The most thorough study yet of a mysterious creature that lived 300 million years ago has ruled that it had no bones after all. Since its discovery nearly 70 years ago, the true nature of Tullimonstrum gregarium – AKA the Tully monster – has confounded scientists. Studies have variously found it was a vertebrate, or
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It has been over sixty years since Dr. Frank Drake (father of the Drake Equation) and his colleagues mounted the first Search for Extraterrestrial Intelligence (SETI) survey. This was known as Project Ozma, which relied on the “Big Ear” radio telescope at the National Radio Astronomy Observatory (NRAO) in Greenbank, West Virginia, to look for
Coastal critters thought to be strangers to the open ocean have been found amongst the seething mass of plastic waste that is the Great Pacific Garbage Patch. “The issues of plastic go beyond just ingestion and entanglement,” Linsey Haram, a marine ecologist formerly at the Smithsonian Environmental Research Center, explained when in the process of
SpaceX is about to attempt the first test flight of a mega rocket that could one day take us to Mars. If successful, Starship will be the tallest and most powerful fully reusable rocket ever flown. That is a rather sizeable ‘if’. SpaceX founder Elon Musk has given the test launch only a 50 percent
A spacecraft quietly speeding its way through the Solar System has caught its first glimpses of the asteroids it was sent to investigate from a distance of hundreds of thousands of kilometers. Launched in October 2021, NASA’s Lucy probe heads the first-ever mission to study the asteroids attendant on Jupiter. Of the 11 objects it
Spend long enough in America’s frozen north, and you get used to seeing stunning displays of nature high in the sky. Mostly it’s in the form of the shimmering curtains of light created as solar winds collide with the upper atmosphere. To photographer Todd Salat, auroras are worth a patient wait in the cold night
A popular and easy method for validating whether or not a chunk of rock is a meteorite, and what kind of meteorite it is, has been inadvertently erasing invaluable information locked inside. The use of rare-earth magnets such as neodymium erases and overwrites the magnetic record locked inside ferromagnetic minerals in meteorites, scientists from MIT
Testing the possibility of models of gravity different from general relativity may be closer to home than we think. A team of researchers has proposed that we might be able to use seismic motions in the Earth itself to test for modified gravity. We do not understand 95 percent of the contents of the Universe.
The evolution of the human eye has long been considered one of biology’s more challenging mysteries, drawing debate over the sequence of steps required to turn rudimentary sensitivity to light into a complex photographic system. New research suggests some components of vertebrate vision may not have been shaped incrementally as their genes passed down family
Astronomers have discovered a cosmic smash-up just waiting to happen in a giant object just 3 billion years after the Big Bang. A galaxy called J0749+2255 actually consists of two galaxies merging into one, and it has not one but two actively feeding supermassive black holes. It just so happens these two black holes are
Almost every morning I face the same dilemmas. Whether I should wake up my wife with a kiss or let her sleep longer. Should I get out of bed or just press the snooze button? And that is even before I have had my first cup of coffee. Our daily life is rife with so-called
An ancient stone “scoreboard” likely used in a soccer-like ball game was discovered at an archeological site in Mexico earlier this week, archaeologists said. Found at the Maya Chichen Itza site, researchers and archeologists said the circular stone’s diameter was just over 32 centimeters (or just over 12 inches), and it weighed 40 kilograms (about
There’s a problem for researchers trying to identify the size of ancient armored fish from the late Devonian period (approximately 382-358 million years ago): only the armored parts around their heads have been preserved in fossils. In other words, we’ve been trying to judge the size of species like those in the Dunkleosteus genus of
As early as 170,000 years ago, Homo sapiens was sustaining itself on fatty, protein-rich fare: the cooked flesh of giant land snails. A study of snail shells excavated from the famous Border Cave archaeological site in South Africa, followed by rigorous experimentation, reveals that the nutritious mollusks were an important part of the human diet
Tardigrades are microscopic creatures with a gift for survival. These aquatic invertebrates – aka water bears or moss piglets – can withstand exposure to high levels of radiation, the crushing pressure of the deep sea, and even the vacuum of space. We’ve also learned water bears have some pretty wild sex, thanks to recent video
