The internet has transformed most areas of our lives over the last few decades, and the technology keeps improving: researchers just set a new record for data transmission rates, logging an incredible speed of 178 terabits per second (Tbps). That’s around a fifth faster than the previous record, set by a team of researchers in
Next week for the first time on record, two hurricanes could hit the Gulf of Mexico at the same time. Twice before, in 1959 and 1933, two tropical storms have entered the Gulf at the same time. But never before have both been hurricanes. It might not go that way. Only one of the storm systems
Radiation that would reduce the DNA inside our own cells into genetic confetti is no match for the microscopic tough-guy known as a tardigrade, and we just got closer to understanding just how these critters are so tough. Their protection works in part due to the shielding provided by a special ‘damage suppression’ protein called
For the first time, pressure over 100 times that found in Earth’s core has been generated in a lab, setting a new record. Using the highest-energy laser system in the world, physicists briefly subjected solid hydrocarbon samples to pressures up to 450 megabars, meaning 450 million times Earth’s atmospheric pressure at sea level. That’s equivalent
Greenland’s massive ice sheet saw a record net loss of 532 billion tonnes last year, raising red flags about accelerating sea level rise, according to findings released Thursday. That is equivalent to an additional 3 million tonnes of water streaming into global oceans every day, or six Olympic pools every second. Crumbling glaciers and torrents
The International Space Station (ISS), in Earth orbit at hundreds of kilometres altitude, is not perfectly airtight. Every day, the cabin loses a minute amount of air, monitored carefully so that a liveable atmospheric pressure can be maintained, and to identify leaks. Now the latter has come to pass, just two years after the last
Prehistoric sculptures depicting human-like faces have some scientists thinking certain expressions might well be universal across time and culture. New research has found ancient Maya people and other Mesoamerican civilisations, such as the Olmec, were sculpting scenes of pain, elation, sadness, anger, strain and determination in ways that are still recognisable to us up to
Humanity will have burned through all the natural resources that the planet can replenish for 2020 by Saturday, according to researchers who said the grim milestone is slightly later than last year after the pandemic slowed runaway overconsumption. So-called Earth Overshoot Day – the date when humanity has used all the biological resources that Earth
The sound of a key sliding into a lock could be enough information to potentially create a copy of that key and open the lock – that’s the conclusion of researchers who’ve been investigating “acoustics-based physical key inference”. It makes sense, if you think about it: the clicks and clacks of a key pushed into
The lives and deaths of animals that lived more than 2,000 years ago are coming to light. A cat, a snake, and a bird that were mummified in ancient Egypt have undergone non-invasive, high-resolution 3D X-ray scans, helping us to understand how they were kept, and the complex mummification procedures practised thousands of years ago.
While bacteria are often associated with icky germs, they really are so much more than that. They help us digest things, feed trees nitrogen, play a huge role in cycling Earth’s nutrients, and survive staggering extremes. Recently, we discovered some of these incredibly tough and tiny packages of life can even live off air alone.
A gigantic fleet of floating rocks, spewed up from an underwater volcano in the Pacific Ocean, floated across the waves for thousands of miles. Eventually, it made it all the way to Australia, then started on a new project: revitalising the world’s largest (and very threatened) coral reef system. This unlikely chain of events may sound
In 1604, a white dwarf star went supernova. This is quite normal behaviour for a white dwarf star; but this one, at a distance of just 20,000 light-years from Earth, was visible to the naked eye, and documented by astronomers around the world, including German astronomer Johannes Kepler. Kepler’s Supernova, as it came to be
There’s a lot going on in the centre of our galaxy. The Milky Way’s core is home to a supermassive black hole as massive as 4 million Suns called Sagittarius A*, and the environment around it is intense. Blowing out from this region is a nuclear galactic wind. It’s carved out two huge gamma-ray bubbles
Having strong, biased opinions may say more about your own individual way of behaving in group situations than it does about your level of identification with the values or ideals of any particular group, new research suggests. This behavioural trait – which researchers call ‘groupiness’ – could mean that individuals will consistently demonstrate ‘groupy’ behaviour
Life was trying, but it wasn’t working out. As the Late Devonian period dragged on, more and more living things died out, culminating in one of the greatest mass extinction events our planet has ever witnessed, approximately 359 million years ago. The culprit responsible for so much death may not have been local, scientists now
