News

The surface of the Earth is not static. Throughout its history, landmasses have come and gone, their parts drifting and shifting into one configuration or another. Sometimes land has been well-distributed, but at others it has all come together to form vast conglomerations called supercontinents, which themselves eventually break up. But what causes these enormous […]

Not everyone has an inner monologue – it turns out that between 5 and 10 percent of the population don’t experience near-constant internal dialogue with themselves. According to new research, this group may find certain problem-solving tasks more difficult, particularly those involving verbal memory. Advertisement Lack of an inner voice, or anendophasia as it’s been […]

A 155-million-year-old brittle star fossil has been declared a remarkable and “incredibly rare find” by a team of scientists. The beautiful specimen is remarkably intact, and preserves a delicate moment in which the individual was completing the process of cloning itself. Where do baby brittle stars come from? It’s an unusual question with a curious […]

It’s often said that “SOS” – the distress signal put out by troubled ships at sea – means “Save Our Souls” or “Save Our Ship”, but that’s not strictly true.  Advertisement When the “SOS” distress signal was first developed in the early 20th century, it was chosen simply because it had a distinctive Morse code […]

Our galaxy, the Milky Way, is surrounded by smaller galaxies. The precise number is difficult to estimate – the galaxies are small and dim, and they end up blending with the background objects and foreground stars. Theory suggests that there should be a lot more dwarf galaxies around the Milky Way than we see. But […]

The human Y chromosome isn’t what it used to be – long gone are the days when it used to be the same size as its pal, X. It’s now much smaller, but is it set to disappear entirely? And if so, what would happen? Advertisement The human Y chromosome: an overview Most humans have […]

In 2013, geologists claimed they had confirmed the existence of the “largest single volcano” ever discovered on planet Earth: a geological monster named Tamu Massif. Located below the Pacific Ocean about 1,609 kilometers (1,000 miles) east of Japan, the deepsea giant spans an area of over 310,000 square kilometers (120,000 square miles) – that’s larger […]

In 1970, British mathematician John Horton Conway created a zero-player videogame, dubbed “Conway’s Game of Life”. Advertisement The game takes place on a grid of squares, and the only input a user can have is setting the initial state, making it a far cry from Far Cry. The user sets the starting state of the […]

A new tool developed by bioengineers at Caltech has been shown to be the best yet at translating brain signals generated from internal speech. While it has only been tested in two patients so far, with further development the technology could allow people who are unable to speak to communicate using only their thoughts. Advertisement […]

Have you ever wondered what would happen if you were on a commercial flight flying far above the ground when a massive earthquake struck? Surely you would be too high to experience anything, right? Well, it depends on a few things. Advertisement Earthquakes and the air  It might seem unlikely, but depending on the situation, […]

Crocodiles and alligators might be some of Earth’s oldest species, but that doesn’t mean they are immune to the problems faced by modern-day reptiles. The Cuban crocodile is a critically endangered species and is thought to have the smallest range of all the crocodilians.  Where do Cuban crocodiles live? The Cuban crocodile (Crocodylus rhombifer) used […]

The Northern Hemisphere’s summer was a scorcher, pushed off the charts by a combination of global heating and El Niño. Given the much higher baseline today, and how exceptional it was, some people speculated last summer may have been the hottest for 100,000 years, if not longer. That’s not a claim that can currently be […]

If you favor an evening over a morning shower (and that’s a whole other debate we’re not getting into now!) you may well have been tempted to hop in bed while your hair is still wet. Who has time for blow-drying when there’s sleep to be had? But if this is you, you might also […]

Amongst the remains of the Great Temple at Hattusa, located in modern-day Turkey, is a feature that stands out: a large monolith of nephrite, carved into the shape of a cube. Advertisement The stone, called a “wish stone” by locals to the area, was found in the remains of the Hittite empire that settled in […]

After a brief hiatus, it looks like the boat-attacking orcas of the Mediterranean are back. Two sailors had to be rescued this weekend after their boat was reportedly struck by a group of orcas in the Strait of Gibraltar. Advertisement The sailboat, named Alborán Cognac, encountered the feisty cetaceans on the morning of Sunday, May […]

At the Veerabhadra Temple in Lepakshi, Andhra Pradesh, India, there are hundreds of ornate features, carved out in the 16th Century CE. Advertisement At the complex, as well as a monolithic bull (carved from one giant slab of granite) in the image of the Hindu god Shiva’s mount, there is one particular feature that draws […]

It is undeniable that we are changing the planet’s climate. The reality of this is backed by study after study – and the latest one shows that the rate at which carbon dioxide is being released into the atmosphere now has no natural counterparts over the last 50,000 years. Advertisement Researchers analyzed the gas that […]

New research has found that lowland populations of Papua New Guinea have Denisovan genes that may have helped them develop a resistance to malaria. The findings are part of a larger study that examined whole-genome sequences from highlanders and lowlanders living in the southwestern Pacific country. Advertisement Papua New Guinea (PNG) has a diverse range […]

How would you feel to be surrounded by 10 million bats? For wildlife cameraman Josh Aitchison, it was an “extraordinary spectacle,” and one that he had to spend three weeks living in a tree to capture from a unique angle. Advertisement Straw-colored fruit bats, Eidolon helvum, are a large species of Old World fruit bats, […]

An international team of astronomers has announced the discovery of a truly odd-ball planet. The planet has an extremely low density, so low that it has been compared to cotton candy. It is 50 percent larger than Jupiter but seven times less massive, orbiting its star every 6.25 days. It is called WASP-193b. Advertisement The […]