Feathers are not simply the domain of birds, nor did they arise solely for flight. New research on China’s rich fossil record suggests instead that these structures arose 100 million years before birds, and maybe even before dinosaurs themselves. The breakthrough came late last year, when researchers were studying two new fossilised pterosaurs in China.
How far can the human body be pushed? It’s a question you might ask yourself on a 5K run, or an early morning gym session, but a new study says there is a definite limit to human endurance – beyond which our bodies start breaking down. For long-term levels of exertion, that limit is burning
Not everything on Earth has sex. While the vast majority of creatures on the planet reproduce this way, some animals prefer to go it alone. Sometimes when they do this, they thrive – successfully rejecting sex for millions of years. Sometimes animals even switch between sexual and asexual reproduction. So, sex is a tricky thing.
Astronomers peering into the dark heart of the Milky Way galaxy have seen a vast, rotating disc of cool gas, circling the supermassive black hole that therein resides. Long has this disc been hypothesised; now, it is revealed in all its turbulent glory. “We were the first to image this elusive disk and study its
Imagining something into reality is probably a desire as old as imagination itself, but there might just be a slight bit more to it than mere wishful thinking. A new study reveals how imagining a scenario that takes place in an emotionally neutral place can change our attitude to that place in reality. To puzzle
Starting the day with a bowl of pressed cereal rings from a garish cardboard box is a signature of the modern age. So when researchers discovered that a stash of tiny, Bronze Age doughnuts were made from processed grains, they seemed strangely out of place. The Austrian archaeological dig site of Stillfried an der March was
New results from the Large Hadron Collider have confirmed it. The mysterious five-quark subatomic particle – the pentaquark, only discovered a few years ago – really is composed of two sets of quarks. One is a meson, a type of particle that contains a quark and antiquark pair; the other is a three-quark baryon: the subatomic
Scientists have demonstrated a lightweight type of foam made of hollow metallic spheres that can withstand the incredible impact of .50 calibre rounds: the kinds of bullets fired by heavy machine guns and sniper rifles. While weighing only about half as much as conventional steel armour, this engineered material – called composite metal foam (CMF)
Electric car motors, iPhones, military jet engines, batteries, and satellites all have something in common: They require rare-earth elements to function. Rare-earth elements are a group of 17 metals that – as their name suggests – form under the Earth’s surface and are difficult to find and extract. But they are crucial to the tech
Humanity has been climbing a treacherous path, and now, looking down from such great heights, our footprints are clear to see. In the middle of May, carbon dioxide (CO2) levels in our planet’s atmosphere climbed over and above 415 parts per million (ppm) for the first time since the dawn of our species. That was a
As tall as the towers of London Bridge, New Delhi’s Ghazipur landfill continues to grow at a startling pace. Within a year, it is set to rise higher than the Taj Mahal, one of the country’s most iconic monuments. Nicknamed ‘Mount Everest‘ by locals, the expansive pile of fetid matter is already more than 65 metres
The Dutch airline KLM is funding the development of a V-shaped aeroplane designed to seat passengers in its wings to make it more fuel-efficient, the company announced Monday. Its futuristic shape will make the “Flying V” lighter and more aerodynamic, KLM said. Its designers say it will need 20 percent less fuel than an Airbus
PDS 70, the star that last year gave us the first ever confirmed direct image of a planet being born, had an extra trick up its protoplanetary disc. In follow-up observations, astronomers have found a second planet – and managed to take photographs of both. This gives it the added honour of being only the
New York is one signature away from becoming the first state in the country to ban cat declawing, a practice advocates say serves no benefit to felines and is done typically out of convenience. The bill, which passed by a wide margin Tuesday in the state’s majority-Democrat Assembly and Senate, would impose a US$1,000 fine
The world has learned many lessons from the Chernobyl disaster, a devastating nuclear power plant accident that recently rejoined our cultural conversation thanks to a new series on HBO. Though many elements of the disaster are still shrouded in mystery, we know a few things for certain: On April 26, 1986, the core of a nuclear
Do you need another reason to love bees? Not only can our fuzzy little flower friends perform basic arithmetic, scientists have now discovered that they can recognise symbols associated with numbers. Just as we humans recognise the symbol 7 or VII is associated with a quantity of seven, it seems that bees can make the
