Researchers working on the Central Andean Plateau (or Altiplano) in Peru have discovered a giant tree fossil buried in the plains – and the 10 million years of history that it reveals don’t quite match up with what we thought we know about the ancient climate. Back when this tree died, a little more than
Galaxies are already pretty huge, billions to trillions of stars whirling around a supermassive black hole. But that’s not where their influence ends. A large, spherical halo of gas surrounds a galaxy, reaching vastly farther than the main population of stars, a bit like a galactic atmosphere. Hubble observations of our nearest galactic neighbour, Andromeda,
It might sound like a bad movie, but extreme wildfires can create their own weather – including fire tornadoes. It happened in California as a heat wave helped to fuel hundreds of wildfires across the region, many of them sparked by lightning. One fiery funnel cloud on 15 August was so powerful, the National Weather
Space has never been a one-size-fits-all affair. Our Universe is littered with gas and dust forming the shapes of faces, jellyfish, butterflies, giant pillars that look like a hand, and so much more. And now, for those Star Wars fans out there, there’s TXS 0128+554 – a galaxy that looks very much like a TIE Fighter.
Mars may have only a thin atmosphere compared to other Solar System planets, but boy does it make the most of it. Water ice can rise high in the sky to form thin clouds. Wild winds can whip up into uncontrolled dust storms that shroud the entire planet, or create dust towers that extend almost
Keeping qubits stable – those quantum equivalents of classic computing bits – will be key to realising the potential of quantum computing. Now scientists have found a new obstacle to this stability: natural radiation. Natural or background radiation comes from all sorts of sources, both natural and artificial. Cosmic rays contribute to natural radiation, for
Animals have been hibernating for a long, long time, a new study shows. Researchers have analysed 250 million-year-old fossils and found evidence that the pig-sized mammal relation, a genus called Lystrosaurus, hibernated much like bears and bats do today. Finding signs of shifts in metabolism rates in fossils is just about impossible under normal conditions – but
SpaceX is aiming to launch three rockets on Sunday, including two back-to-back Falcon 9 launches in Florida and a Starship test flight in Texas, if weather permits. The aerospace company said it intends to launch its twelfth Starlink mission at 10:12 am EST from the Kennedy Space Center in Florida, sending 60 Starlinks into orbit. The second
Songbirds in tropical rainforests curtail their reproduction to help them survive droughts, according to a study Monday. Species with longer lifespans were better able to cope with this environmental volatility than previously thought, researchers found. With more record hot spells gripping parts of the planet and biodiversity threatened by human encroachment on habitats, a crucial
For as long as there has been a Universe, space has been expanding. It winked into existence roughly 13.8 billion years ago, and has been puffing up ever since, like a giant cosmic balloon. The current rate of this expansion is called the Hubble constant, or H0, and it’s one of the fundamental measurements of
In the shadow of Canada’s largest cluster of skyscrapers, Toronto is looking to preserve a majestic, centuries-old oak tree – but efforts have been complicated by the pandemic. The towering 24-meter (79-feet) high Northern Red Oak is one of the oldest trees in these parts, having sprouted an estimated 300 years ago, around the time
Plants have a seemingly effortless skill – turning sunlight into energy – and scientists have been working to artificially emulate this photosynthesis process. The ultimate benefits for renewable energy could be huge – and a new approach based on ‘photosheets’ could be the most promising attempt we’ve seen so far. The new device takes CO2, water, and sunlight
Wormholes are a popular feature in science fiction, the means through which spacecraft can achieve faster-than-light (FTL) travel and instantaneously move from one point in spacetime to another. And while the General Theory of Relativity forbids the existence of “traversable wormholes”, recent research has shown that they are actually possible within the domain of quantum
There’s an enormous variety of life thriving deep beneath Earth’s surface. A new analysis of two major groups of subsurface microbes has now revealed that their evolutionary path to life in the dark has been more curious than we expected. In our planet’s first 2 billion years of existence, there was no oxygen in the
If a tree falls in a forest and no one is there to hear it, does it make a sound? Perhaps not, some say. And if someone is there to hear it? If you think that means it obviously did make a sound, you might need to revise that opinion. We have found a new
More than half the ice shelves ringing Antarctica that prevent huge glaciers from sliding into the ocean and lifting sea levels are at risk of crumbling due to climate change, researchers said Wednesday. Melt water running into deep fissures caused by warming air is undermining the structural integrity of these natural barricades, they reported in
