Sharks are pretty eclectic eaters. They’ll go for prey ranging from fish and invertebrates to sea mammals and turtles. A shark may even have a chomp on the odd surfer. If they can catch it, or scavenge it, and it’s made of meat, sharks will generally eat it. A new study identifying the contents of
Month: May 2019
The world produces a staggering 180 billion aluminium cans every year, but it’s a safe bet many of the people consuming those beverages don’t know about a hidden material concealed inside the metal cylinders. For decades, aluminium can manufacturers have lined the inside of their cans with plastic. Why? Well, it’s to protect the beverage
If you pictured a fight between a snake and a squirrel, you probably wouldn’t bet on the squirrel coming out on top. But that’s exactly what happened in a particularly gruesome case in 2009, caught on camera by William Leggett, who was a ranger at West Texas’ Guadalupe Mountains National Park. The photo below shows
The window for climate action is closing before our very eyes, and as emissions continue to rise, researchers at Stanford are asking us to consider the lesser of two evils. In a new commentary, the authors propose a wild idea that would intentionally release more carbon dioxide (CO2) into the atmosphere, while getting rid of
The Greenland and Antarctic ice sheets are melting. Scientists have known this for years, but they’re only now realising how quickly that melting is happening. Greenland’s ice is melting six times faster now than it was four decades ago; the ice sheet is sloughing off an average of 286 billion tons of ice per year. In
There’s no doubt we have too much plastic in our oceans, and it’s all our fault. But an unexpected source of support might help us to solve this terrible environmental problem: marine microbes that eat plastic, breaking the ubiquitous waste material down. In new research, an international team of scientists studied how microbial communities build
You may not realise it, because we always see the same side of it from Earth, but the Moon is pretty weird. The side we see is very different from the far side, which is always facing away from us, and the contrast between these two sides has been a baffling oddity. Now we have a
Hurricane season doesn’t start until June 1, but the National Hurricane Center announced Monday evening that Subtropical Storm Andrea had formed. Called a subtropical storm because it has a blend of both tropical and nontropical characteristics, it is packing peak winds of 40 mph (64 kilometres per hour). The storm could strengthen slightly through Tuesday
If you think your mom is laying it on thick about producing grandchildren, take heart: At least you’re not a male bonobo. Bonobo mothers have been seen performing a variety of behaviors that seem to lend their sons an advantage when it comes to fathering babies, according to a study published Monday in Current Biology
It’s long been known that cannabis plants are indigenous to Central Asia, but a new study provides a fresh focus on where exactly this genus may have first evolved millions of years ago. Documents dating back to the middle ages show humans have been hypothesising about the geographical origins of cannabis for over a thousand
The Solar System might be a soggier place than we previously thought – even in the glacially cold reaches of the Kuiper Belt. There, dwarf planet Pluto could be harbouring liquid oceans under a shell of nitrogen ice. It was thought that the temperature required to maintain a liquid ocean on Pluto was too high
Sound isn’t just something we hear. It’s a formidable physical phenomenon – a wave of pressure that reverberates through the air around us. But the medium sound moves through doesn’t have to be air. Incredibly loud sounds can also travel through water, sometimes even being the result of particularly noisy fish. But if you really want
Finally, 130 years after it was established, the kilogram as we know it is about to be retired. But it’s not the end: tomorrow, 20 May 2019, a new definition will be put in place – one that’s far more accurate than anything we’ve had until now. After the shift was unanimously voted in at the
Sometimes, while waiting for quantum computers to become a thing, or complaining that your stupid laptop keeps dying on 5 percent battery, it’s easy to forget just how far technology has come over the past 50 years. Sure, we can all list off a whole bunch of innovations that have changed the way the world
Thirty years ago, archaeologists digging at one of England’s earliest medieval villages discovered the remains of 73 worn cooking pots. Used for the last time half a century ago, they still hold tiny remnants of their last meal. Which means they provide fascinating insight into what medieval people actually ate on a day-to-day basis. Chemically
After 12 successful seasons, “The Big Bang Theory” has finally come to a fulfilling end, concluding its reign as the longest running multicamera sitcom on TV. If you’re one of the few who haven’t seen the show, this CBS series centers around a group of young scientists defined by essentially every possible stereotype about nerds
