Russian hackers infiltrated US electric utilities last year and had the ability to cause widespread blackouts, the Department of Homeland Security (DHS) said in a briefing on Monday. Symantec first reported on a hacking campaign by the state-sponsored group Dragonfly targeting dozens of victims in the US energy sector in 2017. But this is the
Month: July 2018
Grey wolves are among the top predators on the Arctic tundra, but there’s a little fellow underfoot who has their lupine compadres beat. A calculation for a new paper estimates that, in terms of raw biomass, the wolf spider outweighs the grey wolf by just over 80 to 1. That, friends, is a lot of
Nobody knows his name, nor the language he speaks, or spoke. But there he is, still alive and still alone, in newly released footage shot deep in the lush growth of the Amazon rainforest. Some call him the the Man of the Hole, in reference to the deep pits he digs to catch wildlife. Others
Dreaming is one of the strangest things that happens to us, and for as long as we have been recording history, we have been puzzling over why our minds are so active while we sleep. Finally, new research claims to have evidence as to what dreaming is all about – and it will probably surprise
At the far end of town where the Grickle-grass grows, a team of professors has finally cracked The Lorax, by Dr. Seuss. You may not have realized that The Lorax needed cracking, but that’s why you’re not an anthropologist at Dartmouth College. In a paper released Monday in the prestigious journal Nature Ecology & Evolution,
A group of German engineering students won the third SpaceX Hyperloop Pod Competition on Sunday, as their prototype pod shattered speed records and raced through a nearly mile-long tunnel at 290 miles per hour (466 kilometre per hour). WARR Hyperloop, from the Technical University of Munich, won first place for the third time in a
We may not need to travel far from our home planet to find a spot in our solar system that could once have supported life. Long ago, Earth’s Moon may have had conditions in which life could arise, according to a study published Monday in the journal Astrobiology. In fact, such conditions could have arisen
“Just how old do you think my dog is in dog years?” is a question I hear on a regular basis. People love to anthropomorphize pets, attributing human characteristics to them. And most of us want to extend our animal friends’ healthy lives for as long as possible. It may seem like sort of a
Scientists have created a tiny rotor that rotates at speeds of up to 60 billion revolutions a minute – the fastest-spinning human-made rotor in history, and 100,000 times faster than your average dental drill. The record-breaking invention not only pushes the boundaries of physics but could also be used to study some of the mysteries
A first-of-its-kind four-day work week experiment in New Zealand has come to an end after two months, but the trial went so well the company actually wants to make the changes permanent. While lots of research has shown the numerous benefits a reduced work week can provide to employees, what’s remarkable about this trial is
In 2015, 96 million floating plastic ‘shade’ balls were dumped into the reservoir of drought-embattled Los Angeles. It was a plan to save water by preventing evaporation – and it did – but there was one big wet elephant in the room that was somehow overlooked. Manufacturing that many plastic balls actually used more water
The radioactive fallout of the Fukushima nuclear disaster in 2011 cast an irrevocable toll on the environment within Japan – and outside of it – and years later, the legacy of its toxic contamination is still being discovered. Even the sun-kissed vineyards of California weren’t immune to Fukushima’s shadow, it seems, with scientists having now
I had what seemed like rather a good idea a few weeks back. Building on some prominent findings in social psychology, I hypothesised that politicians on the right would wipe their bum with their left hand; and that politicians on the left would wipe with their right hand. Ludicrous? Yes – absolutely. But for once
Forty-nine years ago this Friday, Neil Armstrong and Buzz Aldrin became the first humans to set foot on the Moon. That day, they also became the first people to harvest samples from another celestial body and bring them back to Earth. Over the course of the Apollo missions, astronauts collected about 2,200 individual samples weighing
We all know that helium makes your voice all squeaky like a chipmunk, but in the last few years, there’s been a new voice-altering gas on the block. It’s an ultra-dense substance called sulfur hexafluoride, and it makes your voice go all deep and demony. The science behind this is actually really cool. When lighter-than-air
To glimpse a meteor shower, sometimes you’ve got to wake up in the middle of the night, bundle up against frigid cold, and wait many minutes or hours. All to see a streak of light, a piece of space that crosses briefly into our world. Soon, though, all you may need is enough cash. A
In 1969, Apollo 11 astronaut Neil Armstrong became the first person to walk on the Moon. Forty-nine years later, his family is auctioning off a number of incredible and rare items, according to Heritage Auctions in Texas. We can’t imagine these items are going to go cheap, but those who have a bit of money
It’s been a few days since archaeologists from Egypt’s antiquities ministry pried open a mysterious, 27 tonne (30 ton) black sarcophagus, and no ancient curse has befallen the planet despite tabloid warnings. The sarcophagus was first found earlier in July by construction workers in a residential area of Alexandria, a city on Egypt’s Mediterranean coast.