Spend some time in someone else’s body, and your sense of self and your memory starts to shift, new research shows – almost as if your brain is adapting to better fit its new form. It’s a fascinating insight into the link between the physical and the psychological. Researchers haven’t actually worked out how to
The centre of the Milky Way is glowing. Yes, there’s a big chonkin’ black hole there, and it’s a very energetic region, but there’s an additional high-energy, gamma-ray glow, above and beyond the activity we know about, and it’s something that’s yet to be explained. This glow is called the Galactic Center GeV Excess (GCE),
What happens to materials in Earth’s crust when a meteorite slams into them? Specifically, what happens to the quartz found in many different rock types? Scientists thought they already knew the answer – but new lab tests suggest we might have to think again. In the absence of any imminent meteorite strikes, researchers used a
Of the many high expectations we have of quantum technology, one of the most exciting has to be the ability to simulate chemistry on an unprecedented level. Now we have our first glimpse of what that might look like. Together with a team of collaborators, the Google AI Quantum team has used their 54 qubit
For a single cell, the human body is a gargantuan maze of tissues, chemicals and capillaries, crammed full with trillions of other cells all bustling about like commuters at the world’s busiest train station. Somehow, amidst all this hubbub, most cells still manage to reach their destinations. How do they do it? Many cells have a trick
Water covers 70 percent of the Earth’s surface and is crucial to life as we know it, but how it got here has been a longstanding scientific debate. The puzzle was a step closer to being solved Thursday after a French team reported in the journal Science they had identified which space rocks were responsible,
As a source of clean energy, wind farms come with many benefits - but they can be a danger to local birds. A new study suggests a small tweak to the turbine design could make a big difference in terms of avian safety, and all it takes is a paint job. In an experiment run on
An 80-million-year-old embryo has revealed some unexpected features of the most titanic animals to ever have walked the Earth. Sauropods, such as Brontosauruses, which lumbered their way through the Jurassic and Cretaceous ages, are well known for their impressive size and long necks. But very little is known about their young. “The preservation of embryonic
When a star ventures a little too close to a black hole, we know – broadly – what happens. The intense tidal forces tear the star apart in what is called a tidal disruption event, unleashing a final burst of light before the star’s debris passes beyond the event horizon. The precise details of this
At the end of the Universe, long after the last shining stars flicker out, there might be one final set of explosions. Called black dwarf supernovae, these dazzling blasts will herald in the everlasting darkness as the Universe sinks into dormancy, a new study suggests. These newly proposed supernovas are a special breed that haven’t
The Sun’s corona, its outer atmosphere of searing hot plasma, is a source of constant fascination for scientists – and in a major leap forward in our understanding, researchers have mapped out a region of its global magnetic field for the first time. This magnetic field helps to drive and control many aspects of the
A rare merger between clusters of galaxies has just revealed an even rarer sight. Astronomers have found a vast, low-frequency radio ‘bridge’ between the two, spanning a 6.5-million-light-year distance – evidence of a magnetic field connecting them in the early stage of the merging process. It’s only the second time such a radio bridge has
Just before a tiny pup died during the last ice age, it ate a piece of meat from one of Earth’s last woolly rhinos. Researchers made this discovery while doing a necropsy (an animal autopsy) on the mummified remains of the ice age puppy. After finding an undigested slab of skin with yellow fur in the puppy’s stomach, researchers
Sometimes our eyes play tricks on us, and sometimes, we play tricks on them. Optical illusions have entranced neuroscientists for decades, but these false messages have probably been going on much longer than we’ve been studying them. New research has found the eyes of fruit flies are just as easily fooled by static visual patterns
Where do dreams come from? It’s an age-old question, something people have been wondering and theorising about for millennia. Whereas ancient civilisations may have interpreted dreams as having supernatural or spiritual origins, in modern society, we’re more likely to analyse our dreams in terms of our waking life, looking for meaningful connections linking the content
At some point in Earth’s 4.5-billion-year history, its entirely liquid iron core cooled enough to form a solid ball in the centre. Today, our planet’s core consists of a solid iron inner core surrounded by a molten iron outer core, but pinning down exactly when this change occurred has proven quite difficult. Estimates range from
