Sir David Attenborough’s passionate voice is one few would struggle to recognise. Next month, at the UN Climate Change Conference in Poland, world leaders will be listening to it as the famous British naturalist delivers a speech. And you can even help him write it. A new UN campaign called the “People’s Seat” has been
Month: November 2018
A new study suggests that Earth might have once had a different kind of magnetic field – one generated by oceans of magma on its surface, instead of the rotation of its core. And that’s good news, because it means more exoplanets than we thought could have a protective magnetic shield sheltering them from the
A wild turkey has been causing havoc in a Rhode Island town for six months, where it has been blocking traffic, chasing people, and stopping them paying taxes. Three wild turkeys arrived in the town of Johnston in May, but one managed to evade permanent capture the entire time by deploying a number of tactics,
What’s the best way to shut down an awkward politics discussion at the Thanksgiving table before it ruins everyone’s appetite? The answer, obviously, is science. So, in preparation for the upcoming family holiday, here’s a handy list of talking points involving amazing science news you can keep ready for when you need to boldly interrupt
Before the dinosaurs we’re mostly familiar with, there was a group of smaller ancestors that we know very little about. But now archaeologists have discovered three new well-preserved skeletons in Brazil, and it’s teaching us more about this particular branch of the dino family tree. The skeletons fit into a new dinosaur species that’s been
Humans are going places. NASA’s newest plan is to launch crewed missions to Mars in the 2030s, and we’ll need the most advanced and reliable space technology to help get us there safe and sound. That’s where HAL 9000 – the villainous, insane killbot from 2001: A Space Odyssey – comes in. Believe it or
We’ve arrived at a sad realisation. A handful of pixels in about 90 percent of the images taken by one of the major instruments on NASA’s Mars Reconnaissance Orbiter are showing things that just aren’t there. Researchers uncovered the error after searching for better signs of moisture-absorbing materials on the Martian surface. Not only did
If life is to spark in the Universe like it does on Earth, a few things seem to be required, such as an atmosphere, ozone layer, liquid water, and habitable temperatures. But before it ever gets to that point – before planets even form – space itself needs to be primed, courtesy of ultraviolet and
Between Earth and the galactic core, there’s an old, faint star that appears to have something orbiting it, something that’s confusing astronomers. The discovery joins several other stellar objects that have perplexed researchers in recent years, inviting suggestions as mundane as dust and as imaginative as extra-terrestrial technology. Whatever is responsible, it helps to have
On Monday a little spacecraft is going to land on Mars and begin exploring the Red Planet in a way we never have before. If everything goes to plan (which it doesn’t always) a little robot called InSight will be helping us understand the inside of Mars. But sometimes these sorts of missions are difficult to
The willow warbler is not one to stop and smell the flowers. Weighing in at a mere 10 grams (3.5 ounces), this restless little songbird regularly traverses multiple continents, flying thousands of kilometres and taking remarkably few breaks. In fact, researchers in Sweden have now determined this epic trek by the Siberian willow warbler (Phylloscopus trochilus yakutensis) constitutes the
An American tourist was killed by arrows shot by members of the Sentinelese tribe, according to Indian police. The tribe lives an isolated existence on North Sentinel Island. It has almost no contact with the interconnected world, speaks its own language, and lives without modern technology. It’s also off limits for visitors. Dependra Pathak, the
Solar power has never been cheaper, and it’s often held up as a success story for clean energy advocates. In the past four decades, the cost of some solar panels, like photovoltaic cells (PTV), has plummeted by as much as 99 percent. But while the technology’s growth is impressive, until now we didn’t have a
Our planet is constantly changing each and every day, and now thanks to researchers at the University of Cincinnati, we can see some of those shifts mapped over the course of a quarter of a century. The new maps published by the team show 22 percent of Earth’s livable surface has dramatically altered between 1992
A set of wings with wires for engines has established a landmark in aviation, becoming the first object to breeze through the air on the cusp of its own, self-generated ionic wind. At first glance, it looks like the kind of aircraft even the pioneering Wright brothers would have rejected as too ludicrous to fly. But
Well, general relativity is still holding firm. According to a new test of Einstein’s venerable theory, our Universe’s gravity isn’t leaking into other dimensions. We are all very relieved to hear that our gravity isn’t going to disappear into some weird dimension we can’t even comprehend, obviously – after all, there are a slew of