If the dating of a number of East African artefacts turns out to be correct, the emergence of our genus might have been given a boost when hominids literally gave tools an edge. Systematically flaked stones buried in sediment dated from 2.58 to 2.61 million years ago were uncovered at an Ethiopian dig site back
A doomsday ending to climate change is not inevitable, but the situation is becoming ever more desperate. Without immediate and drastic action, reminiscent of efforts during World War II, a new analysis predicts that by 2050, climate change could become an “existential threat to human civilisation” that can never be undone. The new report, co-written
Retelling the 1986 Chernobyl disaster is an exercise in unburying the truth. In the wake of the world’s worst nuclear power plant accident, which forced the city of Pripyat in what was then part of the Soviet Union to evacuate after being exposed to toxic levels of radiation, Soviet officials publicly downplayed the incident. To
Australia’s dinosaur record is one of the most poorly understood, with only a handful of species discovered in the past hundred years. But a newly identified one has been in our possession for decades without us even knowing. A strange collection of unstudied bones on show at Australia’s oldest museum for years has turned out to
Solar panels are fantastic pieces of technology, but we need to work out how to make them even more efficient – and scientists just solved a 40-year-old mystery around one of the key obstacles to increased efficiency. A new study outlines a material defect in silicon used to produce solar cells that has previously gone
The 50th anniversary of You-Know-What is coming up and LEGO is getting in on the celebration. The much-beloved company has released a replica of the Apollo 11 Eagle Lunar Lander. The new lander is part of LEGO’s Creator Expert collection. LEGO teamed up with NASA on this effort, and the model boasts quite a few
A huge discovery that was incompatible with our current theories of dark matter and galaxy formation may have just been resolved. After a new analysis, astronomers have determined that NGC1052-DF2 – found last year to contain absolutely no dark matter – is a lot closer to us than previous calculations estimated. Which means that it
The famous cat-in-a-box thought experiment by Austrian physicist Erwin Schrödinger is an illustration of one of the defining characteristics of quantum mechanics – the unpredictable behaviour of particles at the quantum level. It makes working with quantum systems incredibly difficult; but what if we could make quantum predictions? A team of physicists believes it’s possible.
It was built in the early 12th century by King Suryavarman II, one of the most famous kings of the Angkorian civilization that lasted from approximately the ninth to 15th centuries. The structure is so strongly associated with Cambodian identity even today that it appears on the nation’s flag. For many years, historians placed the
The first film of a total solar eclipse has been restored by specialists at the British Film Institute (BFI) and made available for viewing. The film was taken in North Caroline in 1900 by Nevil Maskelyne. Maskelyne was a British man who was a magician turned film-maker. He took the film as part of a
Plasma, that super-hot mix of electrified atomic particles, plays a key role in the evolution of stars, black holes, and other cosmic elements. For closer study though, plasma needs to be recreated in a lab – and researchers have just managed to generate a particular type of plasma jet for the first time. The key
The most fundamental system we have to quantify the importance of scientific research is broken at its core, a new study reveals – and all it took was a single punctuation mark. In a bizarre new finding, researchers have demonstrated that academic papers with hyphens in their titles get counted less in citation-counting databases: a freakish
Death, for stars, isn’t always a straightforward affair. In fact, it can get downright weird. Astronomers have just identified a star made from the remnants of two dead stars that fused together, which reignited fusion in the core – bringing the new star back to life. The star is called J005311, 10,000 light-years away in
You’re sitting an exam, and just can’t recall the answer you know is in your brain somewhere. A new study suggests that a quick zap to a region in your prefrontal cortex might help you find the missing memory. Okay, so maybe using this in practice is more science fiction than science at this stage,
Twitter, used by 126 million people daily and now ubiquitous in some industries, has vowed to reform itself after being enlisted as a tool of misinformation and hate. But new evidence shows that the platform may be inflicting harm at an even more basic level. It could be making its users, well, a bit witless.
