Hunger is a complex thing. We’ve all heard of the term ‘hangry’ – when something as simple as skipping a meal can change your mood from pleasant into irrationally cranky. But, as new research shows, ‘hanger’ might be more complicated than just a drop in blood sugar, and according to the researchers, it appears to
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NASA has suspended science operations on its brave little Mars rover, Opportunity, as a huge dust storm rages over its location in the planet’s Perseverance Valley. First detected by NASA on June 1, the storm has worsened over the weekend, the intense dust darkening the sky over Mars and leaving Opportunity in the dark. And
You’d think that in the age of the internet, where more information than we can possibly consume in several lifetimes is at our fingertips, stubborn myths from the past would die away. But who among us still thinks the Great Wall of China is visible from space, and that it’s a bad idea to pick
At work, a calendar filled with meetings and deadlines often dictates the cadence of our days. But despite what tightly timed agendas might try to insist, our internal body clocks are secretly running the show. Scientists call this personalised daily pattern of sleep and wakefulness a circadian rhythm. Whether you know it or not, our
In an exciting first, Indian scientists have discovered a sub-Saturn exoplanet orbiting a Sun-like star around 600 light-years away. The planet has been named EPIC 211945201b or K2-236b and it’s big – around 27 times more massive than Earth. The find sees India join a small group of countries to have confirmed a planet outside
In life it often pays to keep a close eye on competitors and rivals. Historian Doris Kearns Goodwin’s book, Team of Rivals, tells how US president Abraham Lincoln persuaded each of his political rivals to join his cabinet, thereby turning them into his allies. But the formation of alliances with potential competitors is not unique
During the 1970s, astronomer became aware of a massive radio source at the center of our galaxy that they later realized was a Supermassive Black Hole (SMBH) – which has since been named Sagittarius A*. And in a recent survey conducted by NASA’s Chandra X-ray Observatory, astronomers discovered evidence for hundreds or even thousands of
[ad_1] When you first start dating someone, at least one of your friends will tell you to “play it cool.” It’s a piece of advice that’s almost as old as dating itself, and it’s based on the idea that if you act like you’re not really eager for the relationship, you suddenly become irresistible. According
Every second, millions of emails, clicks, and searches happen via the world wide web with such fluidity that the internet seems almost omnipresent. As such, people often mistakenly assume that internet traffic happens by air – our mobile devices, after all, aren’t wired to anything. But satellites carry less than 1 percent of human interactions,
In 1999, radiologist Nicola Strickland went on a holiday to the Caribbean island of Tobago, a tropical paradise complete with idyllic, deserted beaches. On her first morning there, she went foraging for shells and corals in the white sand, when the holiday quickly took a turn for the worse. Scattered amongst the coconuts and mangoes
By the age of three or four, we all start to lie. At this point in our brain’s development, we learn that we have an incredibly versatile and powerful tool at our disposal – our language – and we can use it to actually play with reality and affect the outcome of what’s happening. Sooner
[ad_1] At the end of last year, scientists discovered a small octopus city – dubbed Octlantis – a find that suggests members of the gloomy octopus species (Octopus tetricus) are perhaps not the isolated and solitary creatures we thought they were. Octlantis features dens made out of piles of sand and shells, and is home
Buried under a pair of hills at Israel’s northern border, at the nexus of three ancient kingdoms, is one of the last large biblical sites yet to be uncovered. So said an international team of archaeologists after they started to dig up the ruins of Abel Beth Maacah five years ago. The lost town is
From daily tooth-brushing to the 11am coffee, we all have dozens of habits that get us through our daily routine. Some are great – weekly gym visits are often encouraged – others not so much, like smoking a pack a day, or dialling the number of the pizza place way too often. Because we recognise
