Charles Darwin once discovered the rare bird he had been searching for for years – halfway through chowing it down for Christmas dinner. When you picture Darwin, you may imagine him in the Galapagos diligently taking notes while observing a finch, maybe remarking on slight differences between it and another very similar finch. You probably […]
Genome Of Ancient Humans Is The Winning Field Of 2022’s Nobel Prize in Medicine
Swedish geneticist Svante Pääbo is the winner of the 2022 Nobel Prize in Physiology or Medicine and he will receive a prize worth 10 million Swedish kronor (896,256.51 US dollars). The prestigious award was given for “discoveries concerning the genomes of extinct hominins and human evolution,” a field that is now known as paleogenomics. The […]
Musk Reveals “Optimus” Tesla Robot, But Some Folks Aren’t Impressed
Tesla boss Elon Musk has revealed the company’s humanoid robot after a lot of hype. Just before “Optimus” shuffled out on stage and awkwardly waved, the billionaire assured the crowd that it wasn’t just a guy in a spandex suit like their last event. Nevertheless, some experts remained unimpressed. Optimus was presented in the first […]
Meet The World’s Next Supercontinent, Amasia
The big picture of Earth’s geologic history over the last 2 billion years is of continents coming together and then breaking apart every 600 million years or so. A future rejoining is inevitable, but geologists have long debated whether it will occur when the Americas’ west coasts run into Asia, or if their east coasts […]
The Nobel Prize in Medicine or Physiology has Been Announced
The winner of the 2022 Nobel Prize in Physiology or Medicine is Swedish geneticist Svante Pääbo. The award was given for “discoveries concerning the genomes of extinct hominins and human evolution.” The prize is worth 10 million Swedish kronor (896,256.51 US dollars). The award recognizes how the Swedish geneticist’s work in the field of evolutionary […]
Does A Sibling’s Gender Influence Our Own Personality? A Major New Study Answers An Age-Old Question
Our siblings play a central role in our childhoods, so it stands to reason they influence our personality in the long term. In particular, researchers have long been interested in how growing up with a sister compared to a brother might influence who we become as adults. How do children interact with their sister or […]
COVID-19 Can Cause Lasting Lung Damage – 3 Ways Long COVID Patients’ Respiration Can Suffer
As pulmonologists and critical care doctors treating patients with lung disease, we have heard many of our patients recovering from COVID-19 tell us this even months after their initial diagnosis. Though they may have survived the most life-threatening phase of their illness, they have yet to return to their pre-COVID-19 baseline, struggling with activities ranging […]
Blood Falls In Antarctica Oozes A Gruesome Red, And Shows Life At Its Most Extreme
Blood Falls is a waterfall of vibrant red water that oozes out of the Taylor Glacier in Victoria Land, East Antarctica. For decades, this strange sight confused the brave explorers who managed to reach this distant valley. While we now have a solid idea of what’s causing this hellish phenomenon, research over the past few […]
You Could One Day Wear Hearing Aids In Your Mouth Thanks To Dental Implant Technology
Anything is possible in a world where bees can be fish and lagoons can be people – including false teeth doubling up as hearing aids. It sounds wild, we know, but the future of assistive hearing devices could lie in our mouths via a dental implant capable of conducting sound from tooth to jaw to […]
“Love Hormone” Oxytocin Could Help Mend A Broken Heart
Oxytocin is a hormone produced by the brain (specifically the hypothalamus) and released into the bloodstream. It is often touted as a “love hormone” or “love drug” – it can help us socially bond with others and generates happy feelings. But this hormone may be able to heal hearts after a heart attack, a study […]
Summer Swimming Season May Be Over, But You Can Still Get Swimmer’s Ear – And You Don’t Even Need To Go In The Water
Many forms of ear infections strike children and adults alike, but among the most common is acute otitis externa, also known as swimmer’s ear. About 10 percent of Americans will experience swimmer’s ear during their lifetimes. Adults are affected more commonly, and children only rarely, generally ages 5 to 12. Advertisement But you don’t have […]
Florida’s Hurricane Ian “Street Shark” May Actually Be Real
Another hurricane, another chance to share old “footage” of sharks taking to the flooded streets in a classic case of sharks appearing where sharks definitely shouldn’t be. A classic hoax. Or is it? You may have seen the video circulating on social media of what appears to be a shark swimming down a street […]
Do Multimillion-Dollar Dinosaur Auctions Erode Trust In Science?
Dinosaurs are in the news these days, but it’s not just for groundbreaking discoveries. More and more paleontologists are ringing alarm bells about high-profile auctions in which dinosaur fossils sell for outrageous sums. The most recent example involves a 77 million-year-old Gorgosaurus skeleton that Sotheby’s sold for over US$6 million in August 2022. Advertisement But […]
Elon Musk Suggests Cybertruck Could “Serve Briefly” As A Boat. Not Everyone Is Sold
Elon Musk has stirred up Twitter once again by suggesting that his much-hyped Cybertruck will be “waterproof enough to serve briefly as a boat.” Given Musk’s notorious online persona, it’s impossible to tell whether this is a serious statement or just something he’s spitballing. Nevertheless, the tweet caused a cascade of reactions (mainly negative). Advertisement […]
Browser Extension Rejects Annoying And Manipulative Cookie Popups So You Don’t Have To
Are you sick of dealing with labyrinthine cookie consent popups just to navigate the web without being tracked? Well, researchers from Aarhus University, Denmark, have created a browser extension that automatically rejects them for you. Consent-O-Matic is free and available for Mozilla Firefox, Google Chrome and other chromium-based browsers, and Safari for macOS and iOS. […]
TWIS: Hubble And JWST Team Up To Gaze At DART, Webcam Footage Shows The Devastation Of Hurricane Ian, And Much More This Week
This week, we see the first joint footage from Hubble and JWST, blessed images of a sloth with a big ol’ coconut for a head, and we learn about the man who prevented World War III. For First Time, Hubble And JWST Watched The Same Event: DART Slamming Into An Asteroid The two titans of […]
Meet Snaky McCrocface (We’re Only Half Kidding)
Researchers have identified a brand new species of polycotylid plesiosaur and they’ve named it “snaky crocface”. Technically, the new species is called Serpentisuchops pfisterae but the translation to snaky crocface from the Latin and Greek is pretty accurate. Despite misconceptions, plesiosaurs are not dinosaurs but marine reptiles. Most plesiosaurs fall into either the small head, […]
Spanish Lagoon Is Granted Personhood Status And Can Now Sue Polluters
The Mar Menor lagoon on Spain’s southeast coast has been granted personhood status by the Senate in Madrid, meaning legal action can now be taken on behalf of the threatened ecosystem against polluters. The new law is the first in Europe to bestow such rights upon a natural landscape and comes after some 640,000 Spanish […]
Private SpaceX Mission May Help NASA Extend Hubble For Many Years To Come
NASA and Elon Musk’s SpaceX are setting out to study the possibility of using the private space company to boost the Hubble space telescope into a higher orbit, NASA announced yesterday. The pair signed a deal earlier this month that will see SpaceX study whether it’s possible for its Dragon spacecraft to safely rendezvous with […]
Juno Flyby Reveals Best New Images Of Jupiter’s Moon Europa In 20 Years
The Juno spacecraft has returned the first images taken during a flyby yesterday from just 352 kilometers (219 miles) above the surface of Jupiter’s icy moon Europa. The flyby, which was closer than most satellites are to the Earth, is an effort both to learn more about the enigmatic world and to move to a […]
