You ever watch your pets sleeping? When they twitch their paws and whiskers, and yip and mewl? Well, cats and dogs experience REM sleep, which means they’re probably dreaming. And, while evidence of REM sleep has so far not been seen in octopuses, they do have a kind of sleep twitch of their own. Sleeping
Global warming has put a glacier in the Italian Alps at risk of collapse, officials warned, leading to road closures, travel restrictions, and evacuations in the immediate vicinity. Municipal officials issued the order after surveyors observed a significant increase in the sliding speed of the Planpincieux glacier, which rests on the Italian side of the
Like the deserts of the Antarctic, or the deepest parts of the sea, Mono Lake in California is an inhospitable place for most life forms. Apart from bacteria and algae, it appears only brine shrimp and diving flies can put up with its super-salty waters. But there’s more to this body of water than meets
We humans have officially entered uncharted territory. In the roughly 2.5 million years our kind has walked the Earth, never before have we endured such an atmosphere. New research on ancient soil has now confirmed that carbon dioxide levels in the past sixty years are the highest we’ve experienced in all of human history. Throughout
These days we’re used to jaw-dropping photos getting snapped from the International Space Station, but the latest one NASA astronaut Christina Koch recently posted to Twitter comes with a special message, too. The image shows the Soyuz MS-15 spaceflight taking three people to the ISS: Roscosmos cosmonaut Oleg Skripochka and NASA astronaut Jessica Meir as part
Autonomous driving will bring us a number of freedoms. Passengers will be able to watch movies, read newspapers – if they still exist – or play video games while the AI drives. But BMW thinks being chauffeured by a self-driving car can get a whole lot more exciting than that. The German carmaker released –
In the search for the earliest life on Earth, it can be hard to tell whether you’re looking at an actual fossil, or crinkles in the rock itself. Such doubts have long shadowed the 1980s discovery of 3.5 billion-year-old fossils in the Australian desert. Now, scientists think they have finally put the matter to bed.
There is such a thing as not enough chaos. In a new study, scientists have discovered that complex calculations performed by computers can be off by as much as 15 percent, due to a “pathological” inability to grasp the true mathematical complexity of chaotic dynamical systems. “Our work shows that the behaviour of the chaotic
The first-ever direct image of a black hole‘s event horizon was a truly impressive feat of scientific ingenuity. But it was extremely difficult to achieve, and the resulting image was relatively low-resolution. Techniques and technology will be refined, and it’s expected that future direct images of black holes will improve with time. And a new
As beautiful as Machu Picchu is, it’s not the easiest place to get to, high up in the Andes with steep drops to the Urubamba River on three sides. Now researchers think they might know why the site was chosen. The secret may lie deep below this iconic Incan city, in the faults where tectonic
Climate change is already having staggering effects on oceans and ice-filled regions that encompass 80 percent of the Earth, and future damage from rising seas and melting glaciers is now all but certain, according to a sobering new report from the United Nations. The warming climate is killing coral reefs, supercharging monster storms, and fueling
After months of debate, the Australian Capital Territory has become the very first jurisdiction in the nation to pass a law allowing the recreational use of marijuana. Starting sometime in the new year, adults living in Australia’s capital city Canberra and its surrounding territory will be allowed to personally possess and grow small amounts of
We’ve watched the Spot robot quadruped grow up and evolve, from its earliest days as a larger, more cumbersome beast to a carefully refined machine capable of pulling trucks. Now maker Boston Dynamics is putting the robo-dog on sale. The idea is not to provide a friendly pet that curls up in front of the
You don’t belong here. They’re onto you. Everybody is going to find out the truth. It’s only a matter of time. Dark thoughts like these are symptoms of something called impostor syndrome: a strange psychological phenomenon that makes ordinary people – even brilliant ones – feel like they’re frauds, fakes, inadequate, and undeserving. It doesn’t have
For several years now, physicists at the European Organisation for Nuclear Research (CERN) have been running a landmark experiment, recording tens of billions of particles break apart in the hopes of catching a few oddballs. And they finally have some intriguing results to share. This experiment, called NA62, has researchers building and destroying pairs of quarks called
Gigantic underground masses of rock the size of hidden continents could have been concealed inside the planet in virtual isolation since Earth first formed, scientists suggest in a new study. Up until now, not a lot has been known for sure about these two huge, mysterious structures called large low-shear-velocity provinces (LLSVPs). We know that