Our planet’s water supply is an incredibly valuable resource that we need to protect, and worrying new figures show between 30-50 percent of it is being stolen – meaning that water isn’t paid for or counted. This theft occurs when people and companies obtain water illegally – often for agricultural purposes. That could mean getting
When Comet NEOWISE streaked by Earth in July, we were dazzled by a plethora of stunning photographs of the twin-tailed space rock. But none were remotely like images taken by the Gemini North telescope in Hawaii. In optical wavelengths, the telescope imaged a stream of dust and molecular gas spiralling out from the nucleus –
A chance discovery during a hike in Grand Canyon National Park in 2016 ended up revealing strange footprints left by something that also walked there once, long, long ago. So long ago, in fact, that these ancient tracks – left approximately 313 million years ago – represent the earliest footprints ever found in this epic,
Hidden among the seeming endlessness of space, there could be countless worlds that never see the light of day. These mysterious bodies, called rogue planets, are not like other planets, although there could be multitudes of them. In our own Solar System, Earth and all its planetary siblings orbit around the Sun, bathing in its warmth
Radioactive dust deep beneath the ocean waves suggest that Earth is moving through a massive cloud left behind by an exploded star. Continuously, for the last 33,000 years, space has been seeding Earth with a rare isotope of iron forged in supernovae. It’s not the first time that the isotope, known as iron-60, has dusted
Billions of years ago, rain once fell on the Martian plain, and not always softly. New research on the Red Planet’s now-empty lakes suggests a huge amount of liquid water must have spilled from the skies roughly 3.5 to 4 billion years ago, enough to sculpt river-like channels and breach several lake basins. “This is
For half a century scientists feared that the Somali elephant shrew had vanished from the face of the Earth. No one had seen so much as a whisker. But the tiny mammal with its probing trunk-like nose was quietly thriving in the arid, rocky landscape of the Horn of Africa, researchers said Tuesday. The elusive,
Earlier this year, astronomers announced a dazzling discovery. A fast radio burst called FRB 121102 wasn’t just repeating – it was repeating on a discernible cycle. For around 67 days, the source is silent. Then, for around 90 days, it wakes up again, spitting out repeated millisecond radio flares before falling silent, and the whole
Firefighters on Sunday battled some of California’s largest-ever fires that have forced tens of thousands from their homes and burned one million acres, with further lightning strikes and gusty winds forecast in the days ahead. Thousands of lightning strikes have hit the state in the past week, igniting fires that left smoke blanketing the region,
If you’ve looked at the news today, you’d be forgiven for thinking a huge asteroid is on track to collide with Earth the day before the 2020 US Presidential election. At least that’s the takeaway from quite a few news outlets. And, understandably, some people are freaking out. In a year with a literal pandemic,
The mantis shrimp is quite a fearsome foe. While they’re neither shrimp nor mantis, this marine crustacean, measuring about just 10 centimetres (4 inches) long, has incredible eyes that can see cancer, and a club-like hand that can throw the fastest punches in the ocean. We’re talking 23 metres per second, and creating 1,500 newtons of
Scientists from Leeds and Edinburgh universities and University College London analysed satellite surveys of glaciers, mountains, and ice sheets between 1994 and 2017 to identify the impact of global warming. Their review paper was published in the journal Cryosphere Discussions. Describing the ice loss as “staggering,” the group found that melting glaciers and ice sheets could cause
The world’s oceans have turned into a veritable sponge for our emissions, and new climate models suggest we’ve soaked them right through. Since the 1950s, our planet’s vast bodies of water have absorbed roughly 93 percent of the energy entering the climate system, and while most of that heating has been observed near the ocean
For all the little creatures out there, falling water can be a big hazard. When water drops are a large percentage of your body size, you need clever adaptations to survive even commonly occurring phenomena such as rain. So even greater volumes of falling water, like a waterfall, may as well be a wall to
If you’re a fan of science fiction, chances are you encountered a few franchises where humanity has spread throughout the known Universe. The ships that allow them to do this, maybe they use a warp drive, maybe they “fold space,” maybe have a faster-than-light (FTL) or “jump” drive. It’s a cool idea, the thought of
In 2020, we’re sadly used to hearing how disinformation campaigns are being waged to influence people’s thinking, spread fake news, and further political agendas But the same tactics aren’t solely a threat in terms of long-term social manipulation, scientists warn. In a new study, researchers demonstrate that weaponised disinformation campaigns could also hypothetically be exploited to
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