Living in an arid region is a precarious business. Harsh conditions make growing tough for plants, meaning every shoot and leaf is all the more precious, even when they’re dead and decaying. A new study conducted at Boolcoomatta Station Reserve in outback South Australia has demonstrated the importance of vegetative leftovers in fueling a desert
If you walk through the woods and pass a beehive, you may catch the sweet scent of honey in the wind and suddenly be flooded with memories: having tea with grandma or eating warm biscuits on a Sunday morning. If you were taking that walk 300,000 years ago with a Denisovan – a now-extinct hominid
You can now listen to the sounds of the space around one of the Milky Way’s most spectacular stars. RS Puppis, a Cepheid variable star around 6,500 light-years away, has gotten the data sonification treatment by the sci-art outreach project SYSTEM Sounds. They took a Hubble image of the star and transcribed the light into
Black holes are bizarre things, even by the standards of astronomers. Their mass is so great it bends space around them so tightly that nothing can escape, even light itself. And yet, despite their famous blackness, some black holes are quite visible. The gas and stars these galactic vacuums devour are sucked into a glowing
We have a new exoplanet to one day scour for potential signs of life. Just 31 light-years away, astronomers have identified an incredibly rare Earth-sized world orbiting at a distance from its star that should be hospitable to life as we know it. If, that is, the exoplanet itself has the right conditions to be
Bar charts and line graphs are both designed to help us visualize data. They are tools to convert numerical information into pictorial narratives that can be more easily comprehended. They don’t change the data; they simply represent it. They do represent it in different ways, however, and even those slight differences can be enough to
The adorable, white-spotted pink-nosed marsupial that lives in the top half of Australia would rather die than miss out on sex. During its brief mating window, the males run themselves ragged – then die from exhaustion, a study led by the University of the Sunshine Coast suggests. The study compared the activity of male and
Oscar-Claude Monet was a vital founder of the impressionist art movement in the 19th century, and some scientists now think the French painter’s revolutionary style was heavily influenced by air pollution. At the beginning of his career, Monet painted cities and landscapes that sharply contrasted with the sky. As the fallout from the Industrial Revolution
The Universe was simply different when it was younger. Recently astronomers have discovered that complex physics in the young cosmos may have led to the development of supermassive stars, each one weighing up to 100,000 times the mass of the Sun. We currently have no observations of the formation of the first stars in the
Humans and dolphins on the southern coast of Brazil have created a carefully synchronized ‘dance’ to shepherd as much migrating mullet into their nets and mouths as possible. Traditional fishers in the city of Laguna have been working with Lahille’s bottlenose dolphins (Tursiops truncatus gephyreus) to capture fish for more than 140 years. From above,
It’s not every day you get to rediscover the words of a world-famous thinker, an influencer of Albert Einstein himself. A nearly 20-minute video interview with the ‘father of the Big Bang‘ was found in the archives of a public-service broadcaster called Vlaamse Radio- en Televisieomroeporganisatie (VRT), located in the Flemish region of Belgium. Watching
Scientists have found a clever way to generate hydrogen straight from salty seawater. This could be another step towards a clean energy future, if renewables power the process. The new device makes a few chemical modifications to existing technologies, making it possible to extract hydrogen from untreated, unpurified seawater – which could alleviate concerns about
It can be tempting to think that the recent wildfire disasters in communities across the West were unlucky, one-off events, but evidence is accumulating that points to a trend. In a new study, we found a 246 percent increase in the number of homes and structures destroyed by wildfires in the contiguous Western US between
Billion-dollar startup Colossal Biosciences claims it has come a step closer to reviving the dodo, a flightless bird that has been extinct since the 17th century. The futuristic plan is only possible now that the Dallas-based company has decrypted the dodo’s entire genome, according to a press release. The bird is the latest in the
Paleontologist Matt Friedman was surprised to discover a remarkably detailed 319-million-year-old fish brain fossil while testing out micro-CT scans for a broader project. “It had all these features, and I said to myself, ‘Is this really a brain that I’m looking at?'” says Friedman from University of Michigan. “So, I zoomed in on that region
An analysis of the residue on ceramics found in an ancient embalming workshop has given us new insights into how ancient Egyptians mummified their dead. Even more astonishingly, a team of scientists has been able to link different substances to the specific parts of the body on which they were used. This discovery is, in
