In response to a new report from an independent panel, NASA says it has appointed a director in charge of research into UFOs — now known as unidentified anomalous phenomena, or UAPs — and will work with other agencies to widen the net for collecting UAP data. “This is the first time that NASA has
Human activity and appetites have weakened Earth’s resilience, pushing it far beyond the “safe operating space” that keeps the world liveable for most species, including our own, a landmark study said Wednesday. Six of nine planetary boundaries – climate change, deforestation, biodiversity loss, synthetic chemicals including plastics, freshwater depletion, and nitrogen use – are already
When Isaac Newton inscribed onto parchment his now-famed laws of motion in 1687, he could have only hoped we’d be discussing them three centuries later. Writing in Latin, Newton outlined three universal principles describing how the motion of objects is governed in our Universe, which have been translated, transcribed, discussed and debated at length. But
The astronaut Frank Rubio broke the record for the longest in orbit mission by an American, spending more than 355 days aboard the International Space Station. “In some ways, it’s been an incredible challenge. But in other ways, it’s been an incredible blessing,” Rubio said Wednesday from the ISS during a chat with NASA that
Something rather monstrous happens to the nematode Allodiplogaster sudhausi when reduced to snacking on boring old fungus. Scientists have discovered it develops a giant mouth and feasts on other worms, including those from its own family. This new form has been named the teratostomatous morph, with “teras” being an ancient Greek word for monster. Two
Neutrinos are abundant subatomic particles that have a crucial role in the composition of the Universe. Initially considered massless, these barely-detectable particles ought to weigh something according to updated theories. Exactly what that measurement is has yet to be determined experimentally. An international team of scientists has come up with a new way to solving
They lounge in hot tubs, have active sex lives, and sometimes, take joyrides. Macaques are living the life. Photographer Atsuyuki Ohshima captured a rare photo of one monkey’s cowboy behavior. The photo, taken on Japan’s Yakushima Island, is titled “Forest Rodeo.” Ohshima snapped the photo just after the monkey catapulted itself onto a sika deer,
The James Webb Space Telescope has measured the expansion rate of the Universe, and the results are not great news for the biggest crisis in cosmology. The finding is in agreement with measurements made by the Hubble Space Telescope. This means that there’s no error in the Hubble data, and we’re still at an impasse.
Now officially known as unidentified anomalous phenomena (UAPs), ‘UFOs’ have certainly long captivated our curiosity. NASA commissioned a study team in 2022 to investigate such hard-to-easily-classify reports, and tomorrow they’re revealing the highly anticipated findings at a media briefing. The scarcity of high-quality observations of UAPs – defined as objects in the sky that are
A recent mission from the American spaceflight company, Virgin Galactic, is facing public backlash after it carried the remains of two extinct hominins into space. The University of the Witwatersrand in Johannesburg, South Africa, is custodian of the fossils and its researchers are celebrating the event as a “historic first” and “a tribute to science
For nearly fifty years, mathematicians have puzzled over a deceptively simple question: how small can you make a Möbius strip without it intersecting itself? Now, Richard Schwartz, a mathematician at Brown University, has proposed an elegant solution to this problem, which was originally posed by mathematicians Charles Weaver and Benjamin Halpern in 1977. In their
Ever since 1911, when British mycologist Michael Cressé Potter noticed that brewer’s yeast generated electricity, scientists have been trying to harness the power of microbial fuel cells. But the efficiencies of tiny, budding ‘bioreactors’ have been too low for practical use. What’s more, it turns out microbes can be surprisingly picky in what substrates they
What we thought was a pretty normal spiral galaxy not far from the Milky Way has revealed a hidden surprise. NGC 4632, some 56 million light-years away, is circled by a huge ring of gas that wraps around the galaxy at a highly inclined angle to its galactic plane. Why didn’t we see it until
Mysterious lights appear to have been spotted in Morocco before a devastating earthquake hit last week – and scientists still can’t figure out what caused them. A 6.8-magnitude earthquake hit the High Atlas Mountains in Eastern Morocco on Friday. At least 2,900 people have died and about 5,500 are reported injured, Reuters said on Tuesday.
