The super-thin ‘wonder material’ graphene has been shaking up science for years with its amazing properties, but things get really interesting when you stack this 2D nanomaterial up against itself. In new experiments, physicists in the US have found that when graphene is assembled in a double-layer vertical stack – with two adjacent sheets of
With the ability to use tools, solve complex puzzles, and even play tricks on humans just for funsies, octopuses are fiercely smart. But their intelligence is quite weirdly built, since the eight-armed cephalopods have evolved differently from pretty much every other type of organism on Earth. Rather than a centralised nervous system such as vertebrates have,
If you swallow a bunch of cyanide or breathe in too much carbon monoxide, you are in for a pretty bad time, since both are poisonous to humans. But they may have been instrumental to our very existence – and new evidence suggests both were carried here on meteorites. In a type of carbon-rich meteorite
In the bewildering quagmire that is the gas between the stars, the Hubble Space Telescope has identified evidence of ionised buckminsterfullerene, the carbon molecule known colloquially as “buckyballs”. Containing 60 carbon atoms arranged in a soccer ball shape, buckminsterfullerene (C60) occurs naturally here on Earth – in soot. But in 2010, it was also detected in
A core part of a SpaceX rocket narrowly missed a landing pad, crashed into the sea, and exploded during a test that CEO Elon Musk described as the “most difficult” in company history. At around 2:30 am ET (7:30 am UTC) on Tuesday, a Falcon Heavy rocket lifted off from Cape Canaveral, Florida, which was
In latest gruesome nature news, scientists have discovered new details on a fungus that compels its cicada hosts to mate long after their genitals have gone and their bodies have turned into what one researcher colourfully describes as ‘flying salt shakers of death’. The fungus is called Massospora cicadina, and its effects read like an abstinence
From the air, the massive crater resembles a pink virus floating against a pool of green. But from the ground, the destruction is clear and devastating: A 33-foot (10 meter) wide, 13-foot (4 meter) gouge into the earth that began in the 1940s with an Allied sortie and ended Sunday morning in a massive blast
An intense heat wave is set to bake Europe in coming days, and it could be historic, potentially shattering records across a large portion of the continent. The heat wave is expected to peak between Wednesday and Friday, when a swath from Spain to Poland is expected to see temperatures at least 20 to 30
An ancient water conservation technique once used in Peru could be making a comeback in the modern era, as the country struggles with extreme dry seasons amidst a population rise. Researchers estimate the technique – used by indigenous peoples of the region – is at least 1,400 years old. It involves diverting water from streams
Scientists have recreated Titan-like conditions in a lab, and found that organic molecules from Titan’s atmosphere could be forming rings of alien crystals around the methane lakes that dot the Saturn moon’s surface. Previously, the team led by researchers at NASA’s Jet Propulsion Laboratory had discovered two of these ‘molecular minerals’. Now they’ve discovered a
Chernobyl has become a byword for catastrophe. The 1986 nuclear disaster, recently brought back into the public eye by the hugely popular TV show of the same name, caused thousands of cancers, turned a once populous area into a ghost city, and resulted in the setting up of an exclusion zone 2600 km² in size.
