Given recent headlines, you may be wondering why polio is even an issue in 2022. For more than 60 years, vaccines against the poliovirus have protected virtually everyone in the United States from the disease. Due to an enormously successful polio vaccination campaign beginning in the 1950s when the first polio vaccines became available, by […]
Super-Earths Are Bigger, More Common And More Habitable Than Earth Itself – And Astronomers Are Discovering More Of The Billions They Think Are Out There
Astronomers now routinely discover planets orbiting stars outside of the solar system – they’re called exoplanets. But in summer 2022, teams working on NASA’s Transiting Exoplanet Survey Satellite found a few particularly interesting planets orbiting in the habitable zones of their parent stars. One planet is 30% larger than Earth and orbits its star in […]
A Third Of AI Researchers Think AI Could Cause “Catastrophic” Outcomes On Par With Nuclear War This Century
Deborah BloomfieldSource Link: A Third Of AI Researchers Think AI Could Cause “Catastrophic” Outcomes On Par With Nuclear War This Century
Long COVID Links To Autoimmune Disease Visible In Blood A Year After Infection
Anywhere between five and 50 percent of people infected with SARS-CoV-2 – the virus behind the still-very-much-ongoing worldwide pandemic – will go on to develop Long COVID. It’s a condition that so far has escaped hard study or explanation – though a few hypotheses have begun to take hold. Now, another piece of evidence has […]
Koh-i-Noor: Queen’s Death Reignites Controversy Of World’s Largest Diamond
The Koh-i-Noor, the largest diamond in the world, is continuing to stir up controversy in the wake of Queen Elizabeth II’s death. Though undeniably stunning and unparalleled in its rarity, this egg-sized diamond has, in the eyes of some, become a potent symbol of bloodshed, stolen history, and the horrors of colonialism. The 105.6-carat diamond […]
Mark Zuckerberg lost $71 Billion This Year, Plummeting Down World’s Rich List
The personal wealth of Meta overlord Mark Zuckerberg has plummeted by $71 billion in 2022 alone, according to Bloomberg. While Wall Street has been having a rough year in general, the decline of Zuck’s fortunes is the biggest seen among any of the billionaires. Zuckerberg still has a total net worth of $54 billion, but […]
Scientists Begin To Understand Mystery Gene In Soil Viruses
Soil is a thriving ecosystem of life and death, with insects and plants using it to sustain them until their timely demise, at which point bacteria, fungi, and other decomposers take over and degrade them back into the earth. Within this complex system, viruses utilize special genes that are crucial to their metabolic processes but […]
“Parachuting”, “Waving”, And The “Snap-Trap” — Octopus Hunting Techniques Revealed By High Speed Cameras.
Octopuses are everyone’s favorite eight-armed underwater creature with complex brains and serious smarts. How they move, however, is no less than random, with those eight limbs making them look downright peculiar at times. Now, new research has looked at how octopuses use their arms for hunting and discovered some surprising results. “Normally when you look at […]
Saturn’s Moon Enceladus Now Has All The Elements For Life
Enceladus has quickly gone from being just another small moon of Saturn to prime territory to answer the great question: are we alone in the universe? No one thinks Enceladus could be home to sentient creatures, but if it hosts microbes, it would be powerful evidence that life is abundant and that given a chance […]
Miami Is Thinking Of Offering Bounties For Dead Iguanas. It Desperately Needs To Google The “Cobra Effect”
Miami Beach is considering paying bounties for dead iguanas, after the cost of paying professionals to destroy the creatures rocketed to over $200,000. Miami Beach has an iguana problem. An invasive species of American iguana (aka green iguana) is flourishing in the area, and causing all kinds of destruction. The species, native from southern Brazil […]
JWST Captures Neptune And Its Intriguing Rings As We Have Never Seen Before
Ever since Neptune’s discovery back on September 23, 1846, the planet has fascinated astronomers worldwide. The ice giant makes a complete orbit of our Sun every 164.8 years and hides its secrets in one of the dimmest parts of our Solar System. But when you shine the most powerful space telescope ever built on something, […]
Why Did 98 Percent Of Women In Nazi Concentration Camps Stop Menstruating?
The sudden halting of menstrual periods (amenorrhea) experienced by prisoners at Nazi concentration camps has historically been attributed to the effects of trauma and malnutrition, although new research paints a considerably darker picture. Drawing upon written historical records and interviews with Holocaust survivors, the study authors find evidence that synthetic steroids were added to the […]
What Are The Royal Cyphers On UK Post Boxes?
If you’ve ever hung around a post box in the UK, really taking your time to savor the moment of sending in that tax return, you may have noticed a few letters on it, beneath an image of a crown. If that’s happened to you, you are not alone. Every now and then, someone spots […]
Everyone Is Clowning On Space Force’s Official Anthem
Space Force, the smallest branch of the US armed services, has been mocked by the Internet pretty much since its inception. Whether that’s by trekkies for their logo, or by everybody for the fact that their uniforms are the kind of camo that disguises you among trees, which are famously not that abundant in space, […]
Uganda Declares Outbreak Of Rare Ebola Species After Six “Suspicious Deaths”
An Ebola outbreak has officially been declared in Uganda after a person tested positive for the Sudan species of the virus, the World Health Organization (WHO) said on Tuesday. This is following six “suspicious deaths” in the past month. Worryingly, it’s uncertain whether the existing Ebola vaccines will work against this rarer species of the […]
Pain Really Is Worse At Night, And This Is Why
We can sometimes think of pain as a purely physical experience – the result of something going wrong or getting injured in your physical body. In fact, nothing could be further from the truth: pain is a physical sensation, but it’s also incredibly tied up with factors like our emotions and psychology. It’s also affected […]
Mars Is Littered With 15,694 Pounds Of Human Trash From 50 Years Of Robotic Exploration
CC BY-ND People have been exploring the surface of Mars for over 50 years. According to the United Nations Office for Outer Space Affairs, nations have sent 18 human-made objects to Mars over 14 separate missions. Many of these missions are still ongoing, but over the decades of Martian exploration, humankind has left behind many […]
Here’s The Real Reason To Turn On Aeroplane Mode When You Fly
We all know the routine by heart: “Please ensure your seats are in the upright position, tray tables stowed, window shades are up, laptops are stored in the overhead bins and electronic devices are set to flight mode”. Now, the first four are reasonable, right? Window shades need to be up so we can see […]
Where to Find Tech-Friendly Art Online
For people who work in technology and who are interested in technology, aesthetics often come second. While many of our jobs and lives depend on cold, unromantic machinery like computers and hard drives, that doesn’t mean we can’t brighten them up a little bit. Find a smartphone case that features a graphic or image that […]
The Deadly 19th-Century All-Female Warriors That Inspired “The Woman King”
Epic images from The Woman King show a powerful Viola Davis starring in a movie that’s already smashed it at the box office with a debut topping $19 million. While the film takes creative license over the true story of the Agojie, an all-female unit of warriors who protected the African Kingdom of Dahomey in […]