A lightning bolt that struck a tree on Florida’s west coast has produced a fascinating type of phosphorus material we haven’t seen on Earth before: one that could represent a whole new mineral group, bridging the gap between space minerals and minerals found on Earth. The material, which is a close match for calcium phosphite
A stunning solar “waterfall” has been spotted on the surface of the sun. The picture, taken by astrophotographer Eduardo Schaberger Poupeau on March 9, shows a wall of plasma being shot “some 100,000 kilometers” – or about 62,000 miles – up towards space, Poupeau told Spaceweather.com. That’s high enough to engulf about eight Earths. The
Graphene is a special material. Among its many talents, it can act as a superconductor, generate a super-rare form of magnetism, and unlock entirely new quantum states. Now graphene has another amazing credit: it can record levels of magnetoresistance without a need to push the temperature down towards absolute zero. High magnetoresistance – a material’s
The motion of a star as it makes its way through the galaxy has led to the discovery of a new alien world. Using data from the Gaia spacecraft that’s mapping the Milky Way, astronomers detected a kink in the motion of a star named HIP-99770, suggesting the presence of a nearby planet. Follow-up observations
This month marks the anniversary of a major achievement in astrophysics. On 10 April 2019, the Event Horizon Telescope (EHT) collaboration unveiled the first-ever direct image of the shadow of a black hole. Now, scientists have used a new machine learning technique to reprocess the original data to reveal a new, sharper view of the
A buzz of clicks and gleeful victory squeals compose the soundtrack in the first footage ever recorded from the perspective of dolphins freely hunting off the coast of North America. For a scientific study published last year, the US Navy strapped cameras to its dolphins, which are trained to help identify undersea mines and protect
Could we discover conditions necessary for life outside the Earth in the Solar System? This is one of the mysteries that the space mission JUICE (for JUpiter ICy moons Explorer) – set to be launched from Kourou, French Guiana, on Thursday 13 April 2023 at 12.14 pm UT – will look to elucidate. To propel
When Mount Vesuvius erupted nearly 2,000 years ago, the Roman city of Pompeii and its residents were buried alive, entombed in ash. But the nearby city of Herculaneum was obliterated, and few traces of its people were ever found. Their bodies were most likely vaporized in a searing hot blast of gas and particles, according
Some mysteries in science vanish with more accurate measurements, resolving gaps with a puff of new data. And sometimes, a second look simply reinforces the fact you have a mystery on your hands. It’s the latter in the case of a new study that challenges the Universe’s most fundamental laws of physics. The Hubble constant
In May and June of 2018, Australia’s first near-complete skull of a sauropod – a group of long-tailed, long-necked, small-headed dinosaurs – was found on a sheep station northwest of Winton in Queensland. I was part of the dig team from the Australian Age of Dinosaurs Museum that made the discovery, and subsequently had the
How did the most massive stars form? Astronomers have debated their origins for decades. One of the biggest problems facing these theories is the lack of observations. Massive stars are relatively rare, and so it’s hard to catch them in the act of formation. But new observations of the so-called Dragon cloud may hold the
A well-known bacterium could transform carbon dioxide from the air into a useful bioplastic, tackling two global problems in one swift move, using a prototype system designed by a team of chemical engineers in Korea. Plastic-munching bacteria capable of breaking down plastic waste in a matter of hours have attracted much attention lately as a
Buried under kilometers of rock in Ontario, Canada, a tank of the purest water flashed as barely detectable particle slammed through its molecules. It’s the first time that water has been used to detect a particle known as an antineutrino, which originated from a nuclear reactor more than 240 kilometers (150 miles) away. This incredible
Squirming slowly along the ocean floor, sea cucumbers look like an easy target to hungry predators. But at the slightest provocation, these chunky tube animals tear a hole in the wall of their own butt and cast out a tangle of fine, sticky, noodles. Stress-induced butt-vomiting might sound comical, but it serves a useful purpose
