News

In 1986 Venezuela, a peculiar, venom-esque goo began seeping from a busy highway connecting the Simón Bolívar International Airport and the capital city of Caracas. As quickly as it appeared, the mysterious goo, named La Mancha Negra or the black spot, began to spread, turning the highway into a motorist death trap. The black goo […]

The first continents emerged about 3.5 billion years ago, but geologists are unclear on the initial formation process. A new explanation attributes their rise to an association of three types of coarse-grained rocks, collectively called granitoids, that might look very familiar to someone with a recent home renovation. Once the Earth cooled and developed oceans, […]

Science’s understanding of a mysterious and rare disorder known as Alice in Wonderland syndrome just got a little bit better thanks to a study that mapped a brain circuit that seems to be involved in the condition. The research, which has been posted as a preprint and is yet to be peer-reviewed, identified a network […]

A potentially hazardous asteroid the size of a stadium is set to make a flyby of Earth tomorrow at a distance of around 2,850,000 kilometers (1,770,000 miles). Space rock fans can view a live stream of the asteroid, courtesy of the Virtual Telescope Project. Asteroid 2008 OS7, as the name suggests, was first seen during […]

Did Alzheimer’s ail the elderly in antiquity? With dementia cases on the rise in modern times, it’s an intriguing question and, thankfully, a new study has some answers. Dementia, of which Alzheimer’s is the most common type, is not a specific disease, but rather a term used to describe symptoms related to memory loss. Today, it […]

Periodical cicadas don’t emerge often – only once every 13 or 17 years, to be precise – but when they do they arrive in their millions, and even billions. It’s now accepted that this pattern of emergence helps them avoid falling in sync with any predators, but how do they know to emerge all at […]

Researchers in Australia have used spent coffee grounds to make concrete 30 percent stronger. Simply by replacing a percentage of sand with waste coffee, something common to many households, it is possible to make construction more efficient and greener.  As a household item, coffee grounds are everywhere. It is currently estimated that around 60 million tons […]

NASA’s Ingenuity helicopter concluded its 72nd flight with a rough emergency landing, losing contact with the rover Perseverance when it was still about 3 meters (10 feet) from the ground. One communication was established, the American space agency announced that they had seen images that confirmed that after almost 1,000 days of service, Ingenuity had […]

A new species of giant deep-sea isopod has been identified in the Bahamas after researchers with OceanX deployed traps on the seabed. A cousin of the much beloved terrestrial roly-poly pill bugs, they serve a similar ecological role in the nutrient cycle, making them a vital part of the ecosystem. These alien-like critters have see-through […]

A 30-year study of over 900 participants has found an association between polycystic ovary syndrome (PCOS) and problems with memory and cognition. While it’s not possible to say for sure that PCOS caused the observed issues, the scientists behind the work say more research is now needed to better understand these potential risks of a […]

Visions of the future from the past tend to involve a lot more stuff flying around in the sky than ends up happening in real life. Disappointing as it is that we didn’t get flying cars, we have also missed out on Cloud Nine; Buckminster Fuller’s vision of the future population being housed inside gigantic […]

Ever feel like you’re being watched? More specifically, ever think to yourself, “I probably should/shouldn’t do that,” because someone might see you? Well, here comes science to throw a spanner in the works. When one group of researchers applied testosterone gel to some men, it made them much less sensitive to being observed, and consequently […]

By comparing the DNA of individuals born with a range of birth defects, including extra fingers and toes, researchers have identified a new rare disorder and with it, opened up an avenue towards improved diagnosis and treatment. The findings were described in a study that examined three children sharing a rare combination of traits: polydactyly, […]

While you might hear parrots and think of them flying majestically through the trees in the Amazon – or even that one time a flightless parrot in New Zealand got up close and personal with a zoologist – your mind probably wouldn’t go to the idea of them swinging through the forest by their beaks. […]

A mysterious low noise regularly heard by residents in South Tampa, Florida, over the last three years may have an explanation. In 2021, residents from Port Tampa to Davis Islands heard what has been described as a “mysterious deep bass sound”. Advertisement “Everyone seems to have their favorite theory,” resident Sara Healy explained in a […]

Bone fragments found near, Ranis, central Germany, prove Homo sapiens were in the area at least 45,000 years ago, possibly the earliest date for our species in northern Europe. The discovery indicates that modern humans and Neanderthals lived side by side for thousands of years, rather than our ancestors’ arrival spelling immediate doom for humanity’s […]

Along the coast of Morocco, archaeologists have uncovered the oldest human footprints ever discovered in Northern Africa and the Southern Mediterranean. Dating to some 90,000 years ago, they are also “among the oldest footprints attributed to Homo sapiens worldwide.”  An international team of archaeologists recently discovered the footprints near the city of Larache on the […]

Since the 18th century, we’ve known that there are special points around two massive bodies in space as long as one orbits the other. There are places that move with the smaller orbiting object, never changing distance from it; they are great places to park spacecraft and telescopes. And it turns out, you can copy […]

Over in the Facebook group Physics is Fun, one member stirred things up a bit by claiming “light takes on the velocity of its source”, meaning that if you were to cycle forwards and turn on your bike light, the light emitted from it would travel at light speed + whatever incredible speed you are […]

The interaction between light from the Sun, charged particles, and molecules in the atmosphere can create a variety of glowing phenomena. The best known are the Northern and Southern Lights. They truly put on a show, but they are not the only ones. A more subtle phenomenon is called airglow, and while it is possible […]