In the north of the Arabian Peninsula, bordering the Nefud Desert, archaeologists have recently catalogued vast stone monuments dating back 7,000 years. Shaped like long rectangles, the ‘mustatil‘ structures are a mystery – but new evidence suggests they were possibly used for ritual or social purposes. Mustatils are amongst the earliest forms of large-scale stone
A California resident has tested positive for plague, marking the state’s first human case of the disease in five years, according to health officials. The case was confirmed on Monday (August 17) in a resident of South Lake Tahoe, according to a statement from the El Dorado County Department of Health and Human Services. The individual is described
A car-size asteroid flew within about 1,830 miles (2,950 kilometers) of Earth on Sunday. That’s a remarkably close shave – the closest ever recorded, in fact, according to asteroid trackers and a catalogue compiled by Sormano Astronomical Observatory in Italy. Because of its size, the space rock most likely wouldn’t have posed any danger to people on
A pair of Danish computer scientists have solved a longstanding mathematics puzzle that lay dormant for decades, after researchers failed to make substantial progress on it since the 1990s. The abstract problem in question is part of what’s called graph theory, and specifically concerns the challenge of finding an algorithm to resolve the planarity of
Just as you thought it was safe to go back to ignoring Betelgeuse, the red giant star started acting up again. After its first round of dimming, and then brightening, Betelgeuse has now started to dim once again. Moreover, this new dimming is inconsistent with Betelgeuse’s current brightness variation cycle – so, once again, the
California’s Death Valley recorded what may be its hottest ever temperature on Sunday (August 16) – a blazing 130 degrees Fahrenheit (54.4 degrees Celsius). If that National Weather Service (NWS) measurement holds up, it will have been the hottest August temperature recorded there by 3 F (1.7 C), the hottest temperature recorded in Death Valley
Around 15,000 light-years away, an active black hole seems to be periodically lighting up an otherwise unremarkable cloud of gas with gamma rays. But there’s a catch. The gas cloud is around 100 light-years from the black hole – and exactly how the cloud is pulsing in time with it is a mystery. It’s unlikely,
NASA is actively monitoring a strange anomaly in Earth’s magnetic field: a giant region of lower magnetic intensity in the skies above the planet, stretching out between South America and southwest Africa. This vast, developing phenomenon, called the South Atlantic Anomaly, has intrigued and concerned scientists for years, and perhaps none more so than NASA
An international team of marine scientists have discovered 30 new species of invertebrates in deep water surrounding the Galapagos, the Ecuadoran archipelago’s national park authorities announced Monday. The deep-sea experts discovered fragile coral and sponge communities including 10 bamboo corals, four octocorals, one brittle star and 11 sponges – as well as four new species
The existence of time crystals – a particularly fascinating state of matter – was only confirmed a few short years ago, but physicists have already made a pretty major breakthrough: they have induced and observed an interaction between two time crystals. In a helium-3 superfluid, two time crystals exchanged quasiparticles without disrupting their coherence; an
They may not have had fancy mattresses, but the earliest human ancestors were quite capable of putting together a cosy place to sleep. Newly found remains of human bedding in an ancient archaeological site show just how clever they were at doing so. In the well-known site of Border Cave in South Africa, archaeologists have found
When you see a face in a cloud, in the slots of a power point, or on the side of a house, there’s a term for it: face pareidolia. This strange perception phenomenon makes lifeless, inanimate objects appear to have facial features – the basic shapes of two eyes and a mouth is often all
Earth is a genuinely magical place. We know that’s not the sort of thing you’d expect to read on a science website, but just take a look at the photo above – a pre-dawn picture taken by an Expedition 62 crew member on the International Space Station (ISS) back in March. In this image, taken
If you’ve ever looked up during a thunderstorm and glimpsed a red jellyfish sitting high in the sky, you weren’t hallucinating. These tentacle-like spurts of red lightning are called sprites. They’re ultrafast bursts of electricity that crackle through the upper regions of the atmosphere – between 37 and 50 miles (60 and 80 kilometres) up
Plastics were not made for human consumption, and yet consume them we must. Tiny remnants of these synthetic polymers have now leached into our air, food and water, and avoiding them has turned into an almost impossible battle. A study of five popular seafoods, bought from a market in Australia, reveals just how ubiquitous these
A ship that has leaked more than 1,000 tonnes of oil in pristine waters off the Mauritius coast has split in two, its Japanese operator said Sunday. The bulk carrier MV Wakashio ran aground on a coral reef off the southeastern coast of Mauritius on July 25 and began oozing oil more than a week