Poring over four decades of satellite data, climate scientists have concluded for the first time that humans are pushing seasonal temperatures out of balance – shifting what one researcher called the very “march of the seasons themselves.” Ever-mindful of calculable uncertainty and climate deniers, the authors give “odds of roughly 5 in 1 million” of
Last year, astronomers discovered a massive supercluster of galaxies located approximately 4 billion light-years from Earth – and not only is it one of the largest known structures in the cosmos, it’s also the most distant supercluster we’ve ever observed. See, in space, everything is a question of perspective. From where you sit, the planet
Global warming isn’t the cause of slowdown in a huge circulation pattern in the Atlantic Ocean, which is, in fact, part of regular, decades-long cycle that will affect temperatures in coming decades, according to a new study. Oceanographers are concerned about the long-term stability of the Atlantic Ocean circulation, and previous studies show that it
When you add a smiley face to the end of a message, you may be saying more than you realise. Emoticons, faces formed from punctuation symbols such as :-), and emojis, picture symbols such as 😀, are now common features of the way we communicate using phone and internet messaging services and social media. They
One snowy January day, I asked a classroom of college students to tell me the first word that came to mind when they thought about mathematics. The top two words were “calculation” and “equation.” When I asked a room of professional mathematicians the same question, neither of those words were mentioned; instead, they offered phrases
The soaring temperatures in Europe and North America have seen a rise in reports of dogs being rescued from hot cars. Police across England, Wales, Scotland, Northern Ireland, Ireland, and Canada have all saved dogs from certain death. But in the US, a Great Dane in Juneau, Alaska, a Pitbull Boxer mix in Trussvile, Alabama,
You probably know that, for the most part, Yellowstone National Park is located in Wyoming. But there’s a small sliver of the park that crosses the border into Idaho, and that tiny, 130-square-km (50-square-mile) patch is known as the Zone of Death. Why? Well, thanks to a loophole in the US Constitution, you could technically get
It’s hard to say exactly why you like someone. Maybe it’s their goofy smile; maybe it’s their razor-sharp wit; or maybe it’s simply that they’re easy to be around. You just like them. But scientists generally aren’t satisfied with answers like that, and they’ve spent years trying to pinpoint the exact factors that draw one
What has six legs, two antennae, four furry appendages sprouting from its backside – and a big chunk of the Internet freaked out? The world’s most viral and terrifying moth. A man in Indonesia posted a picture and video of the insect on Facebook in October last year, drawing more than 36,000 comments, many from
After days of intense and viral speculation, archaeologists in Egypt this week finally opened up that mysterious, 2,000-year-old giant black sarcophagus. So far, no curse has been unleashed (that we know of), but the team did discover something slightly gruesome inside – three skeletons, most likely soldiers, decaying in a pool of dark red, murky
Warning: This story contains graphic — if not disgusting, yet fascinating — videos and physical descriptions of the act of popping pimples. Believe it or not, there’s an entire subculture of people really passionate about popping pimples. Sandra Lee, a dermatologist in Southern California, calls them “popaholics” and their sickening — yet, somewhat intriguing — obsession with watching
Thanks to high school, we’ve all got a pretty good idea about what’s on the periodic table. But whether you’re looking at something common like calcium, iron, and carbon, or something more obscure like krypton and antimony, how well do you know their functions? Could you name just one practical application for vanadium or ruthenium?