Our Sun regularly erupts in tongues of heat and fury so large, our own planet would be dwarfed by their size many times over. To better understand how they work, researchers created a version that could fit inside your lunchbox. Using an apparatus that turns powerful bursts of electricity into rope-like loops of plasma, a
Birds likely aren’t the first things that spring to mind when you think of poisonous animals, but two common species in Papua New Guinea have been found hoarding a toxic arsenal in their feathers. The regent whistler (Pachycephala schlegelii) and rufous-naped bellbird (Aleadryas rufinucha) have been caught in possession of a potent neurotoxin. Batrachotoxin causes
At first the brown, mangled ball of fur and claws is unidentifiable. But X-ray scans have revealed this grapefruit-sized lump is actually a 30,000-year-old mummified ground squirrel from the ice age. A gold miner found the mysterious fur ball in 2018 in the Klondike gold fields near Dawson City, Yukon, according to the Yukon Beringia
Scientists are still getting to grips with the ins and outs of strange materials known as time crystals; structures that buzz with movement for eternity. Now a new variety might help deepen our understanding of the perplexing state of matter. Just as regular crystals are atoms and molecules that repeat over a volume of space,
We’ve just been given a spectacular new perspective on what is possibly the oddest ball in the Solar System. The James Webb Space Telescope has turned its golden, infrared gaze on the enigmatic seventh world from the Sun, Uranus – and the image it returned has revealed the turquoise planet in gleaming glory. Moons, rings,
Scientists have stitched together the most high-resolution map yet of the underlying geology beneath Earth’s Southern Hemisphere, revealing something previously undiscovered: an ancient ocean floor that may wrap around the core. This thin but dense layer sits around 2,900 kilometers (1,800 miles) below the surface, where the molten, metallic outer core means the rocky mantle
An ethereal blue glimmer just below the waterline has lured scientists like wisps from folklore to three new glowing species of marine bristle worm (polychaetes). Their genus name, Polycirrus, means ‘many tendrils‘ in Latin. Looking at these otherworldly worms, you can immediately understand why. Until now, we knew of only four species of Polycirrus with
Astronomers are currently searching for signs of life in the “habitable zones” of nearby stars, which is defined as the band around a star where liquid water can potentially exist. But a recent paper argues that we need to take a more nuanced and careful approach, based not on the potential for life, but the
Research suggests people can generate false memories within the blink of an eye. In a series of four experiments led by the University of Amsterdam, researchers showed 534 people letters of the Western alphabet in actual and mirrored orientations. After some participants were shown an interference slide with random letters designed to scramble the original
For all the joy they bring, families and close friendships often involve conflict, betrayal, regret, and resentment. Prince Harry’s recent memoir, Spare, is a reminder of the fact that the people closest to us often have the greatest power to hurt us. He describes power struggles, conflict, challenging family dynamics, and decades of guilt, jealousy,
Home runs are exhilarating – those lofting moments when everyone looks skyward, baseball players and fans alike, anxiously awaiting the outcome: run or out, win or loss, elation or despair. Over the past several Major League Baseball seasons, home run numbers have climbed dramatically, including Aaron Judge’s record-breaking 62 homers for the New York Yankees
Quantum computing promises to be a revolutionary tool, making short work of equations that classical computers would struggle to ever complete. Yet the workhorse of the quantum device, known as a qubit, is a delicate object prone to collapsing. Keeping enough qubits in their ideal state long enough for computations has so far proved a
Last year a new finding in particle physics stunned scientists: a fundamental particle responsible for one of the Universe’s four fundamental forces was heavier than predicted. The discovery of a discrepancy between the W boson‘s theorized and experimental masses promised new insights beyond the Standard Model, the theoretical blueprint that describes how matter behaves. Now
Ask any pet owner if their beloved companion has a personality and you’ll most often get an emphatic “yes”. But now tiger researchers can nod along too – a study published Wednesday reveals that the world’s largest felines have individual character traits. The behavior of the 248 Siberian tigers observed through a personality test showed
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