The link between ancient volcanic eruptions and the most severe extinction event the world has ever seen just got even stronger. A new analysis of mercury isotopes has provided evidence that a quarter of a billion years ago, far-flung places in Earth’s Southern Hemisphere were blanketed with debris from volcanic eruptions in Siberia. The so-called
Weighing in at just 1.2 milligrams, a new robot called FAIRY – that’s short for Flying Aero-robots based on Light Responsive Materials Assembly – is the first flying bot we’ve seen based on soft materials that respond to light. The robot was inspired by dandelion seeds, and ultimately it could be used in the same
A green comet called C/2022 E3 (ZTF), or Comet ZTF for short, is nearing its closest approach to Earth for the first time since the ice age. Comet ZTF will come within 26 million miles (42 million kilometers) of our planet on Wednesday, about a third of the distance between Earth and the Sun. The
Sophisticated artificial intelligence (AI) algorithms have predicted that the world will be 1.5 °C hotter than it was before the Industrial Revolution by the early 2030s – another climate change alarm bell to add to the cacophony that’s already being sounded. And that’s baked in, the AI says: it doesn’t matter whether greenhouse gases rise
A ghostly blue spiral spotted in the sky over Hawaii could be related to a SpaceX satellite launch. The National Astronomical Observatory of Japan spotted the mysterious spiral through its Subaru Telescope on January 18, just after SpaceX launched a Falcon 9 rocket carrying a large military satellite for the US Space Force. Ichi Tanaka,
A gargantuan effort by a huge international team of scientists has just given us the most precise map of the all matter in the Universe obtained to date. By combining data from two major surveys, the international collaboration has revealed where the Universe does and doesn’t keep all its junk – not just the normal
A new video shared on YouTube is one of the most amazing things we’ve ever seen in planetary science. The video shows four dots of light moving in partial concentric circles around a black disk at their center. What you’re actually looking at is a planetary system. The four dots are exoplanets, with the black
A burly figure emerges from the shadows of a forest, only to lumber off into the cover of trees once again. It’s a scene that’s been caught from the corner of a thousand human eyes, yet no one is any closer to looking a Bigfoot or a Sasquatch square in the face. If someone were
Some 540 million years ago, diverse life forms suddenly began to emerge from the muddy ocean floors of planet Earth. This period is known as the Cambrian Explosion, and these aquatic critters are our ancient ancestors. All complex life on Earth evolved from these underwater creatures. Scientists believe all it took was an ever-so-slight increase
Jupiter isn’t alone along its orbital path around the Sun. Two giant swarms of asteroids have been snared in the gravitational interaction between the gas giant and our star, leading and trailing Jupiter as it treads its cosmic measure. Between these swarms, known collectively as trojans, we’ve identified more than 12,000 asteroids to date, but
Great Zimbabwe was the first major city in southern Africa, home to an estimated 18,000 people at its peak. Yet no one really knows why it now lies in ruins. The demise of the once-thriving Medieval metropolis is sometimes boiled down to drought and a drying climate, but archaeologists have now found evidence of careful
The violent fingers of electricity that struck a sand dune in Nebraska have left behind a configuration of crystal rarely found in nature. Inside a piece of fulgurite – or ‘fossilized lightning‘ – created by a powerful bolt of electricity traveling into and fusing sand, scientists have found a quasicrystal, an arrangement of matter once
An urgent search was underway in Western Australia on Saturday after a tiny radioactive capsule was reported to have gone missing while being transported from a mine. The 8 millimeter by 6 millimeter silver capsule, which is used in mining operations, has been unaccounted for since mid-January, emergency services said. It contains the radioactive substance
In a recent study published in Sciences Advances, an international team of scientists led by the Technical University of Munich examined the Martian meteorite Tissint, which fell near the village of Tissint, Morocco, on 18 July 2011, with pieces of the meteorite found as far as approximately 50 kilometers (30 miles) from the village. What
In most ways, HBO’s new series The Last of Us depicts a classic zombie apocalypse. One morning, everybody is going about their normal life. There’s a mention on the radio of chaos in Jakarta. And by nightfall, twitchy, possessed once-humans are sprinting after the main character. This time, though, it’s a fungus turning people into
Scientists have a problem when it comes to modeling space events inside laboratories: Earth’s gravity tends to get in the way, making it difficult to replicate environments away from our planet. A recently proposed solution takes the form of a tiny glass ball a mere 3 centimeters (just over an inch) in diameter. In spite