For the first time, world demand for oil, gas and coal is forecast to peak this decade due to the “spectacular” growth of cleaner energy technologies and electric cars, the International Energy Agency’s chief said Tuesday. The IEA’s annual World Energy Outlook, due out next month, will show that “the world is on the cusp
The human brain is super sensitive to any sort of pattern that resembles a face, which is why we so often ‘catch the eye’ of inanimate objects glaring, grinning, or gaping back at us. Now, psychologists in Australia have shown that the tendency to see faces that aren’t really there, called face pareidolia, may be
When and where did our ancestors first fashion footwear? We cannot look to physical evidence of shoes for the answer, as the perishable materials from which they were made would no longer be evident. Ichnology, the study of fossil tracks and traces, can help to answer this unresolved question through a search for clear evidence
A potential water world orbiting a dim red star a mere 120 light-years away has just become a little bit more exciting. A probe into the atmosphere of K2-18b reveals the presence of carbon dioxide and methane, as scientists previously predicted for an ocean planet with a hydrogen-rich atmosphere, or Hycean world. Moreover, the observations
Red fire ants have marched one by one into Sicily – the first official sighting of the invasive species in Europe. If these notorious swarming insects, originally from South America, continue to spread like they have elsewhere, experts worry they could claim the whole continent. Today, imported red fire ants (Solenopsis invicta) are the fifth
Atomic clocks are the most accurate timekeeping instruments we have. A new study proposes a way to use the instruments’ mind-blowing level of precision to detect the tiniest of energy fluctuations, potentially giving scientists a way to observe some types of dark matter. Dark matter continues to prove elusive: though we haven’t observed it directly,
Between January and August, the United States was struck by a record-breaking 23 weather and climate disasters where losses exceeded US$1 billion in each case, official data showed Monday. The tally for 2023 has already exceeded the previous record of 22 such events in 2020, the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration (NOAA) said, and four
The United States has been pumping so much groundwater that the ground is beginning to split open across southwestern parts of the country for miles on end. These giant cracks, aka fissures, have been spotted in states including Arizona, Utah, and California. Groundwater is one of the main sources of freshwater on Earth – it
From their astute ability to read our emotions to their impressive language and number comprehension, canine powers of understanding continue to amaze. Now it seems they may also be able to listen to us in their sleep. A small pilot study of 13 dogs reveals dogs’ brains deep in the throes of slumber light up
For a few hours after a star smashes into a supermassive black hole, some of the brightest light in the Universe is produced. The subsequent flash of radio waves were thought to simmer down within weeks or months of a collision. It turns out we might have been a little impatient to turn our gaze
We have built telescopes in our backyards, and high upon remote mountains, and even launched telescopes into space. With each advancement in our technology, we have made amazing and surprising new discoveries about the Universe. So what should our next advance in observatories be? Based on a new paper on the arXiv, a good choice
An ancient supervolcano in the United States may be hiding the largest deposit of lithium found anywhere in the world. A new study hypothesizes that the McDermitt Caldera, which sits on the border between Nevada and Oregon, contains more than double the concentration of lithium seen in any other bed of clay globally, around 20
The Milky Way should be teeming with small black holes. Somewhere out there, lurking in the corners of the galaxy, an estimated 10 million to 1 billion stellar mass black holes are thought to be just hanging out, dark and mysterious. Because we can’t usually see them, unless they’re active, we can’t take a census.
The Moon was geologically active between 3.7 and 2.5 billion years ago, experiencing quakes, volcanic eruptions, and outgassing. Thanks to the Moon being an airless body, evidence of this past has been carefully preserved in the form of extinct volcanoes, lava tubes, and other features. While the Moon has been geologically inert for billions of
We might soon be able to record the tunes we hear in our dreams, thanks to a system that’s under development. A team from the startup REMspace, run as part of the Phase Research Center in Russia, has come up with a combination of hardware and software able to decode a melody being played via
The European Space Agency released photos showing its Aeolus satellite tumbling to a fiery death as it re-entered Earth’s atmosphere at a blazing 16,700 mph. The Aeolus satellite was launched to space in 2018. It was the first satellite with powerful laser technology capable of observing wind on a global scale. Over its 5-year mission,
In an effort to create robots capable of controlling their own life-cycles, researchers have developed squishy little devices that can melt themselves into a puddle of goo. “We have mimicked death in a life cycle where the robot could end itself,” Seoul National University engineer Min-Ha Oh told Peter Grad at Tech Xplore. This ‘death’
Heart in your throat. Butterflies in your stomach. Bad gut feeling. These are all phrases many people use to describe fear and anxiety. You have likely felt anxiety inside your chest or stomach, and your brain usually doesn’t hurt when you’re scared. Many cultures tie cowardice and bravery more to the heart or the guts
Some parts of the United States are hitting temperatures “too hot for safe fan use” twice as often as they did decades ago, new research shows. Analyzing hourly weather data from the past 20 years and between 1950 and 1969, Luke Parsons, a climate scientist at Duke University, and colleagues found that more US residents
Spacecraft instruments are highly specialized and can take years to design, build, and test. But a last-minute hack to one of the instruments on the ESA’s Solar Orbiter has allowed the spacecraft to take some difficult observations it would otherwise have been unable to take. It’s all because of one astronomer and an instrument door.