Humanity is likely responsible for the death of yet another sperm whale. After it washed ashore Kapota Island in the Wakatobi National Park in Indonesia, park officials found its stomach full of plastic. Over 1,000 individual pieces were found, including 115 plastic cups, 25 plastic bags, two flip-flops, and a sack containing over 1,000 pieces
Penises come in many shapes and sizes in the animal kingdom. But usually they’re only ever found on the sperm-owner of a species. In the strange case of a tribe of cave-dwelling winged insects found in Africa and Brazil though, it’s the egg-laying females who grow a phallus – albeit, not one that ejaculates sperm,
Most people have heard of the gender pay gap, but there’s another form of gender inequity that doesn’t get nearly as much attention. Not only are women getting short-changed in the workforce, studies suggest they are also getting the short end of the stick in the bedroom. Even today, in an age where many women
NASA has ordered a safety review of the two companies it has hired to fly astronauts to the International Space Station, a months-long assessment that would involve hundreds of interviews designed to evaluate the culture of the workplaces, the agency said. The review, to begin next year, would look at both Boeing and SpaceX, the
Some corners of the internet are in a bit of a tizzy after a Texas resident allegedly discovered a writhing, brain-like mass of worms in a puddle following several days of rainfall. According to Pen News Agency, which seems to supply content primarily to, ahem, British tabloids with a spotty track record when it comes
When it comes to measuring ice loss at the poles, and predicting what might happen next, scientists need as much accurate data as they can get – and a new study suggests there’s a big source of geothermal heat underneath East Antarctica that we haven’t yet factored into our calculations. Ice in this area appears
There’s a forest in Massachusetts that for nearly 30 years has hosted the world’s longest running soil-warming experiment, measuring how hotter temperatures impact the tiny life-forms that live in the dirt. With the way climate change is going, you could say the future itself is buried in that heated dirt. But our unknown tomorrows aren’t
It’s thought that somewhere out there, the Sun has a twin – born not just in the same stellar nursery, but an almost identical twin, a binary companion made of the same star-stuff. And astronomers think they might have just found it. Located roughly 184 light-years away, it’s called HD 186302, and it’s almost certainly
A five-year long investigation into the criminal trade of tiger parts in Czechia culminated in the discovery of a horrific animal slaughterhouse in Prague, and shows illegal trafficking in big cats isn’t just a problem in Asia. Back in July, inspectors with the Czech Environmental Inspectorate (CEI) led over 200 police and customs officers in
For the first time, brain tissue grown in a lab has spontaneously exhibited electrical activity, and it looks startlingly similar to human brain activity. More specifically, it resembles the brain activity of premature babies. Now, the report of this startling development is yet to be peer-reviewed, but if confirmed, it could be a huge discovery
For the first time, brain tissue grown in a lab has spontaneously exhibited electrical activity, and it looks startlingly similar to human brain activity. More specifically, it resembles the brain activity of premature babies. Now, the report of this startling development is yet to be peer-reviewed, but if confirmed, it could be a huge discovery
In a search for ancient life on Mars, NASA will send its next rover to explore Jezero Crater – the site of a former delta and lake. The rover, which is scheduled to launch in 2020, is equipped with a drilling system that can collect and store rock samples that contain clues to Mars’s ancient
A fisherman has shared a video of a surprise drawn up from the depths of the ocean. Included in the catch from a deep-sea trawling expedition was a sight most people never see in the wild: a wriggling worm that lives in the deep, dark ocean, where little light penetrates. The footage was shared on
Bill Nye thinks you’d have to be on drugs to believe Mars could ever be habitable for humans. “This whole idea of terraforming Mars, as respectful as I can be, are you guys high?” the science educator asked in an interview with USA TODAY. “We can’t even take care of this planet where we live,
Nowhere is climate change more obvious than in the Arctic. Experiencing rapid and, at times, unprecedented atmospheric change, the cold crest of our planet has taken on a burden greater than any other region in the world. But while it’s clear the Arctic is especially vulnerable to greenhouse gases, the physical causes that are driving
The Australian wombat has one of nature’s most bizarre superpowers. This pudgy, bear-like marsupial is the only animal we know of that can produce cube-shaped poos. These unique droppings have long been a biological mystery, although biologists have partially attributed the shape to the incredible dryness of wombat poop. But now we have a new
If you want to design something right, look to nature for inspiration – that’s the message from scientists who have produced a new type of brush, based on a detailed analysis of a cat’s tongue and its ultra-effective grooming capabilities. In particular, the team looked at certain types of papillae on the tongues of cats,
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