Between 1946 and 1958, the US government tested 67 nuclear weapons in the Marshall Islands. It later dumped radioactive waste from the tests into a crater on one of the islands, placing an 18-inch-thick concrete dome over the horrifying sludge. Because the crater was only supposed to be a temporary storage solution, the bottom of
Most people are familiar with optical lasers through their experience with laser pointers. But what about a laser made from sound waves? What makes optical laser light different from a light bulb or the sun is that all the light waves emerging from it are moving in the same direction and are pretty much in
Consider yourself lucky if you’re in a job that you love, but be aware that there’s a potential downside – other people might take advantage of your passion for your work. New research shows that managers often set extra hours without pay, or give out demeaning tasks to employees, to those who are particularly passionate
Using the combined might of two of Hawaii’s powerful telescopes, astronomers have captured what they are describing as “groundbreaking” sharp new images of a planetary system still in the process of being born. They also found no evidence of three previously detected planets. The star is LkCa 15, a young, Sun-like T Tauri star 473
Millions of cryptocurrency investors have been scammed out of massive sums of real money. In 2018, losses from cryptocurrency-related crimes amounted to US$1.7 billion. The criminals use both old-fashioned and new-technology tactics to swindle their marks in schemes based on digital currencies exchanged through online databases called blockchains. From researching blockchain, cryptocurrency and cybercrime, I
Climate breakdown is already having a massively negative impact on the world’s wildlife, but it seems there are even more ways animals can be harmed by our negligence. Marine biologists have just demonstrated for the first time that low oxygen levels in the water can send marine invertebrates blind. With rising global temperatures already lowering
In the Chinese science fiction film The Wandering Earth, recently released on Netflix, humanity attempts to change the Earth’s orbit using enormous thrusters in order to escape the expanding Sun – and prevent a collision with Jupiter. The scenario may one day come true. In five billion years, the Sun will run out of fuel
They say a tree never forgets, and apparently, neither does its resin. For more than ten thousand years, an ancient chewing gum, made from the tar of a birch bark tree, has held the memory of Scandinavia’s first human settlers. Discovered in the 1990s, in a prehistoric hunter-fisher site on the Swedish coast, known as the Huseby
Unknown to many travellers in southeast Asia, the ‘jars of the dead’ in Laos are a 2,000-year-old mystery that has never been solved. Speckled across thousands of square kilometres of the Xieng Khouang plateau – now known as the ‘Plain of Jars’ for that very reason – these empty megalithic structures from the Iron Age
When Victor Vescovo’s submarine hit the floor of the Mariana Trench, it sent the sediment swirling. “At bottom,” the Texas businessman-turned-extreme-explorer said into his headset. “Repeat: at bottom”. In a control room more than 35,850 feet (10.9 km) above, Vescovo’s dive team clapped and cheered. Congratulations were in order: they had just set a record.
The world watched avidly earlier this year when NASA spacecraft New Horizons made a historic encounter. It flew past an object called 2014 MU69 – AKA Ultima Thule – the farthest named single object in the Solar System. We know what it looks like. We know it’s a bit of a weirdo. But now scientists
Peacock spiders are so adorable, they stand a chance to sway the feelings of the most seasoned spider hater. These creatures are tiny – a mere 5 millimetres (0.2 inches). They’re also fluffy, the males have incredibly colourful butts, and they love to dance. Now we’ve discovered these spiders also have an interesting superpower – the
Did you know that there are forests in the Arctic? Lush underwater forests of large brown seaweeds (kelps) are particularly striking in the Arctic, especially in contrast to the land where ice scour (scraping of sea ice against the sea floor) and harsh climates leave the ground barren with little vegetation. Kelp forests have been
Yutu 2, the Chinese rover that landed on the far side of the Moon earlier this year, just examined the first-ever samples of the Moon’s mantle. The samples are believed to have been dug out by a meteorite impact so strong that it crashed through the Moon’s crust, according to research published in the journal
Researchers have pinpointed a previously unknown source of volcanoes in the extreme depths of Earth – in the transition zone between the upper and lower mantle. Until now, we thought we had a handle on the ways in which volcanoes form, welling up from the molten regions in the upper mantle beneath our planet’s crust,
Scientists have reworked the DNA of Escherichia coli to help us understand apparent redundancies in its genetic code. At four million base pairs in size, they now have the results of the most ambitious attempt at a completely synthetic form of life. For all its immense variation, life on Earth all shares a common language in its