Fluctuations in the light blazing from the brightest galaxies in the Universe could reveal a secret in their cores, astronomers say. According to a new analysis of a type of galaxy known as a blazar, the best explanation for unusual changes in their glow is a pair of supermassive black holes locked in a decaying
Geoengineering is often presented as a last-resort technological fix to the climate crisis that can still swoop in and save the day. But new models suggest that such risky measures, like dimming the Sun, are not enough to save Antarctica now. There’s only one thing left that could, and it’s the very same thing we’ve
India’s Chandrayaan-3 mission delivered its Vikram lander and Pragyan rover to the lunar surface on August 23rd. Now, as the lunar day ends two weeks later, the rover’s mission may be over. The Indian Space Research Organisation (ISRO) has put Pragyan into sleep mode. We’re accustomed to rover missions that last years, thanks largely to
Our lives were already infused with artificial intelligence (AI) when ChatGPT reverberated around the online world late last year. Since then, the generative AI system developed by tech company OpenAI has gathered speed and experts have escalated their warnings about the risks. Meanwhile, chatbots started going off-script and talking back, duping other bots, and acting
You’re running, but you’re not going anywhere. You’re falling, but you never hit the ground. You’re watching your loved one waste away, but there’s nothing you can do about it. If you’re like most people, then you might be covered in a cold sweat by now, recalling a nightmare. Though our dreams are highly personal,
There are several perfectly good reasons why water isn’t a popular medium for calligraphers to write in. Constantly shifting and swirling, it doesn’t take long for ink to diffuse and flow out of formation. An ingenious ‘pen’ developed by the researchers from Johannes Gutenberg University Mainz (JGU) and the Technical University of Darmstadt in Germany,
As elephants wander the African savannah, they might keep in touch with relatives by calling out their individual ‘names’. Researchers have found evidence that wild savannah elephants in Kenya label each other with specific vocal sounds, which they then use to communicate. The research is not yet peer-reviewed, but if the results can be verified
At around 3,300 meters (2 miles) below the surface off the coast of Alaska, where the warm light of the Sun never penetrates, an NOAA Ocean Exploration remotely operated underwater vehicle came across a strange, golden orb. It was “tightly adhered” to a rock dotted with white sponges, measuring around 10 centimeters (4 inches) across
An unprecedentedly violent volcanic eruption that triggered a tsunami off the Pacific island nation of Tonga in 2022 unleashed the fastest underwater currents ever recorded, according to a study published on Thursday. The submerged Hunga Tonga-Hunga Ha’apai Volcano sent rocks, ash and gas racing across the seafloor at 122 kilometers (76 miles) per hour in
The most high-resolution map yet of the underlying geology beneath Earth’s Southern Hemisphere reveals something we previously never knew about: an ancient ocean floor that may wrap around the core. This thin but dense layer exists around 2,900 kilometers (1,800 miles) below the surface, according to a study published in April. That depth is where
A comet called Nishimura discovered just a month ago could be visible to the naked eye this weekend, offering stargazers a once-in-a-437-year chance to observe the celestial visitor. The ball of rock and ice, whose exact size remains unknown, is named after the Japanese amateur astronomer Hideo Nishimura who first spotted it on August 12.
Forty years ago this month the US Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) released a grim report warning us of the coming perils if we did not act on climate change. “Agricultural conditions will be significantly altered, environmental and economic systems potentially disrupted, and political institutions stressed,” they predicted in a report published in September, 1983. After
An arrangement of galaxies in a giant bubble has been found not far from the Milky Way, and astronomers believe it could be a relic of the early Universe. Astronomers have named the cluster Ho’oleilana, a Hawaiian name inspired by the chant, Kumulipo, which tells of the creation of structure in the Universe. The cluster’s
Wind and snow don’t always bring about the coldest winters in the Arctic. When snow is blown across sea ice, an international team of researchers has found it can indirectly contribute to regional warming. That happens because snow in the Arctic contains tiny particles of sea salt. If these aerosols are whipped up into the
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