One of the largest and strangest engineered structures on Earth is almost completely hidden from the world, unless you know where to look. Buried in the Caatinga vegetation of northeastern Brazil, scientists have uncovered the true scale of a vast array of some 200 million termite mounds covering an area the size of Great Britain.
Eight thousand light-years from Earth, just below Scorpio, there’s a cosmic serpent that’s been hiding a secret sting in its tail. In a sinuous curl of glowing dust, astronomers have discovered a binary star system unlike any other in the Milky Way. It’s a pair of rare, old, and unstable stars right on the brink
Some 4,000 years ago, a thriving civilisation in the Indus River Valley inexplicably abandoned its cities, leaving their empty buildings to decay. The Harappa culture (of what is now Pakistan) had a booming local economy and long-distance intercultural trade. Yet, by around 1800 BCE, they had moved from their cities with mod cons such as
If you’re an alien far, far away inside the globular star cluster M13, one day you might receive a radio message from Earth written in binary code. Decoding it would give you a beautiful 8-bit style picture of some basic human information – including the structure of DNA, a graphic of our Solar System and
The Earth is wonderfully weird. From tiny puddle-dwelling creatures that can survive in outer space to a paint so dark that your eyes can’t actually even see it, Earth is filled with plenty of strange and incredible things – both natural and made by us. Here are a handful of things on this planet that
As days, then weeks passed with no contact from the ARA San Juan submarine, Argentines began to accept the fact that what had once been an aging staple of the nation’s naval fleet had been suddenly and tragically transformed into a 60-meter-long metal tomb. But as the nation mourned the anniversary of the San Juan’s
We’ve all heard about the infamous number 666, which is rather cryptically referred to as the “number of the beast” in the New Testament, and has more recently become known as the number of the Antichrist. But what is it about this simple, symmetrical number that’s been giving everyone the heebie jeebies for the past 2,000
Stupid people tend to overestimate their competence, while smart people tend to sell themselves short. As Shakespeare put it in As You Like It: “The fool doth think he is wise, but the wise man knows himself to be a fool.” That conventional wisdom is backed up by a Cornell University study conducted by social psychologists David
Humanity just made a weighty decision. On Friday, representatives of more than 60 nations, gathered in Versailles, France, approved a new definition for the kilogram. Since the 19th century, scientists have based their definition of the fundamental unit of mass on a physical object — a shining platinum iridium cylinder stored in a locked vault
Microscopic organisms found in dirt collected from a hike through Nova Scotia mean we’re going to have to add another branch to the tree of life. The strange organisms simply don’t fit into the plant kingdom, the animal kingdom, or any other kingdom we’ve classified up until now. The tiny critters in question represent two
If someone asked you what the worst year in human history was, what would you guess? 1347 CE was pretty bad. That’s the year the Black Death seriously hit Europe. Any of the years of the Holocaust, between 1941 and 1945. Or 1918, the year of the start of the flu pandemic that killed up
Palm oil can be found in food and cosmetics everywhere: in fact, half of the world’s population uses palm oil in food. But public awareness about the loss of wildlife through deforestation caused by palm oil crops is growing, and there’s mounting pressure on retailers to reduce their sales of palm oil products, or boycott
The architectural design behind Japan’s new space research center is mind-boggling. The futuristic building will incorporate elements of spacecraft design, which emphasize light weight and high functionality. The whole thing will be suspended over a man-made, Moon-like crater. The building will be a robotics research center that’s part of the Avatar X space research campus on
Modern medicine’s ability to keep us alive makes it tempting to think human evolution may have stopped. Better healthcare disrupts a key driving force of evolution by keeping some people alive longer, making them more likely to pass on their genes. But if we look at the rate of our DNA’s evolution, we can see
We can’t see it with our naked eyes, but deep in the far reaches of the Universe is a galaxy that’s absolutely blasting out radiation. It’s called W2246-0526, and it’s emitting as much infrared radiation as 350 trillion Suns, making it the most luminous galaxy we’ve ever observed. What’s its secret? Well, we’re not entirely
Dogs, cats, or goldfish probably can’t have conversations with each other about times long gone by – it’s a feature we’ve thought was exclusive to humans. But a new study is shaking up that idea, showing that orangutan mothers wait on average seven minutes after a potential predator is out of sight, before sounding the
