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
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
Researchers at Yale University have developed a seriously confusing optical illusion that is proving our human nature has some bizarre quirks. As part of the Neural Correlate Society’s annual optical illusions contest, the Yale researchers developed what they call the “Who’s Chasing Whom?” illusion. Take a look at the video the team developed. What do
On Friday, Apple announced that two of its products – the iPhone X and the 13-inch MacBook Pro (non Touch Bar) – have known hardware issues. Bloomberg first reported on these issues after being posted on Apple’s support pages on Friday. Apple said that on some iPhone X devices, display screens are experiencing touch issues. Those issues include: The
There’s no easy way to rate dog intelligence. It can be focused on more than one thing. As canine psychologist Stanley Coren wrote back in the ’90s, there’s adaptive intelligence (i.e., figuring stuff out), working intelligence (i.e. following orders), and instinctive intelligence (i.e. innate talent) – not to mention spatial intelligence, kinesthetic intelligence, interpersonal intelligence,
Why is my awareness here, while yours is over there? Why is the universe split in two for each of us, into a subject and an infinity of objects? How is each of us our own center of experience, receiving information about the rest of the world out there? Why are some things conscious and
“If one made a research grant application to work on time travel it would be dismissed immediately,” writes the physicist Stephen Hawking in his posthumous book Brief Answers to the Big Questions. He was right. But he was also right that asking whether time travel is possible is a “very serious question” that can still
Poachers that kill or maim elephants for their ivory tusks have decimated world elephant populations. According to new research, that activity has placed such a strain on elephant populations in Mozambique that it’s forcing the hand of evolution. Historically, only 2 to 4 percent of female African elephants were naturally tuskless — and now nearly
Polish astronomers just discovered two new planets in our galaxy. That’s cool news on its own, but these planets are different from most. Unlike almost all known planets, New Scientist reports, these two planets don’t orbit a star. Instead, they drift aimlessly through the cold, dead void of space — and presumably spend their time
An extraordinary account of the impact space weather had on military operations in Vietnam in 1972 was found buried in the US Navy archives, according to a newly published article in Space Weather. On August 4, 1972, the crew of a US Task Force 77 aircraft flying near a naval minefield in the waters off
According to some alarming tabloid headlines, three giant asteroids are skimming by Earth this weekend – one as long as a blue whale! Here’s what’s really going on: there are a number of asteroids about to zip through Earth’s general neighbourhood, according to a NASA asteroid watch website. But we’re not in any danger whatsoever
Who were the first Americans? While we have some rough ideas, the answer to this question has long been up for debate. Now, comparisons between two extraordinary sets of ancient American remains has added rich detail to the spread of ancient human populations through the New World more than 13,000 years ago. And it shows
At first glance, you might miss it. But among Central Park’s usual waterfowl crowd, there appears to be a new addition. And people are flocking to see him. A single, male Mandarin duck flaunts his multi-coloured feathers as he swims out among a posse of mallards and wood ducks. He’s not a local, and it’s
The best scientists are the ones that ask lots of questions, even when they may seem absurd to the rest of us – like, how many mosquitoes can you squeeze into just one cubic centimetre? The answer may seem like a meaningless pursuit, but there’s actually a point – it could help us in our
The sky above Earth is never completely dark. Even at night a soft glow emanates from the rim of the upper atmosphere. It’s always there, right above us, but it’s tricky to see from Earth. Lucky for us, an astronaut on board the International Space Station has captured the spectacular effect from space. The photograph
Of all our planet’s continents, we know the least about the icy landmass of Antarctica. Now, scientists have used satellite imagery to peer into Earth’s tectonics, revealing the hidden structures of Antarctica as part of their work. Due to its remote location and abundance of ice, charting the geological characteristics of Antarctica is tricky, but
We all know that corvids (ravens and crows) are no bird brains. Earlier this year, they stunned scientists with their ability to tear paper into a tool to obtain food. Now another bird has followed suit: Goffin’s cockatoos (Cacatua goffiniana) have shown that they can tear cardboard into the shape of a tool to get