It’s hard living in a relativistic Universe, where even the nearest stars are so far away and the speed of light is absolute. It is little wonder then why science fiction franchises routinely employ FTL (Faster-than-Light) as a plot device. Push a button, press a petal, and that fancy drive system – whose workings no
We just entered a fundamental new epoch in computing. Maybe. Google scientists said we did. Then their declaration mysteriously vanished. Last week, a scientific paper by Google and affiliated researchers was uploaded on a NASA website. Its contents – if legitimate – are not insignificant. In the paper, the scientists claim that quantum processors have
The verdict is in: after conducting a thorough round of observations, the comet suspected of being an interstellar alien has been ratified. According to the International Astronomical Union (IAU), the comet is “unambiguously” interstellar in origin, and it has now been given a name: 2I/Borisov. Previously, the comet had been going by the provisional name
The map of the world looked very different 240 million years ago. Earth’s modern-day continents were joined together in one Pac-Man-shaped supercontinent known as Pangea, which eventually split into two fragments: Laurasia in the north and Gondwana in the south. The former became Europe, Asia, and North America. The latter dispersed to form modern-day Africa,
The crypt-keeper wasp is hardly a fussy eater. Given the chance, this creepy parasitic insect will chew through the heads of at least seven different species to survive, a new study has found. Discovered just a few years ago, this gruesome predator (Euderus set) is known as a ‘hyper-manipulator’ – a parasite that manipulates a parasite
There could be another force, even stronger than a hydrogen bond, holding our DNA together, new research suggests. First discovered back in the 1950s, the double helix structure of our genetic material has since become iconic, although we’re still figuring out how all its pieces fit together. Appearing like a twisted ladder, the rungs are
When KIC 8462852 – affectionately known as Tabby’s Star – arrived on the scene in 2015, it made one heck of a bang. We’d never seen a star like it before. It kept growing dimmer, erratically, in a manner that defied explanation. It still does – but it’s looking like KIC 8462852 isn’t quite unique.
Diamonds are hardly ever perfect. Like us, they carry blemishes and flaws: tiny ‘inclusions’ of ancient chemistry trapped inside their lustrous frames. To the jeweller, these minuscule marks may diminish a gemstone’s value. To a scientist, the imperfection itself can actually be the true glittering prize. In a startling new discovery, researchers in Canada have
The second-fastest pulsar ever discovered has been caught spitting out gamma rays, and this surprise discovery could help astronomers better understand the properties of these strange and extreme stars. The gamma radiation of millisecond pulsar PSR J0952−0607 is so faint, detecting it required some clever new search methods – and these made it possible to
In a kind of odd man-versus-nature moment, a Russian navy boat was attacked and sunk by a walrus during an expedition in the Arctic, the Barents Observer reported Monday. The Altai, a tugboat of the Russian navy’s Northern Fleet, sailed to the Franz Josef Land archipelago in the Arctic carrying researchers from the Russian Geographical
Some 2,500 years ago, in what is today southern Germany, a small child’s body was laid to rest. A bronze bracelet adorned their wrist and a tiny ceramic jug was placed at their feet. We can easily imagine them sipping from the child-sized cup, but exactly what it held has never been certain. Now, an
Days after millions of young people took to the streets around the globe to protest for more aggressive action on climate change, dozens of world leaders arrived Monday at the United Nations facing a simple question: What’s your plan? Monday’s UN climate summit was billed as an opportunity for nations to make high-profile commitments to
For the second time in a month, the world is mourning yet another one of Europe’s majestic glaciers. Once a sight to behold, scientists now say that Switzerland’s Pizol glacier has all but disappeared thanks to climate change. Since 2006, this natural wonder has lost at least 80 percent of its volume, and the few patches of white
Many think of dogs as loyal, love-filled companions, and cats as cute beasts that tolerate us – but we might have to rethink that a little. According to new research, cats can get just as bonded to their human friends as dogs do. This may not come as a huge surprise to those who live
Venus is not a nice place, by human standards. For a world named after a Roman goddess of love and beauty, it really is quite the toxic, super-heated hellscape. But it wasn’t always this way. In a new study, scientists make the case for how ancient Venus could have once supported life alongside oceans of
For decades, an ancient circle of stones has lain just out of sight beneath the waters of Spain’s Valdecañas Reservoir, its tallest pillars occasionally breaking the surface like the fingers of a drowning swimmer. Months of intense drought have now caused the reservoir’s waters to fall – enough to reveal the structure in its entirety.