Every now and then, Earth’s protective magnetic cage changes its stripes, sending explosive showers of charged particles spilling into the atmosphere. NASA’s quartet of orbiting Magnetospheric Multiscale (MMS) satellites has finally recorded one in high detail on the planet’s night side, providing vital information on a phenomenon that stirs the winds of space throughout the
Do you drink freshly brewed coffee to start off your day? Or is a cup of English breakfast tea a better option for you? Your choice could be a result of your genes, and how they affect your experience of bitter flavours. Published today, our new study shows that the likelihood of a person being
From the video, the amorphous blob seems to stretch on for a mile as it snakes through the water, dwarfing the two divers who surround it. For 48-year-old videographer Steve Hathaway, the October 25 sighting near a small, volcanic island about 30 miles (48 kilometres) off New Zealand’s northernmost point put an end to a
In the driest and oldest desert on Earth – a place so barren and bleak it’s effectively hell on Earth – things don’t work quite the same way they do in other places. Take water. We tend to think of water as a universally life-giving blessing, but in the hyperarid core of Chile’s Atacama Desert,
Polar bears are pretty much the poster child for climate breakdown. That famous WWF photo by Carla Lombardo Ehrlich of a polar bear clinging to a remnant of melting ice is a stark and poignant image of the dangers of global warming. A new survey suggests that in some parts of the Arctic, the polar
It’s been almost 500 years since Italy’s Campi Flegrei let loose its fiery wrath, but new evidence reveals the ancient supervolcano – the home of Vulcan, the Roman god of fire – may be stirring from its long sleep. For the 1.5 million residents of the Naple region who live in the shadow of the
A spoonful of celebrity could help the science go down more smoothly. A new study has found that exposure to celebrity opinions on evolution can influence an individual’s own acceptance. Evolution is a basic scientific principle that’s been around for well over a hundred years, yet many people today continue to misunderstand or reject the
For a brief moment earlier this year, a small spot in China blazed with such heat, the Sun would have been staring down at Earth feeling mightily jealous. Scientists announced this week that the Experimental Advanced Superconducting Tokamak (EAST) reactor in Hefei has finally achieved a temperature exceeding 100 million degrees Celsius, setting a new
Scientists behind a major study that claimed the Earth’s oceans are warming faster than previously thought now say their work contained inadvertent errors that made their conclusions seem more certain than they actually are. Two weeks after the high-profile study was published in the journal Nature, its authors have submitted corrections to the publication. The
China has halted a directive that partially legalized the domestic trade in farmed rhinoceros and tiger parts, two weeks after the move drew a torrent of criticism from conservation groups. A senior official in China’s cabinet said in a state media interview published Monday that implementation of an October directive reviving the market for the
It appears that climate change could be damaging the fertility of insects, leaving males virtually sterile, according to new research. Since these creatures make up 90 percent of all life forms on Earth, the results should concern all of us. Scientists agree that climate change is causing heatwaves to become longer, more intense, more frequent
If you’re eagerly awaiting the next generation of personal transport, we’ve got some good and bad news. The good news is you can now order your very own hoverbike for delivery in the first half of 2019; the bad news is it’ll cost you an estimated US$150,000. The Hoverbike S3 is manufactured by Californian company
Astronomers have found a telltale sign that something is tugging at the movements of Barnard’s star – so it looks like we could soon be adding a planetary neighbour to the local directory of our corner of the Milky Way. Barnard’s star is a red dwarf that was already hanging out in space before our
Finally, 130 years after it was established, the kilogram as we know it is about to be retired. But it’s not the end: a new definition will be put in place – one that’s far more accurate than anything we’ve had until now. Tomorrow, on 16 November, the General Conference on Weights and Measures (CGPM)
Multitasking gets a bad rap. While the ability to juggle several things at once seems like an impressive use of brainpower, evidence suggests it’s bad for productivity and memory, and for our mental energy reserves. Wikipedia even calls it “an apparent human ability”, because many argue multitasking isn’t actually real, but merely a false belief
By now, most of us can list a variety of ways our species is making a mess of this planet. Canadian zoologist Sarah Otto reports in detail how humans have made a mess of things, with the aim of asking how it affects evolution overall. The answer isn’t academic, either – it could show us
