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This Antarctic Glacier Just Broke An Unwanted Record – Fastest Retreat In Modern History
The Hektoria Glacier is disappearing at a rate that barely seems possible, losing almost half its area nearly 10 times as fast as any glacier ever observed. Although the Hektoria is small, with little direct impact on global sea levels, the processes that made this possible could happen on larger glaciers, making this a warning […]
New Portuguese Man O’ War Species Discovered After Warming Ocean Currents Push It North
A new species of Portuguese man o’ war has been discovered floating in the waters of northeast Japan. Spotted by a student-led research group, the discovery marks a species that has never been seen before in the area, raising questions about shifting distributions of marine creatures due to the effects of climate change. The rest […]
Watch Orcas Use “Tonic Immobility” To Suck An Enormous Liver Out Of The World’s Deadliest Shark
In the Gulf Of California, a group of orcas have developed specialized shark-hunting skills that mean they can make short work of one of the ocean’s greatest predators. Known as Moctezuma’s pod, they ram great whites so they get flipped upside-down, and then take advantage of their immobilized state to suck out their liver. The […]
Ancient Micronesians Hunted Sharks 1,800 Years Ago, And Now We Know Which Species
The Neolithic inhabitants of the South Pacific feasted on large, fast-moving marine predators, including multiple species of shark and tuna. By identifying the remains of these ancient meals at a 1,800-year-old site in Micronesia, researchers have begun to reveal the remarkable fishing strategies employed by these prehistoric hunter-gatherers. The rest of this article is behind […]
World’s First Plasma “Fireballs” Help Explain Supermassive Black Hole Mystery
Supermassive black holes remain full of mysteries, from their formation to their behaviors. One of them might soon be solved, though this won’t be coming from some new space observations. The insights from a particle accelerator on Earth deliver a solution to a long-standing problem. The rest of this article is behind a paywall. Please […]
Why Do We Eat Chicken, And Not Birds Like Seagull And Swan?
Chicken, whether Kentucky fried or simply buttered, is a large part of the human diet. The average American, for instance, eats around 45 kilograms (100 pounds) of chicken every year, according to the National Chicken Council. If you were so inclined, you could fashion that amount of chicken into a sculpture larger than a German […]
How To Find Fossils? These Bright Orange Organisms Love Growing On Exposed Dinosaur Bones
In what might be the coolest solution to “how to find fossils”, a new study has revealed how we can take to the skies when trying to find dinosaur remains all thanks to vibrant orange-colored lichens. Two species (Rusavskia elegans and Xanthomendoza trachyphylla) were found to grow across as much as 50 percent of exposed […]
Strange Patterns In Ancient Rocks Reveal Earth’s Tumbling Magnetic Field, Not Speeding Continents
Magnetic deposits laid down during the Ediacaran Period, 630 million years ago to 541 million years ago, are not inexplicable fluctuations, some researchers argue. Instead, there is a pattern encoded in the rocks of Morocco’s Anti-Atlas Mountains consistent with rapid shifts in the planet’s magnetic field. The Earth’s magnetic field is stable enough that people […]
Interstellar Comet 3I/ATLAS Can Now Be Seen From Earth – Even By Amateur Telescopes!
Two weeks ago, interstellar comet 3I/ATLAS was at conjunction, on the opposite side of the Sun with respect to Earth. Last week, it reached perihelion, the closest point it would ever get to the Sun. Now it is back from behind the Sun and we can see it again. In fact, Earth is moving towards […]
For 25 Years, People Have Been Living Continuously In Space – But What Happens Next?
On November 2, 2000, astronaut Bill Shepherd and cosmonauts Yuri Gidzenko and Sergei Krikalev entered the International Space Station (ISS). That means that for the last 25 years, there have always been some humans in space – a quarter of a century in which a few members of our species have not been on the […]
People Are Not Happy After Learning How Horses Sweat
People are ever so slightly horrified and a little grossed out after learning the foamy truth about how horses sweat. Every now and then on the Internet, people rediscover something weird about animals that breaks their expectations. For instance, in 2020, people (including myself) were pretty shocked to find out what koalas sound like, while […]
World’s First Generational Tobacco Ban Takes Effect For People Born After 2007
The Maldives has become the first country in the world to successfully implement a generational tobacco ban, with the new law making it illegal for anyone born on or after January 1, 2007, to buy, use, or sell any form of tobacco. The rest of this article is behind a paywall. Please sign in or […]
Why Was The Year 536 CE A Truly Terrible Time To Be Alive?
History is full of crummy times. Flip to any chapter in the human story, and you’ll find that peace and prosperity are the exception, not the norm. Sure, periods of plenty and politeness have been enjoyed, but they often came crashing down in an outbreak of violence or, if you were lucky, they slowly rotted away into obscurity. However, of […]
Inside The Myth Of The 15-Meter Congo Snake, Cryptozoology’s Most Outlandish Claim
There’s a curious tale that often circulates on internet forums and podcasts, a legend of a 15-meter (50-foot) snake said to lurk in the depths of Central Africa, known to lunge from the jungle and strike at passing helicopters when disturbed. Like most stories in cryptozoology, it’s almost certainly nonsense – but it’s one hell […]
NASA’s Voyager Spacecraft Found A 30,000-50,000 Kelvin “Wall” At The Edge Of Our Solar System
In 1977, NASA launched the Voyager probes to explore the outer reaches of the Solar System and the interstellar space beyond. Eventually, both spacecraft encountered a blazing “wall of fire” at the system’s boundary, recording temperatures between 30,000 and 50,000 kelvin (about 54,000 to 90,000 degrees Fahrenheit) as they passed through. There are a few […]
“Dueling Dinosaurs” Fossil Confirms Nanotyrannus As Own Species, Interstellar Comet 3I/ATLAS Is Back From Behind The Sun, And Much More This Week
This week, could the world’s first meteorite collision with a moving vehicle explain this Tesla’s melted windscreen? Of Earth’s 34 vital signs, 22 are now at record levels, and a 42,000-year-old sharp, yellow crayon suggests Neanderthals were creating art. Finally, we take a look at true crime; why it’s so widely enjoyed, and is consuming […]
This Is What Antarctica Would Look Like If All Its Ice Disappeared
Ice blankets about 98 percent of Antarctica, concealing nearly all of its land beneath a frozen shell. But thanks to remarkable advances in imaging technology, scientists can now reveal what the continent truly looks like beneath all that ice. The Bedmap2 was created back in 2013 using vast amounts of data on surface elevation, ice […]
Bacteria That Can Come Back From The Dead May Have Gone To Space: “They Are Playing Hide And Seek”
Before a spacecraft is sent to another world, it is thoroughly sterilized. Space agencies take planetary protection very seriously. We do not want to spread Earthly life elsewhere or think we have discovered a possible life signal on another world, when we’ve actually simply caught a stowaway. It is possible, though, that some bacteria can […]
Earth’s Apex Predators: Meet The Animals That (Almost) Can’t Be Killed
In 2017, epic footage from a helicopter showed a saltwater crocodile carrying a freshwater crocodile in its mouth like a carrot stick. Freshwater crocodiles are proficient hunters themselves, but they’re dwarfed by the might of one of Earth’s apex predators – aka, an animal with no natural predators. The saltwater crocodile, making light lunch of […]
