world’s largest seed bank and contains seeds from 190 […]
Incredible Complete Map Of Insect Brain Released After 12 Years’ Work
The most complex brain map ever created has been released by scientists, depicting the intricate inner workings of the insect mind. They state that the new map could be a crucial step into actually beginning to understand how the brain works, including how thoughts originate. “If we want to understand who we are and […]
“Mummy Brown” Paint Used Ground Up Human Remains To Make Art
The grim paint color Mummy Brown takes the saying “suffer for your art” to a new level by instead monopolizing on the suffering of others, or at least their death. Made of the ground up remains of mummified humans, it was used for centuries and is thought to have been incorporated into some famous paintings, […]
Turns Out Star Trek’s Planet Vulcan Doesn’t Exist After All
A few years ago, astronomers excitedly shared the news that a candidate exoplanet was spotted around star 40 Eridani A, which has a particular significance for fans of Star Trek. It’s the system that hosts Vulcan, the world where Spock, T’Pol, and countless other characters come from – but it seems that the planet will […]
Roman Gladiators Fought In Britain, And We Finally Have The Evidence To Prove It
The Roman Empire, according to the first-century poet and satirist Juvenal, owed its survival to two things: bread and circuses. While that may sound tame, what you have to remember is that “circuses”, back in the days of death by multi-species dogpiling and communal poop sponges, meant something a little more X-rated than Bozo the […]
Fastest Debris Avalanche On Record Was One-Third The Speed Of Sound
In 1980, a colossal earthquake on the Mount St. Helens volcano triggered the fastest debris avalanche ever recorded, clocking in at 402.3 kilometers (250 miles) per hour, according to Guinness World Records. That’s almost a third of the speed of sound, which travels at 1,234 kilometers (767 miles) per hour. The avalanche was just one […]
“Zombie” Viruses Still Infectious After Almost 50,000 Years Frozen In Permafrost
After almost 50,000 years frozen deep within the Siberian permafrost, a horde of ancient, and still infectious, viruses has been unearthed. Remarkably, and also a little worryingly, these “zombie” viruses were still able to infect living single-celled amoebae after re-emerging from their deep freeze, a new study has found. Researchers identified and revived 13 new […]
Thai Monkeys’ Nut-Cracking Tools Look Confusingly Like Those Made By Early Humans
Monkeys are among the many animals known to use tools, so it is no surprise long-tailed macaques in Phang Nga National Park, Thailand, crack nuts with stones. In the process these “hammerstones” sometimes break. The products look so much like the tools found in Africa and attributed to early hominins such as Australopithecus that scientists […]
Euphrates River Is Drying Up And Crisis Looms, Just As The Bible Warned
In the Bible, it’s said when the Euphrates river runs dry then immense things are on the horizon, perhaps even the foretelling of the Second Coming of Jesus Christ and the rapture. Revelation 16:12 reads: “The sixth angel poured out his bowl on the great river Euphrates, and its water was dried up to prepare […]
Genetically Modified Bacteria Fight Cancer By Snitching On It
Scientists have genetically engineered bacteria that don’t cause illnesses in humans but do enjoy getting inside tumors, with this particular interest seen as especially useful to fight cancer. The bacteria act as a mole, infiltrating the tumor and then producing special molecules that alert the immune system, which subsequently attacks the cancer. This bacteria was […]
Humans Weigh Far More Than All The Wild Mammals On Earth Combined
A team of environmental researchers has estimated the biomass of all wild mammals, finding that humans vastly outweigh all of them combined. The team, led by Ron Milo of the Weizmann Institute of Science in Rehovot, Israel, was attempting to identify a metric that could be used to track conservation efforts on a global scale. […]
British People Sound Smarter Than Americans, Right?
Are British people smarter and more informed than Americans? According to a new study, many Americans seem to think so, and it may come down to a simple difference in how we use a common word. Oscar Wilde famously noted that British and American people “have really everything in common…except, of course, language”. While this […]
Earth’s Orbit Must Be Protected From Space Junk, International Scientists Urge
Space in Earth’s orbit is getting crowded. The number of satellites in orbit in 2018 was just over 2,000 – but the introduction of megaconstellations such as Starlink has increased the number massively. There are currently 9,000 satellites, and by the end of the decade, the number is expected to reach 60,000. That could become […]