One of the best-known regions of the brain, the cerebellum accounts for just 10 percent of the organ’s total volume, but contains more than 50 percent of its neurons. Despite all that processing power, it’s been assumed that the cerebellum functions largely outside the realm of conscious awareness, instead coordinating physical activities like standing and
When it comes to future challenges, one of the biggest will be water scarcity – on a warming planet we’re going to have plenty of seawater, but not enough fresh, clean water in the right places for everybody to drink. And while a lot of research has focussed on desalination, a team of scientists have
Welcome to the age of the urban rat. There are about 2 million New York City rats, a 2014 estimate suggested, which would mean the rodents in New York outnumber the humans in Philadelphia. Do not discount the power of gnawing teeth in aggregate — Cornell University scientists once calculated rats cause $19 billion in
When it comes to bees, it seems that nothing really does matter. As shown in a paper published today, our research demonstrates that the honeybee can understand the quantitative value of nothing, and place zero in the correct position along a line of sequential numbers. This is the first evidence showing that an insect brain
Last week the corpse of a mysterious, 6-metre (20-foot) long sea creature washed up in Namibia, confusing experts over whether the remains belonged to a whale or a dolphin. Scientists have now identified the animal – and it’s a unique deep-diving species of whale that hasn’t been seen in Namibia since 2000. After measuring the
If the elk of Yellowstone National Park had a spokeswoman, she would be working overtime trying to set the record straight about elk-human interactions: Despite the headlines, the average elk has a lot more to fear from the average human. There are, after all, myriad websites with details on how to kill the mostly docile
Scientists have reported finding traces of plastic and hazardous chemicals in Antarctica, which before now was the last part of the planet that remained mostly untouched by the damaging effects of human activity. Samples of water and snow, collected over a three-month period earlier this year, paint a sorry picture of the environmental consequences of
This summer, the fifth installment of the Jurassic Park franchise will be on the big screen, reinforcing a love of dinosaurs that has been with many of us since childhood. There is something awe inspiring about the biggest, fiercest, and “deadest” creatures that have ever walked the planet. But the films have had an additional
Between 1971 and 1977, Apollo scientists conducting experiments on the Moon discovered that the surface of our li’l satellite buddy got mysteriously warmer. But the data from 1974 onwards went missing, and the strange warming phenomenon remained an enigma. Now a team of researchers from Texas Tech University has found and restored that data –
As researchers around the globe race to create the next element on the periodic table – an atom that contains 119 protons – one scientist from Michigan State University is looking into where the table might end. While there’s no conclusive answer, it seems we still have a lot left to discover. According to nuclear
We learn about some awesome science in high school – like Einstein’s theory of relativity, the Periodic table, and DNA replication. The knowledge we pick up there sets the foundations for all the other amazing things we go on to study. But science definitely doesn’t end at high school, and it’s once you take your
The search is heating up for a planet beyond Pluto – not just over the evidence, but also over the hypothetical world’s name. No one knows for sure if there really is a missing planet out there, since astronomers have yet to identify it in telescope images. However, they keep turning up indirect evidence that
A Texas man narrowly survived a venomous rattlesnake sinking its fangs into him – after he had already decapitated it with a shovel. According to local news station KIII-TV, Jennifer Sutcliffe and her husband Jeremy were working in their yard in Corpus Christi, South Texas on the weekend of May 27. While weeding, she spotted
The Leaning Tower of Pisa and its 5.5 degree lean has vexed engineers for centuries. Partially constructed on unexpectedly soft soil, the ancient bell tower began to lean before it was even finished, a historical goof that went on to become one of the world’s historical oddities – and made the tower a UNESCO World
One minute, you’re chilling on a mountain. The next you’re being dwarfed by the biggest Moon you’ve ever seen – one that seems to be coming right down to rest on Earth’s surface. That’s what appears to be happening in this video on NASA’s Astronomy Picture of The Day (APOD) site for 4 June 2018.
