Two months before the Apollo 11 mission landed on the Moon for the first time, another NASA capsule snuck tantalisingly close – only to become lost for decades. The Apollo 10 mission was supposed to be a “dry-run“, in which all operations except the actual lunar landing were performed. With two popular cartoon characters as the
At the turn of the 20th century, influential German psychiatrist Emil Kraepelin noticed a curious pattern among his patients. Some liked to rise early and go to bed early, while others found they were more productive if they stayed up late and slept in the next day. Drawing on years of systematic clinical research, psychological
Around 1.2 billion years ago, the biggest asteroid ever to hit the British Isles is thought to have slammed into Earth. Now, experts have identified where the exact impact point may have lain hidden this whole time. The spot in question is estimated to be about 15 to 20 kilometres (9 to 12 miles) off Enard
To sleep or to snooze? You probably know the answer, but you don’t prefer it. Most of us probably use the snooze function on our alarm clocks at some point in our lives. Just a few more minutes under the covers, a time to gather our thoughts, right? While such snoozing might seem harmless, it
Whenever scientists announce an upcoming close encounter with an asteroid, certain corners of the internet light up like the synaptic rush that accompanies a meth binge, with panicky headlines shouted straight from the brain stem. But never mind that. We’re not that corner of the internet. We’re sober, yo! The fact of the matter is,
For nearly 20 years, scientists have debated the viability of an EM Drive, a hypothetical type of engine that could propel a spacecraft without the need for any fuel. If that sounds too good to be true, that’s because it probably is – a working EM Drive would literally break one of the foundational laws
Amazon CEO Jeff Bezos says there’s a very simple reason his other company, Blue Origin, is working on a giant lunar lander to make moon travel as easy as an aeroplane flight: Humanity’s very survival relies on colonizing space, starting with the moon. So he told attendees during his time on stage Thursday at Amazon’s
Mountains are some of the mightiest geographic features on our planet, and no two ranges are the same. Some have soaring peaks, ragged ridges, and deep ravines, while others gently roll away in wavy hills and wide valleys. No matter where they appear, or even how, their branched structures share a universal similarity, and that
How much of your chocolate buying is based on taste, and how much is based on the shininess of its wrapping? A new study backs up what we’ve long suspected – the way chocolate is packaged creates a stronger emotional pull than what it actually tastes like. And while the chocolate we buy in the
Meteorologists in Southern California got a strange surprise on Tuesday night when they spotted a huge blob on the National Weather Service radar. Appearing to be about 130 by 130 kilometres (80 miles), it was moving southward over San Bernardino County. “It was very strange because it was a relatively clear day and we weren’t
New research has revealed a previously unknown source of magnetism deep within our planet’s stupidly hot, squishy layers. Far from being magnetically dead, some of Earth’s mantle might have pockets of iron oxide (Fe2O3) with enough magnetic pull to have a real effect. A research team made up of scientists from around the globe has
On 25 May 2019, a strange, double-asteroid (1999 KW4) flew past Earth at a distance and speed that is likely to make a lot of people nervous. As always, there was no danger, since the asteroid passed Earth at a minimum distance of 5.2 million km (3.23 million miles), over 15 times greater than the
Imagine being a jellyfish just swimming along, minding your own business, when suddenly you’re taken for a nauseating ride in a wildly spinning vortex. This is exactly what happened to a poor creature in Spain, and photographer Victor Devalles managed to capture every moment of it. In fact, Devalles is the one who sort of,
On average, 8.8 million tons of plastic enters the ocean every year. The maximum amount could be closer to 14 million tons – about the weight of 2 million elephants. Most plastics take hundreds of years to break down. And even then, they just splinter into very small pieces called microplastics, which will likely never
The dragonfish is a top predator at the bottom of the sea. A bioluminescent lure on its head and spots on its belly beckon prey, like a lantern draws in moths. The rest of its body, as long as a pencil and almost as slender, is an inky black that blends in with water deeper
As a rule, your brain’s activity doesn’t influence the physiological development of your sex cells. In simpler terms: What you ‘think’ can’t be inherited. But now it looks like we may need to rethink this rule for at least one species. The activity of nematode neurons has been shown to influence the foraging behaviour of
A colossal magnetic field stretching between two clusters of galaxies has been observed for the first time. Roughly a billion light-years away, the ‘bridge’ of radio-emitting plasma spans 10 million light-years, following a filament in the mysterious cosmic web that connects the Universe. The space between clusters of galaxies isn’t completely dark and empty. Long
The most remote location on Earth has many names: It’s called Point Nemo (Latin for ‘no one’) and the Oceanic Pole of Inaccessibility. Most precisely, its exact coordinates are 48 degrees 52.6 minutes south latitude and 123 degrees 23.6 minutes west longitude. The spot is about 2,250 km (1,400 miles) from any spot of land
Humans have spread microplastics to virtually every ecosystem on the planet, from the deepest chasms in the sea to the most remote wilderness on land. Today, there is nowhere left to hide, and each year, we humans receive a hearty dose of our own medicine. From what little we know about microplastics in air, food and water, Canadian
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
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