Greenland’s ice sheet may have hit a tipping point that sets it on an irreversible path to completely disappearing. Snowfall that normally replenishes Greenland’s glaciers each year can no longer keep up with the pace of ice melt, according to researchers at Ohio State University. That means that the Greenland ice sheet – the world’s
One of the major challenges in turning quantum technology from potential to reality is getting super-delicate quantum states to last longer than a few milliseconds – and scientists just raised the bar by a factor of about 10,000. They did it by tackling something called decoherence: that’s the disruption from surrounding noise caused by vibrations, fluctuations
A species of frog from the Brazilian rainforest has become the first amphibian shown to live in a harem, where one male mates with two females who remain loyal to him. So-called polygyny is thought to be the most common mating system among animals and has previously been found in bony fishes, reptiles, mammals, birds,
The COVID-19 pandemic has drawn attention to loneliness in Australia. This is especially so as Melburnians entered the strictest lockdown to date. Meanwhile, the rest of Australia braces for the possibility of a second wave and people are adapting to new habits and restrictions. This has disrupted our social routines, and in many cases has
Sometimes even those with narcissistic tendencies don’t like looking in the mirror. New research has found that people who excessively approve of themselves are unwilling to reflect on their mistakes. When something unforeseen and unfortunate happens, a narcissist appears less inclined to ask, “What could I have done differently?” and more inclined to throw up
Scientists are ironing out the kinks for an ‘anti-solar power’ cell, one that can harvest energy at nighttime, even when the sun isn’t shining. Instead of absorbing light from the Sun and converting it into electricity, like a normal solar panel would, this type of technology works in reverse. At night, when there’s no incoming
There are some days when the rain falls peacefully and gently, nourishing the Earth. But on some other days the rain comes down in a torrential downpour that meteorologists like me call a cloudburst. Standing outside in one of these intense rainstorms can feel like being smothered in a heavy, wet towel. These storms can
For hundreds of thousands of years, humans have cultivated a close relationship with fire. But for all our fascination and intimacy, both with its dangers and its uses, fire can still stun us with something we’ve never seen before. The blue whirl flame was discovered quite by accident just a few years ago. Scientists were
We all know by now that eating less meat is good for the planet – the production of meat products for human consumption leaves behind a hefty carbon footprint. And 2019 research highlighted a very simple way that canteens in schools and colleges could greatly reduce the amount of meat eaten – without actually having to
A woolly brown rhinoceros that weighed two tons once roamed northeastern Siberia before mysteriously disappearing around 14,000 years ago. Was its demise caused by humans, or the warming climate of the time? A new study by a Swedish and Russian team of scientists who examined DNA fragments from the remains of 14 of these prehistoric mammals
Fans of nature’s horror shows will no doubt be familiar with those tongue-eating parasites known for tapping into the blood supply of fish, sometimes attaching themselves to the tongue, causing it to die and eventually replacing it altogether. Normally, we get to experience these finds as unnerving photos of isopods peeking out the mouth of a
The sudden dimming of one of the brightest stars in the night sky, Betelgeuse, could be due to a dust cloud spewing up from its surface, astronomers said on Thursday. The mystery has enthralled skywatchers since the star – part of the Orion constellation – began to lose luminosity last October, with some experts suggesting
Say hello to a new theropod dinosaur species, Vectaerovenator inopinatus. Discovered after a series of serendipitous fossil finds on the Isle of Wight in the UK, it’s thought to date from around 115 million years ago, during the Cretaceous period. The Latin name of the new dino roughly refers to ‘unexpected air-filled hunter from the
NASA’s Mars Odyssey probe has been orbiting the Red Planet for almost 19 years now, making it the longest continually active spacecraft in orbit around a planet other than Earth. That incredible tour of duty means it’s witnessed lots of strange things we can’t easily see from our terrestrial vantage point, and this stunning, colourful
We’ve found the fastest known star in the Milky Way. In the extreme environment at the centre of our galaxy, a newly discovered star called S4714 orbits the supermassive black hole Sagittarius A*. On its orbital journey, S4714 reaches a velocity of around 8 percent of the speed of light – an absolutely jaw-dropping 24,000
A single locust is just bigger than a paper clip. But when these solitary critters attract others into a growing swarm, billions of locusts wind up flying together, forming a moving carpet that can block out the sun and strip the landscape of plants and crops. Giant swarms like this have devastated large swaths of
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