It’s a simple fact of life that older people reminisce about the glory days. You might believe you’ll stay young and free-spirited forever, but one day you’ll find yourself grumbling about not understanding the latest slang words and asking a young person what a meme is. For some it might be happening earlier than they
When animals chat to each other, their interactions are far more human-like than you might expect. According to a comprehensive new study, many species take turns in their conversations, just like we do. This turn-taking has long been suggested as something that separates us from the rest of the animal kingdom, but now researchers say
Scientists have found what they think is the oldest animal footprint in the fossil record, uncovering incredibly ancient track marks imprinted in the dirt as far back as 550 million years ago. These trackways, preserved near burrows, were discovered in Dengying Formation – a rich fossil preserve in China’s south – and constitute the first
For years, NASA’s Curiosity rover has patiently gathered samples on the surface of Mars. Today, scientists are announcing they’ve discovered conclusive evidence that several organic compounds are indeed found on the Red Planet. On top of that, after keeping close tabs on methane levels in the Martian atmosphere, scientists have finally confirmed something weird is
A few clipped neuropeptides make all the difference between a chill honey bee and one that has an irritable need to shiv anything that moves. To discover what makes Africanised “killer bees” so hostile, scientists from University of São Paulo State in Brazil compared their neurochemistry with those of their domesticated relatives and found it
NASA’s New Horizons probe – the same one that gave us stunning photos of Pluto – has just woken up, approximately 6 billion kilometres (3.7 billion miles) from home. It’s currently flying through the Kuiper Belt, and off on an exciting mission scheduled for New Year’s Day – the first-ever flyby of the Kuiper Belt
Lightning on Jupiter has always been something of a mystery. But thanks to the latest efforts of the Juno probe, we now know that it is actually far more similar to lightning on Earth than we had thought – but it’s also still pretty weird, too. Data from everyone’s favourite Jupiter probe has revealed that,
Breakups are tough. Love is one of the most powerful emotions we can feel, making heartbreak one of the most traumatic. After a particularly raw breakup, it can feel like nothing will ever be the same again, with many sufferers reporting feelings of depression, anxiety, exhaustion, and even insomnia. And the one piece of advice
They call Alaska the last frontier, but as the largest American state grapples with global warming happening twice as fast as anywhere else in the US, nobody knows for sure where its vast, changing landscape is headed. Our best guess comes in the form of a new analysis sourced from over 30 years of satellite
Physicists working at the Large Hadron Collider have made a major new detection of the famous Higgs boson, this time catching details on a rare interaction with one of the heaviest fundamental particles known to physics – the top quark. The brief mingling of these incredibly rare encounters has provided physicists with important information on
One of the most important dating tools used in archaeology may sometimes give misleading data, new study shows – and it could change whole historical timelines as a result. The discrepancy is due to significant fluctuations in the amount of carbon-14 in the atmosphere, and it could force scientists to rethink how they use ancient
In the far reaches of the Solar System, objects go into some weird orbits, and astronomers have been baffled as to why. The most intriguing possibility has been that of a huge, unseen planet lurking out there way beyond Neptune. But now a new explanation has emerged, putting a massive dent in the idea of
Left-handed people haven’t always been treated well throughout history. They have been persecuted for their disposition, been labelled as evil – or even as witches – despite making up about 10 percent of the population. In fact, the word “sinister” comes from “left” or “left hand”. There have been a few theories over the decades
At 2 pm EDT (6 pm UTC) this Thursday, NASA will have a big Mars announcement to make. As with most announcements of announcements, they’ve only released a few details, but we do know that the “live discussion” will talk about “new science results from NASA’s Mars Curiosity rover”. So what has Curiosity found? Well,
Narcissists can be tricky to spot, especially if you are in a romantic relationship with one. This tends to be because they rely on using and manipulating others to fulfil their needs and desires – all while blending in like a chameleon. There are three distinct types of narcissists, and they often behave in specific
Using the whole Solar System as a lab, and our most advanced time-keeping instruments for equipment, scientists have helped to verify the ‘Einstein elevator’ hypothesis – one of the central components of his general theory of relativity. The theory deals with the basics of mass, gravity, space, and time – so proving as best as
It was an unprecedented blip out of nowhere in 1982. For the first time, scientists confirmed the first earthquake in Antarctica – but it wouldn’t be the last. As the decades passed, researchers detected eight more seismic events in East Antarctica. And then all hell seemingly broke loose, with sensors picking up 27 earthquakes in
For the past two years, NASA’s Juno probe has studied planet Jupiter like no spacecraft before it. The US$1 billion mission has peeled back the giant planet’s thick cloud layers, searched for an elusive core, and returned dazzling images of colossal storms and chaotic cloud bands. But all good things must come to an end,
Time seems to move faster as we age, but it turns out that maybe the opposite is true: our days on Earth are getting longer over time, and it’s all thanks to the Moon’s effect on our planet’s rotation. But don’t go planning your extra sleep-ins just yet. A new study has traced the relationship