We have comets and asteroids to thank for Earth’s water, according to the most widely-held theory among scientists. But it’s not that cut-and-dried. It’s still a bit of a mystery, and a new study suggests that not all of Earth’s water was delivered to our planet that way. Hydrogen is the most abundant element in
In the far North of the globe, hidden under continental sheet ice nearly a kilometre thick, geologists have found evidence that, not so long ago, Greenland was rocked by a collision with a massive meteorite. The proof? A huge impact crater, 31 kilometres (19.3 miles) in diameter. It is the 25th largest impact crater ever
The crimson pigment is sun-bleached, its eroded lines barely visible against the texture of the plaster. But with effort, you can see a face that once decorated an ancient Christian baptismal in southern Israel. And it’s not what you’d expect. Most historical depictions of Jesus follow a familiar pattern, giving us an iconoclastic image of
We know that huge chunks of ice are breaking off Antarctica at an alarming rate, but sometimes a smart visualisation is what it takes to really understand the scale of a problem – and that’s exactly what we’ve just got for Antarctic icebergs over the last 40 years. Science animators Pixel Movers & Makers (Marlo
The image you see above is something theoretical physicists have described as groundbreaking: a type of fractal called a Sierpinski triangle, created out of electrons on the quantum scale. It’s unbelievably small – and it could reveal new and strange things about electrons. Electrons are a fundamental subatomic particle found in all atoms. They help
Humans have a hard-wired habit of seeing patterns, shapes, and faces in all kinds of objects. For some these phenomena are conspiracy fuel, but it’s really just our brains trying to make sense of the world. Case in point, the Mars Warrior Women, the Mars Face, or any half decent optical illusion. This time, however, we’ve gone a little
Over 100 captured whales are being held in small, crowded enclosures in a so-called ‘whale jail’ off the coast of Russia, where they await suspected sale to Chinese theme parks, according to local media reports. The discovery of the marine containment facility near the city of Nakhodka in Russia’s south-east is being investigated by Russian
If astronomers’ calculations are correct, the Solar System is right in the middle of a turbulent space event: a vast ‘hurricane’ of dark matter, blowing at an insane speed of 500 kilometres per second (310 mps). We can’t see it, and we can’t feel it – but it could mean that a direct detection of
Comic-book creator Stan Lee has died, aged 95. The visionary behind huge swathes of the Marvel Universe and the much-loved superheroes that came with it – Spiderman, Black Panther, The Hulk, Black Widow, and the engineering genius Tony Stark just to name a few – has inspired generations of people with his imagination. His creations
Since Thursday, at least 31 people have died from three wildfires burning in California. The Camp Fire charred the entire town of Paradise in northern California. As of Sunday evening, the blaze covered 110,000 acres and was 25 percent contained. Officials have declared it the most destructive wildfire in California history based on the loss
The evolutionary arms race between predator and prey has given rise to many impressive defence mechanisms; as it turns out, the lowly moth is no exception. These unassuming creatures may not have the charming appearance of their butterfly cousins, but their furry facade conceals some tricks that would impress the most advanced military division. Over
Scientists are now closer than ever to being able to use graphene as a superconductor – to conduct electricity with zero resistance – making it useful for developing energy efficient gadgets, improving medical research, upgrading power grids, and much more besides. The key to the new approach is heating a silicon carbide (SiC) crystal, itself a
We’re facing a deadly Catch 22. As the world grows hotter, people crank up the air con. As they crank the air con, the world grows hotter. And so on. And so on. If it seems like there’s no escape from this gloomy, no-win situation, take heart: a new technology developed by scientists from the
An unusual warbler in Pennsylvania has been discovered harbouring an incredible genetic secret. He’s the hybrid of not two, but three different species of bird. His mother was a hybrid of two warblers – and his father was a warbler of an entirely different third genus. “It’s extremely rare,” said ornithologist David Toews of Cornell
An ancient Egyptian necropolis dating back thousands of years has yielded a bunch of mummies of the sort you might not expect when you hear the word. Instead of important personages, the sarcophagi were hiding dozens of mummified cats, and a rare collection of mummified scarab beetles. And there might be rarer treasure still. While
Another week, another round of great achievements in science – from discovering the oldest figurative cave art we’ve ever seen, to gazing out into the Universe, there is always something new to learn about our world and beyond. Below you’ll find our weekly round-up of last week’s science discoveries in a convenient picture you can
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