The genetic make-up of the iconic Australian black swan (Cygnus atratus) leaves it extremely vulnerable to viruses such as avian flu, research from the University of Queensland reports. The threat is thought to be so severe that it could wipe out the species entirely. The discovery comes after the distinctive bird’s genome was sequenced for
Have you ever worried if the play between your cats was getting too rough? A new study published in Scientific Reports has investigated play and fighting in cats. Their aim was to use simple behaviors anyone could observe to work out what was play and what might lead to fights. This is important because the
A bizarre spatula-billed pterosaur with ridiculous amounts of teeth has been discovered in a German quarry. Its unique facial anatomy suggests it shares feeding traits seen in today’s ducks and whales. While Pterodaustro from Argentina may have even more teeth, this newly discovered species’s mouth protrusions are strangely long and thin in comparison. The researchers
A team of archaeologists unearthed what could be the “oldest” and “most complete” mummy ever discovered in Egypt, the leader of the excavation announced on Thursday. Thought to be the remains of a man named Hekashepes, archaeologists found the 4,300-year-old mummy in an ancient tomb near Cairo from the country’s fifth and sixth dynasty –
JWST’s unparalleled ability to peer into the shrouded hearts of distant clouds has revealed the elements of biochemistry in the coldest and darkest place we’ve seen them yet. In a molecular cloud called Chamaeleon I, located over 500 light-years from Earth, data from the telescope has revealed the presence of frozen carbon, hydrogen, oxygen, nitrogen,
Scientists have discovered the long-buried secret of a 17th-century French aristocrat 400 years after her death: She was using gold wire to keep her teeth from falling out. The body of Anne d’Alegre, who died in 1619, was discovered during an archaeological excavation at the Chateau de Laval in northwestern France in 1988. Embalmed in
‘Spin’ is a fundamental quality of fundamental particles like the electron, invoking images of a tiny sphere revolving rapidly on its axis like a planet in a shrunken solar system. Only it isn’t. It can’t. For one thing, electrons aren’t spheres of matter but points described by the mathematics of probability. But California Institute of
A galaxy whose light has traveled nearly 13.5 billion years to reach us has just been confirmed as the earliest galaxy found to date. By studying the oxygen content of the galaxy with the Atacama Large Millimeter/submillimeter Array (ALMA), astronomers have precisely dated it to just 367 million years after the Big Bang, a time
Close to the summit of an underwater mountain west of the Mid-Atlantic Ridge, a jagged landscape of towers rises from the gloom. Their creamy carbonate walls and columns appear ghostly blue in the light of a remotely operated vehicle sent to explore. They range in height from tiny stacks the size of toadstools to a
When a new island arose from the South Pacific in 2015, it created an unprecedented opportunity not just for geologists and volcanologists, but for biologists and ecologists, too. The appearance of a new island offers a chance to learn about how ecosystems begin, starting with microbial pioneers that colonize new land like this, before plants
Egyptian archaeologists said Tuesday they had discovered an 1,800-year-old “complete residential city from the Roman-era” in the heart of the southern city of Luxor. The city, dating to the second and third centuries, is the “oldest and most important city found on the eastern bank of Luxor,” according to Mostafa Waziri, head of Egypt’s Supreme
Facial pareidolia is the human tendency or illusion of seeing facial structures in an everyday objects – such as seeing the “man in the Moon,” or the face of Jesus on a piece of toast. But here’s a newly found crater on Mars that might be a case of ‘bear-adoilia.’ There’s no denying, the crater
A truck-sized asteroid will pass near Earth on Thursday in one of the closest approaches to our planet ever recorded, NASA said, emphasizing that it poses no danger. Asteroid 2023 BU, which was recently discovered by an amateur astronomer, will zoom by the southern tip of South America at around 4:27 pm PST on Thursday
The propagation of gravitational waves through matter could reveal the ripples in space-time generated by the Big Bang. Two plasma physicists used the propagation of electromagnetic waves through plasma as an analogue for gravitational waves, devising a set of equations that describe what to look for as gravitational waves travel through stars and gas in
While some dog breeds have unfortunate reputations for being more aggressive than others, veterinarians and other animal experts have long been skeptical about this. A new study of 665 domestic dogs (Canis familiaris) in Brazil also points towards factors other than breed having stronger influences over this ‘problematic’ behavior. “The results highlight something we’ve been
Our brains do a fantastic job of acting as master control centers for our sacks of flesh if you stop and think about it – which again will call on your brain. Now researchers have discovered more about how the brain fixes long-term memories in its storage slots. The new study looks at the ‘zone
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