There’s a giant contradiction in the middle of the Arizona desert: an experimental city designed for thousands that now contains only a few dozen inhabitants. For nearly five decades, a group called the Cosanti Foundation has been working to build a city that would inspire a new future of urban design. Today, the project is
The Universe is so unimaginably big, and it’s positively teeming with an almost infinite supply of potentially life-giving worlds. So where the heck is everybody? At its heart, this is what’s called the Fermi Paradox: the perplexing scientific anomaly that despite there being billions of stars in our Milky Way galaxy – let alone outside
Clay is a big deal on Mars because it often forms in contact with water. Find clay, and you’ve usually found evidence of water. And the nature, history, and current water budget on Mars are all important to understanding that planet, and if it ever supported life. Right now, MSL Curiosity is at Mt Sharp
Curiosity is one busy rover. Since touching down on Mars in 2012, it’s helped astronomers locate the planet’s missing methane, delivered new evidence that Mars was once wet, and even provided clues of extraterrestrial life. But all work and no play makes Curiosity a dull bot, so it recently kicked back to do some cloud-watching
They say you should never turn your back on the ocean, but what if the waves are coming from all sides? This is what happens when an unlucky swimmer or boater gets caught between two opposing swells, known as a cross sea. This rare pattern of square waves is a beautiful sight to behold, but
In the crop fields of Argentina, bees have been building nests for their young out of some strange materials. For the first time, scientists have found bee nests made entirely out of plastic waste. A lot of plastic in the form of packaging comes into farms, and often makes its way into the landscape. The
Based on this recently released snapshot of the night sky captured by NASA’s Neutron star Interior Composition Explorer (NICER), we can safely assume Superman gets no sleep at night. Just look at that thing. The sparkling dots and tangled loops are the result of nearly two years of effort to study cosmic sources of X-rays
Astronomers have detected the presence of ammonia mixed in with the rusty colouration of Pluto’s surface. This could have fascinating implications for the icy dwarf planet, as researchers have detailed in two new studies. Firstly, that ammonia-tainted ice hints at a salty, organic-rich ocean hiding beneath Pluto’s surface – one that may contain the right
Parents that make a point of being generous with their money could inspire greater financial responsibility in their kids. Alongside budgeting and saving, a new psychology study suggests that responsible giving is one of the most valuable lessons a child can learn about money. Interviewing individuals of all generations, the research is some of the
Earth is not one to sit still. For roughly 3 billion years, our planet has been perpetually recycling its ocean floor, swallowing up old oceanic crust in some areas and pouring out new seabed in others. Diamonds, it would seem, are the beautiful byproducts of all this restlessness. Tipped off by tiny traces of trapped salt,
Deep below the frozen wastelands of Antarctica, scientists have discovered ancient tectonic plate structures that are having a huge impact on melting patterns around the continent’s largest ice shelf. The hidden rock, in place for hundreds of millions of years, is controlling water flow around the gigantic Ross Ice Shelf. This shelf currently acts as
Every 11 years, the Sun cycles through from riotous flare and sunspot activity to a quieter period, before ramping up again. It’s almost as regular as clockwork, and for years astronomers have been wondering what causes it. Now, they’ve proposed a new solution. Even though the Solar System’s planets are much smaller than the Sun,
As far as mysteries of nature go, ball lightning is one of the more perplexing. It seems there are as many potential explanations as there are sightings, but in spite of decades of intense interest, none stand out as a clear winner. One of the weirder hypotheses claims these glowing balls are nothing more than
A new artificial intelligence created by researchers at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology pulls off a staggering feat: by analyzing only a short audio clip of a person’s voice, it reconstructs what they might look like in real life. The AI’s results aren’t perfect, but they’re pretty good – a remarkable and somewhat terrifying example
A lab-created analogue of a black hole has provided new evidence that these mysterious space objects really do emit radiation. This evidence is indirect: physicists have shown that the analogue has a temperature, which is a necessary prerequisite for the eponymous radiation predicted by Stephen Hawking. Under general relativity, a black hole is inescapable. Its
A Canadian man has pleaded guilty to smuggling thousands of live medicinal leeches into the country, bundled up inside a reusable grocery bag, according to the Canadian government. Ippolit Bodounov will pay a US$15,000 fine for the slimy heist, and had to turn over his nearly 5,000 leeches to authorities, Environment and Climate Change Canada
On May 29, 1919, a solar eclipse forever altered our conception of gravity, rewrote the laws of physics and turned a 40-year-old, wild-haired scientist into a global celebrity – the very personification of scientific genius. It was a very good day for Albert Einstein. The 1919 eclipse across South America and Africa provided direct evidence
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