Tucked away in a remote valley of Brazil’s Serra da Capivara National Park, a group of bearded capuchin monkeys use round quartz stones to crack open cashew nuts on tree roots or other rocks. Beneath their feet, archaeologists have found at least 3,000-years-worth of discarded tools. The chimpanzees of Côte d’Ivoire have been using stone tools like
Elon Musk, the founder and CEO of SpaceX, said his rocket company’s toughest mission yet has arrived – and you can watch it live online below. Sometime between 23:30 ET on Monday (03:30 UTC on Tuesday) and 02:30 ET (06:30 UTC) on Tuesday, a Falcon Heavy rocket will try to lift off from Cape Canaveral,
If we’re serious about perpetuating the human race off our home planet one day, a human sperm bank would come in handy. While fresh sperm samples have sustained some damage under space conditions, a small pilot study now suggests frozen sperm are unperturbed by bursts of microgravity. To create such a condition, a small aerobatic
You might think that plastic pollution on land and sea is old news by now, but it’s taken on a new form we’ve only just noticed: Researchers have identified a crust of plastic particles building up on shoreline rocks. This ‘plasticrust’ isn’t just a worrying symbol of the garbage piling up in our oceans. The coating
Underneath the salty waters of the North Atlantic ocean, geologists have discovered a giant aquifer of freshwater, hidden from view just off the US coast. While the vast size of this massive cache is surprising, it’s not entirely unexpected. Signals of the water first showed up in the 1970s, but until now, nobody suspected that
On 24 June 2019, NASA is sending an atomic clock into space. Not just any old atomic clock, either. It’s up to 50 times more accurate than the atomic clocks aboard GPS satellites, its precision only changing by one second every 10 million years. It’s only the size of a toaster, yet it could revolutionise
Magic: The Gathering, the card game where you build your own deck from over 19,000 unique cards and then battle this deck against other people, is not what you would call simple. But a pre-print paper first published in March turns this already complex game up a notch, showing that a specific set of cards
It’s called the ‘White City’: a fabled settlement hidden deep in the lush rainforests of Honduras, said to be all that now remains of a mysterious civilisation that existed in Central America long before the Europeans came. But this lost city has its non-believers. For much of the last century, doubts have swirled around disputed
Last week, Curiosity made its strongest detection of methane on Mars yet. Its laser spectrometer instrument registered a methane spike of 21 parts per billion by volume (ppbv) in the Gale Crater, a region the rover has been exploring since it landed in 2012. Generally, methane presence on Mars has a global average of 10
In the pitch black waters 759 meters (2500 feet) below the surface of the Gulf of Mexico, a thin, undulating arm emerges from the gloom. Suddenly, it splits, and what was a lone, curious appendage is a writhing bouquet of tentacles until, finally, an honest-to-God giant squid blooms from the darkness and attacks. Then, the
If you’ve ever felt your eyelids droop for just a fraction of a second during some mundane task — like staring at a computer screen or driving down the highway — you’ve experienced a phenomenon known as “microsleep.” Discover Magazine‘s blog The Crux recently spotlighted the experience, which happens when key parts of the brain
Great news! Humankind’s greatest-ever engineering project is nearing completion. Soon we will have warmed the Earth enough to get rid of all those pesky ice sheets and other frozen areas. The finish line is in sight. If we all work together for the next thousand years, we’ll finally reach our goal! NASA has been tracking
Galaxy mergers are not particularly rare, but they are important events. Not only for the galaxies involved, but for scientists trying to piece together how galaxies evolve. Now, astronomers using ALMA have found the earliest example yet of merging galaxies. The pair of merging galaxies in question is called B14-65666, an unwieldy name, but scientifically
Who better to make the perfect crêpe than two French physicists who specialise in fluid dynamics? Edouard Boujo and Mathieu Sellier are experts in their field, and yet both have struggled in the past to cook the thin pancakes with no lumps and bumps in the middle. Frustrated by their failed attempts and prompted by their hungry families,
The data from all those Instagram pictures you’re posting needs to be stored somewhere, and the increasing amount of digital information we’re all producing means we also need an increasing amount of energy just to store it all. Now scientists have come up with a working example of what’s known as universal memory, a brand
Saturn may be the most showy, but it’s not the only planet in the Solar System circled by rings. And the 13 rings around Uranus just spilled previously unknown details when they photobombed a thermal image astronomers took of the ice planet. For the first time, researchers have determined the temperature of the rings, and
This time last year the roughly half-a-million people who live in Cape Town were in a panic. Their city was three months away from becoming the first major metropolis to fully deplete its water sources, and as the saga unfolded, the whole world watched in earnest. Today, in Chennai – India’s sixth largest city –
Just under half a century ago a system of satellites codenamed Hexagon was circling the globe and snapping high-resolution shots of the changing landscape… not to mention a Russian airfield or two. With the Cold War long melted, those images were declassified back in 2002, providing rich pickings for all kinds of research. Now scientists have
The harsh bark of the seal certainly doesn’t spring to mind when you’re thinking of melodious singing voices in the animal kingdom. But it seems the puppies of the sea have been holding out on us: When it comes to replicating a tune, they’re surprisingly talented. While studying the vocal learning of grey seals (Halichoerus