Reactor number four of the Chernobyl Nuclear Power Plant suffered an explosion during a technical test on April 26, 1986. As a result of the accident, in the then Soviet Union, more than 400 times more radiation was emitted than that released by the atomic bomb dropped on Hiroshima (Japan) in 1945. It remains the
Unlike human history, when nature repeats itself, there’s usually a good reason. For the white-throated rail (Dryolimnas cuvieri), all it took was a peaceful reef Eden, free from predators and competition. On the remote Aldabra atoll in the Indian Ocean, scientists have discovered that the same species of bird has lost its ability to fly
Scientists say that something mysterious punched gigantic, cosmic “bullet holes” in parts of the Milky Way. There’s a string of holes in a long stream of stars called GD-1 that suggests that some yet-undiscovered thing blasted its way through, according to research presented to the American Physical Society last month. Harvard-Smithsonian astrophysicist Ana Bonaca, the
In our world, there exists an ancient and cryptic book that reads beyond human understanding. Known as the Voynich manuscript, this artefact dating from the 15th century has practically turned into modern legend. Like King Arthur’s ‘sword in the stone’, the modern ‘world’s most mysterious book’ has attracted a host of curious readers determined to
A strange kind of yellow, exotic glass found across some of the world’s desert regions has finally had its mysterious origins identified – almost 30 million years after it formed on Earth. Libyan desert glass is a naturally occurring kind of glass that’s found in the eastern stretches of the Sahara desert, in eastern Libya
The news this week was shocking: Earth’s atmosphere hit a catastrophic new peak of carbon pollution. But one company wasn’t shocked. It saw this dark future coming a long time ago. As far back as 1982 – 37 years ago – scientists working for oil and gas giant Exxon expertly predicted the shape of climate
Global messaging app WhatsApp, which boasts over 1 billion users, was targeted by hackers last month in a breach that saw mobile devices attacked through the voice-calling functionality of the app. The security flaw potentially gave hackers access to private messages, location data and other personal user information. While WhatsApp hasn’t specifically stated who or how many
Scientists have found a bunch of microscopic creatures that could be totally new to science – but it’s an exceptional challenge to determine who is who when the tiny things you’ve discovered are actually the larva of animals that look completely different in their adult stage. The little-known animals in question are called phoronids, or
San Francisco on Tuesday became the first city in the United States to ban the use of facial-recognition software by city agencies and the police, dealing a swift symbolic blow to a key technology rapidly being deployed by law enforcement nationwide. The 8-to-1 vote by the city’s Board of Supervisors will forbid public agencies from
Only 12 people have ever travelled so far as to touch the brightest object in our night sky – the Moon. All of these astronauts were male. If the very first lunar mission was a small step for man, the next shall be a giant leap for women. At the start of this week NASA
Perhaps your teacher is just a good a judge of your academic prowess as an exam paper – and that could help reduce some of the exam workload on kids as they go through school. Researchers looked at data collected on more than 5,000 pairs of twins in the UK, and found that teacher assessments
Around 620 light-years away from Earth lies KELT-9b – by far the hottest planet we have ever found. It’s so hot that vaporised iron and titanium are scattered throughout its atmosphere, as researchers discovered last year. But it turns out it gets even more intense. Exoplanet scientists have now found a bunch of other vaporised
What happened to Hiroshima? Everybody thinks they know the answer, and yet, strangely, nobody does. History tells us Hiroshima was destroyed by the first atomic bomb deployed in war on 6 August 1945. But what happened to the actual city when it was consumed in its awful, unforgettable fire? Where did Hiroshima go? We might
Warning: Full spoilers below for Game of Thrones Season 8, episode 5, “The Bells.” What do you do if you’ve named your baby after a genocidal maniac? That’s the question facing thousands of parents in America this morning after last night’s Game of Thrones took a very dark turn in the story arc of one
The grand, sprawling palace built by the Roman Emperor Nero nearly 2,000 years ago has been keeping a secret. While working on restorations, archaeologists found a secret chamber – a large underground room decorated with murals depicting both real and mythical creatures. In red and ochre hues, with traces of gilding, centaurs dance across the
Ninety-six million. That’s how many black plastic ‘shade balls’ it takes to cover the Los Angeles reservoir. Why, you ask? Well, despite what has often been reported as the main purpose of these balls, the idea didn’t actually start with just protecting the reservoir from evaporation. In a new episode from Veritasium, Derek Muller investigates the story behind