Ozone-depleting substances are continuing to decrease more than three decades after a major international agreement phased out their production, according to a recently released UN-backed report. We’ll need to wait a few decades before raising the ‘Mission Accomplished’ banner. Knowing it’ll take unprecedented levels of social change to combat global warming, the report even provides
According to historical accounts, the ancient Gauls of Europe 2,000 years ago had a grisly means of commemorating their most prestigious kills: they would embalm the severed heads of these foes, and keep them. Now, for the first time, science has proven that the Gauls did indeed embalm severed heads. The Gauls were fearsome warriors,
Black holes, while fascinating, are hardly a new discovery – but a black hole spinning at one of the highest speeds ever, according to the Hindustan Times, is a completely different story – especially when there have only ever been four others like it. In 2016, India’s first dedicated astronomy satellite, the AstroSat, spotted a
If you’ve ever thought your poo is just a bunch of dead cells, think again. Most of it is alive, teeming with billions of microbes. Here’s what studies in healthy adults reveal makes up our poo. Water Our faeces is largely (75 percent) made up of water, although this differs from person to person. Vegetarians
There was a huge amount of excitement when the Higgs boson was first spotted back in 2012 – a discovery that bagged the Nobel Prize for Physics in 2013. The particle completed the so-called standard model, our current best theory of understanding nature at the level of particles. Now scientists at the Large Hadron Collider
Humanity’s artistic heritage just got a new historical milestone. In a cave wall deep in the forests of the isle of Borneo, archaeologists have just confirmed that a depiction of some sort of cow is the world’s oldest known figurative piece of art. It dates back to between 40,000 and 52,000 years ago, during the
Thanks to the way research is conducted, our perception of human psychology is based largely on subjects who are largely western, educated, industrialised, rich, and democratic. Which is a little… WEIRD. UC Santa Barbara anthropologist Michael Gurven argues this has to change, and has turned to an isolated indigenous population in the Bolivian Amazon to
Roughly one billion light-years from Earth, a giant elliptical galaxy has been found to be an enthusiastic recycler – albeit not of plastic bottles. The supermassive black hole at its core is blasting cold molecular gas, which is then falling into the black hole, and feeding the cycle anew. Such a phenomenon is known as
You step off the plane, having travelled across the world to the opposite hemisphere. The seasons are all backwards, and when you look up at the full Moon, you realise it’s not even the right way up! Not only is this incredibly weird (mostly because, how did we not realise this before?), but this curious
The first components of the International Space Station (ISS) launched into space more than 20 years ago, and it’s been continuously occupied for 18. Right now, it’s the only operational space station in orbit – but that’s about to change. China just unveiled a life-size replica of the core module of the country’s new space
It’s a mystery that scientists have been trying to solve for nearly a century. How did the world’s smallest flightless bird end up on a remote island in the middle of the South Atlantic? The Inaccessible Island rail (Atlantisia rogersi) is a tiny, flightless bird – 15 to 17 centimetres long – that is only
With an underwater jet pack, a black wet suit and a tiny briefcase laden with wires, Rui Matsumoto looked like a spy on a sabotage mission. In truth, the scientist was on a different sort of assignment in the Galápagos Islands, though the stakes were equally high. Matsumoto had come to perform sonograms on the
It’s a big Universe, that’s for sure, which means we might not necessarily cross paths with any other lifeforms that might be out there. But if we want to attract the attention of any galactic neighbours, apparently we could use laser technology we already have right now. Today’s lasers could be repurposed to act as
Earth is too big to fit into an X-ray or MRI scanner, so a group of physicists in Spain found a fascinating new way to peer inside - they used the subatomic particles constantly streaming through the planet. The team scanned the interior of Earth using neutrinos – and even used them to conduct an entirely
Any species reaching for the stars is bound to have its fingertips singed. Probably more than once. One of NASA’s latest posts on the Astronomy Picture of the Day website is an iconic reminder of the mishaps in our spacefaring history. “A flying saucer from outer space crash-landed in the Utah desert after being tracked
The natural world is a strange and wonderful place. But sometimes biologists come across something that is just… odd. Really, really odd. Case in point: this peculiar arachnid photographed by natural scientist Andreas Kay in Ecuador’s Amazon rainforest in July 2017. By all appearances, it looks like it has the tiny head of a black
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