Mapping the human brain in detail could help to unlock some of its mysteries, but our own brains are such amazingly intricate organs that we’re going to be waiting a while for that to happen. Still, scientists just took an important step towards that goal. A team has just created a high-definition, 3D picture of something
Ah, nature. So majestic. So serene. So … disturbing. It turns out that there’s a lot of grotesquery in the animal kingdom, and it goes far beyond snacking on the occasional dead young. Many more animals than you would think have been spotted trying to get their rocks off with the dead. In some cases,
You’ve seen it, you’ve heard it, but have you ever smelled it? As bizarre as it sounds, lightning has a distinct odor. But unlike its blinding flash or deafening roar, the scent of a lightning bolt is much more subtle. In fact, you’ve probably experienced it before. Whenever lightning strikes, it heats the air to
In just a few weeks, NASA is due to launch one of its most ambitious projects yet. The Parker Solar Probe is going to swoop in and ‘touch’ the Sun – coming in closer to the solar surface than any probe has ever done before. Parker’s three closest orbits will bring it within 6.1 million
It may soon be possible for parents to edit the genes of their children before they’re born, changing their DNA in ways that could affect their health and enhance their senses, strength, or even intelligence. The situation is so close to becoming reality, in fact, that genetic experts have pushed in recent years for more
Electron microscopes have been capable of taking snapshots of individual atoms for nearly half a century. But we’ve never seen anything quite on this scale. A new method for catching and measuring the spray of electron beams is giving us a whole new resolution of the sub-ångström world, opening the way to studying molecular structures
Back in 2008, researchers found a weird set of dinosaur fossils in the Grand Staircase-Escalante National Monument in southern Utah. Most ankylosaurid dinosaurs found in the area have smooth bony armour on their skull. This one was spiky. After 10 years of hard work the research has just been published, confirming this weird spike-armoured oddity
All those liquids made out of soy, almond, rice, coconut or oats won’t be called milk anymore, if the US Food and Drug Administration (FDA) has its way. According to the government body’s definition, the word “milk” only refers to lactate from an animal, preferably a cow. And whatever was squeezed out of that soybean
Tens of thousands of years before Swiss inventor Karl Elsener attached a corkscrew to a pocketknife, Neanderthals had their own multipurpose tools: hand axes. These four- or five-inch (10 -13 centimetre) stones were cut into large teardrop shapes, with wide bases that tapered to twin cutting edges. Neanderthals used hand axes to chop and carve
Egyptian archaeologists on Thursday pried open a mysterious 30-ton black sarcophagus and found three skeletons, including one that had suffered a blow to the skull. Legends abounded about the sarcophagus, which construction workers found earlier this month more than 16 feet (5 metres) below ground in a residential area of Alexandria. Some observers thought it
They mystery of why a young star dims every so often may have just been solved. For the first time, researchers have observed what they think may be a star hoovering up the debris after a nearby collision between two planets. It’s not Tabby’s Star, sorry everyone. But it’s actually been puzzling astronomers for much
Using longer exposures and sophisticated processing techniques, scientists have taken extraordinarily high-fidelity pictures of the Sun’s outer atmosphere – what we call the corona – and discovered fine details that have never been detected before. The Sun is a complex object, and with the soon-to-be-launched Parker Solar Probe we’re on the verge of learning so
Rhinos in Australia might seem like an insane proposition – after all, we’ve had historically bad luck with introduced species. But on reflection it’s not quite as crazy as it sounds. There are five species of rhinoceros in the world: two in Africa and three in Asia. The world of all five species is being
After years of debate, the current geological epoch has finally been cut into three sections. While some geologists clearly think it’s a justified change, others feel the move was premature and deserved further discussion. The International Union of Geological Sciences (IUGS) recently ratified the division of the Holocene into the Meghalayan, Northgrippian, and Greenlandian ages
This brand-new baby snake wouldn’t have been on this world long when it died in the Cretaceous period. But in an interesting twist of fate, it was encased in resin and found by humans 99 million years later in Myanmar. The snake fossil is tiny – missing a head and with about 97 bones all
Artificial intelligence (AI) has the potential to save lives by predicting natural disasters, stopping human trafficking, and diagnosing deadly diseases. Unfortunately, it also has the potential to take lives. Efforts to design lethal autonomous weapons – weapons that use AI to decide on their own whether or not to attempt to kill a person –
Rangers have temporarily closed off parts of Grand Teton National Park after guides noticed growing fissures in the area just over a week ago. Since Grand Teton is connected to Yellowstone, and Yellowstone is well known for sitting on top of what could well be a giant volcanic time bomb, the news has rung some
A four-year survey of the entire sky has just delivered results, and they are awesome: we have confirmation that the standard cosmological model, which describes the age, rate of expansion, history and contents of the Universe, is indeed accurate. For four years, the European Southern Observatory’s Planck satellite sailed the skies, constantly scanning and collecting