There aren’t many North Pacific right whales left, with vague estimates in the low hundreds. Those last few populations aren’t known for waxing lyrical either, so when scientists heard a population recently break out into song, they had to go see them live in concert. For the first time, National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration (NOAA)
Living in the city isn’t always easy. You have to contend with multitudes of other people and the problems they bring: disease, violence, pollution, pests. None of these hardships are new to the human experience. In fact, a new study examining one of the world’s earliest urban centres some 9,000 years ago shows people have
In 2015, a Swiss graduate student departed from the Zurich airport with a suitcase filled with empty wallets, loads of cash and 400 spare keys. The authorities stopped him with questions. It was for a science experiment, he explained. He was part of a team of behavioral researchers tackling two important questions: Do people around
When people come to visit the Nordic island of Sommarøy, they must leave their sense of time at the door. Some choose to do this quite literally, and so, the bridge that connects this small fishing village to the mainland is sprinkled not with lover’s padlocks as you would expect in any other location, but rather,
There’s something about a bubble of soapy water that causes it to freeze in a peculiar yet beautiful way. The magical-looking reaction has been an internet sensation for years now, and physicists at Virginia Tech think they finally have an explanation. When a normal drop of water ices over, it starts at the coldest point and
When stars are young, they’re often surrounded by a ring of dust and gas known as a protoplanetary disk. Eventually, the material in this disk can clump together, forming everything from planets to asteroids. Now, an international team of researchers has found a young star with thin rings and gaps in the outer part of
A skull long suspected of belonging to a rare Arctic hybrid has now had its unusual biology confirmed via DNA analysis. According to the results, this strange beast had a beluga whale for a dad and a narwhal for a mum, and would have forged its own path, distinct from the lifestyles of both parents.
In the hunt for alien life, scientists often focus on the “Goldilocks zone“, the region around a star where the temperature would be just right for liquid water to exist on an orbiting planet’s surface. But now, a team from Harvard University is suggesting there’s another kind of Goldilocks zone we should consider in our
When it comes to supersonic aircraft, engineers aren’t afraid to go with a weird design if it will get them a faster plane. In the latest instalment of such feats, NASA’s X-59 QueSST has taken the shape of a pencil with wings. The aircraft’s shape brings with it some interesting questions. For example, if the cockpit
Most clams are happy to make their burrow in a nice, soft bed of sand or mud. Not this mollusc. A recently uncovered relative of the shipworm puts the hard into hardcore, chewing holes into rocks and excreting the debris as sand. Lithoredo abatanica joins a short list of freshwater animals capable of literally weathering
On the French island of Corsica in the Mediterranean, a strange, rarely seen beast stalks the night. Locals call it ghjattuvolpe – the cat-fox – and for the last decade, scientists have been hot on its trail, trying to unravel the mystery. Now agents with France’s National Hunting and Wildlife Office (ONCFS) have revealed their
Paul McCully was having a relatively normal Tuesday in Myrtleford, Australia. Then he looked up. “It looked like inverted waves moving quickly across the sky,” wrote McCully, who was driving at the time. He pulled over to snap a remarkable photo. “It was a stunning sight.” The wavelike ripples resembled choppy seas, as though the
Our search for extraterrestrial intelligence requires spanning distances so vast, sometimes it may feel even worse than finding a needle in a haystack. Since the 1960s, astronomers have combed through billions of radio channels looking for anything out of the ordinary, as this could suggest not only some other form of life, but perhaps also
Engineers have captured some eye-popping footage of one of the densest parts of a satellite getting fried into vapour inside an ultra-hot plasma wind tunnel. They destroyed it in the name of science, of course. The researchers from the European Space Agency (ESA) wanted to better understand how satellites burn up in Earth’s atmosphere as
Once again, Australian fauna have provided the world with a gruesome surprise. This time, it comes at the expense of a tiny little possum, who fell prey to a large and ubiquitous spider. While we’re all wary of spiders, knowing their bites can pack a punch, seeing a big spider capture a small vertebrate is
Sally Ride’s journey to become the first American woman in space, and the youngest person ever sent into orbit, began with a handwritten letter. She wrote to NASA in 1977 after seeing an article in The Stanford Daily as she was finishing up her PhD in astrophysics at the university. The article said that NASA
It’s official, Facebook’s making its own currency. The social network on Tuesday unveiled Libra, the secretive cryptocurrency it’s been working on for more than a year. The currency is being backed by investment from big payment companies like Mastercard, Visa, and PayPal, as well as tech giants including Uber and Spotify. Facebook has high hopes
The more we learn, the more it seems like our skeletal system is adapting to the unique stresses of modern life. For example, researchers in Australia have found evidence that young people appear to be increasingly growing bony protrusions at the base of their skulls, right above the neck. Examining 1,200 X-ray images of adult
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