The tiny hole aboard the International Space Station (ISS) that caused so much drama in August of last year is still producing controversy, over a year later. According to new reports, Russia now knows the source of the hole, but it doesn’t look like NASA has been informed. While talking to the participants of a
On 27 June 2018, the Japanese Aerospace Exploration Agency‘s (JAXA) Hayabusa2 spacecraft reached asteroid 162173 Ryugu. As part of JAXA’s program to study Near-Earth Asteroids (NEAs), this mission has spent over a year conducting landing operations, shooting up the surface with “bullets” and an anti-tank warhead, and collecting samples from the surface and interior that
It’s easy to feel hopeless about the future of our world, especially when the latest IPCC report warned that we have barely a decade left to prevent the most catastrophic climate change scenario. Meanwhile, Earth’s climate continues to smash record after record, plastic will outweigh fish in the oceans by 2050, and new species are
In the most extreme regions of the Universe, galaxies are being killed. Their star formation is being shut down and astronomers want to know why. The first ever Canadian-led large project on one of the world’s leading telescopes is hoping to do just that. The new program, called the Virgo Environment Traced in Carbon Monoxide
The JunoCam onboard NASA’s Juno spacecraft continues to provide we Earthbound humans with a steady stream of stunning images of Jupiter. We can’t get enough of the gas giant’s hypnotic, other-worldly beauty. This image of Io passing over Jupiter is the latest one to awaken our sense of wonder. This image was processed by Kevin
China’s Yutu-2 lunar lander just sent back new images of a strange substance it found near a small crater on the far side of the Moon. Last month, the team behind the lunar rover claimed it had found a “colored mysterious substance” as described in the rover’s diary, which claimed that the material’s “shape and color
More than 10 years after it was released, watching Pixar’s film WALL-E today is a chilling experience. The backdrop of WALL-E and EVE’s robot love story is a dystopian society where humans have abandoned Earth to their trash and left robots to clean up while they cruise space. When the much-loved animation came out in
As it looks increasingly unlikely we’re going to meet our climate mitigation targets, scientists have been investigating more and more extreme solutions, such as geoengineering. Examples include spraying huge amounts of sunlight-reflecting particles into the atmosphere, or dumping trillions of tons of fake snow onto glaciers to stabilise them. These ideas are untested, incredibly risky,
Pacific islanders are running out of time. If global emissions are not drastically reduced, thousands of low-lying atolls may become uninhabitable within decades. And the biggest threat doesn’t actually come from losing land to rising seas. Small island states in the Pacific are responsible for only 0.03 percent of the world’s carbon dioxide emissions, and
The climate crisis is here, and the animals are suffering. Earth’s shifting climate reality is changing how animals around the globe breed and feed – and the effects are nothing short of devastating. Here are just a few of the animals whose existence on this planet has become even more precarious – or even been
Between news of devastating natural disasters, horrifying scientific predictions, and the infuriating lack of political will to do anything about it all, it seems we can’t catch a collective breath at the moment. Some days, news about the climate crisis feels like a heavy weight on my chest. And I’m not alone. Some of us
This September, as the world takes a stand on climate change like never before, let’s spare a thought for those who helped set the stage. The history of climate science stretches back nearly two hundred years, and in all that time, few women have been memorialised in the discipline. Just ten years ago, Eunice Foote
I’m going to start with this: climate change is definitely real. We’re extremely sure it’s caused by humans and we are already seeing the effects all over the world. But despite sound scientific evidence and huge numbers of scientists in agreement, there are still a surprising amount of people who think we’re making it all
Quantum computers exist today, although they’re limited, cut-down versions of what we hope fully blown quantum computers are going to be able to do in the future. But now, researchers have developed hardware for a ‘probabilistic computer’ – a device that might be able to bridge the gap between genuine quantum computers and the standard
Compared to our brief human lives, we tend to think of events on galactic scales as ones that happen extremely slowly. But that’s not always the case. In a spectacular fashion, six galaxies have just undergone a huge transformation in a matter of mere months. They’ve gone from relatively peaceful galaxies to active quasars –
If you had to name a creature in the ocean with sharp teeth, you’d probably say “shark”, right? I’d be thinking shark. Obviously, the answer is shark. But what about the humble sea urchin? These strange, prickly orbs dwell on the bottom of the seabed and don’t even look like they have mouths, let alone
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