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What we’re seeing here is an ammonite fossil. Ammonites are an extinct group of marine invertebrate animals which were basically ubiquitous throughout the Mesozoic, but went extinct after it. Finding an ammonite fossil is therefore not particularly rare, and they can be found in many places of the world. What makes it special is the fact […]
Corals have been around for hundreds of millions of years, but even before them, 550 million years ago, animals were building reefs. A new study has found that Cloudina, the first animals to have hard shells built reefs too. Cloudina lived towards the end of the Ediacaran period – the last geological period of the Proterozoic Eon, immediately […]
The Moon and sleep For centuries, people have thought that the Moon affects sleep patterns. But does it really? Many people report increased sleepiness when there is a full moon, and there have even been some studies linking the Moon with sleep patterns. However, a new study conducted by researchers from the Max Planck Institute of […]
Chimps prefer silence to all types of Western music(even classical music), but that doesn’t mean they don’t like music at all. A new study published in the American Psychological Association found that chimpanzees like traditional African and Indian music. “Our objective was not to find a preference for different cultures’ music. We used cultural music from […]
Researchers have detected the smallest force ever recorded – 42 yoctonewtons – using a system of super-cooled atoms. Yocto-what? The Newton, named after sir Isaac Newton, is the international unit of measure for force. 1 Newton is equal to 1 kilogram times 1 meter over 1 second square (1N = 1 kg * 1 m […]
A new study has shown that neurotoxic pesticides blamed for the huge drop in bee numbers are also equally affecting butterflies, worms, fish and birds. Killing the Bees Analyzing two decades of research on the topic, they found out that two classes of pesticides – neonicotinoids and fipronil – show “clear evidence of harm”. “We are witnessing […]
A while ago, we were telling you about the discovery of a huge exoplanet – a gas giant, found just 155 light years away from Earth. The head researcher behind that study was Marie-Eve Naud. Her main research field is the detection and characterization of exoplanets, with a focus on astrobiology. She was kind enough to talk […]
When theoretical chemists are potrayed in the media, it’s usually not for their musical experiences – but that’s exactly what happened to Dr David Glowacki, a Research Fellow at the Royal Society, affiliated with Stanford. Glowacki was kicked out of a classical music concert for attempting to crowd surf during a performance of Handel’s “Messiah.” Everything started […]
Grüner See (Green Lake) is a lake in Styria, Austria in a village named Tragöß. During the winter, Grüner lake is just like any other lake, nice and calm, surrounded by a county park. However, it is surrounded by mountains, and during the spring, when the temperature rises and the snow melts, the basin of land below […]
Using fMRI machines to peer into the brains of artists is not really a new idea, we’ve even done it to animals as well, so I was quite surprised to see that no one used them to analyze writers as they go through their creative process. But this is exactly what German researchers did now – […]
Last month, the Niels Bugge Cartoon Award asked illustrators and cartoonists from around the world to submit drawings based on a basic theme: climate. Oceans are in our hands,” they proclaimed, and participants from all around the world put forth their best interpretations (often satyrical) of the current climate situation. You can check their website to […]
In the past years, several types of invisibility cloaks have been developed, hiding objects not only from light, but also from sound and even heat. But this is the first time an invisibility cloak for touch has been developed. Recently, we’ve written quite a lot about invisibility cloaks – how they work, how they can be […]
Taking food away from C. elegans in larval stages suspends their development; while they still wiggle around and look for food, they are in a state of arrested development. However, when food becomes plentiful again, they start to develop normally – but live twice as long. This remarkably simple way of achieving longevity is not entirely surprising. It […]
Astronomers have discovered a previously unspotted geological feature on Saturn’s moon, Titan. Pictures taken by the Cassini probe revealed a transient geological feature – a “magic island”. Now you see it, now you don’t The bright, mysterious object was seen in Ligeia Mare, the second-largest sea on Saturn’s moon Titan. But Cassini took pictures of […]
A month ago, on May 25, a large mudslide rushed down a Colorado mountain near the town of Collbran covering an area three miles long and one-half to three-quarters of a mile wide. It claimed the lives of three ranchers, caused a small earthquake and covered an area three miles long and one-half to three-quarters of a mile […]
Paul Barton, a 50 year old pianist fulfilled his dream, as he sat behind his piano just a few metres away from the gentle giants. He transported his piano up a mountain in Thailand – so he could play Beethoven for old, injured, and blind elephants. A lifelong dream “It was a 50th birthday present to myself, my […]
We were telling you a while ago about NASA growing vegetables in space, on the International Space Station. So far, the project has been successful, and everything has worked out fine – so it’s harvest time! In this picture we see American astronaut, Steve Swanson, harvesting lettuce grown on board the ISS. “Expedition 40 commander, harvests […]
The energy industry simply isn’t keeping up with what Elon Musk wants to do. Musk, chairman of the solar installer SolarCity and founder of electric car company Tesla Motors announced that SolarCity will acquire a solar panel manufacturer and start building factories “an order of magnitude bigger” than those existing today. This comes just a […]
Recent swarms of tiny earthquakes inside Hawaii’s Mauna Loa signal that the volcano may be coming back to life. But don’t cancel your vacation plans just yet. Mauna Loa is one of five volcanoes that form the Island of Hawaii in the U.S. It is the largest subaerial volcano in both mass and volume, and […]
How do you act when you’re at a job interview? Do you just go and be yourself, showing your true qualities and defects, or is it all a role in which you say what the interviewer wants to hear? According to a new research, sadly, the latter may be the way to go more often […]
There’s been a lot of discussion regarding the warm or cold blooded nature of dinosaurs. The traditional belief was that they were cold blooded, like today’s lizards, but an increasing amount of evidence indicated that they could regulate their body temperature, like today’s mammals. Now, a new metabolic study showed that the answer is somewhere […]
Today, Elon Must, the founder and owner of Tesla Motors announced that they were releasing all the patents they own, for free, for everyone to use. The release of over 200 patents was announced in style, through a blog entry called “All our patents are belong to you“. ” Yesterday, there was a wall of Tesla […]
A class of drugs currently used to treat leukemia has been found to have some severe side effects – positive ones, that is. The drug was found to drastically boosting immune responses against many different cancers, reports a new study. The drug class is referred to as p110´ inhibitors. Recently, it has been used with […]
Whenever you’re eating a fish or some other marine creature, think just for a moment that it may actually be worth more as a CO2 storing machine than a food. First of all, let’s just make this clear: we’re unsustainably eating fish. If we continue current trends, we’ll soon be facing a massive fish crisis, […]
When you think about ‘gamers’, pretty unpleasant stereotypes usually pop to mind. You’ll likely think about young kids without many friends, spending countless hours of the day and night in front of their computer, or perhaps 30 year old men still living in their parents basement or something. However, a new study has shown that […]
What’s the most common mineral on Earth? Is it quartz, limestone? Maybe olivine? Well, if you take into consideration the entire planet, the most common mineral would be something known as silicate-perovskite – but now, that mineral finally has a name. On June 2, bridgmanite was approved as the formal name for silicate-perovskite – possibly of the Earth’s […]
The 65 year-old iconic Turing Test was passed for the very first time by a supercomputer program named Eugene Goostman. Eugene managed to convince 33% of the human judges that it too was human. The Turing Test The Turing test is a test of a machine’s ability to exhibit intelligent behaviour equivalent to, or indistinguishable from, […]
Intense light from a huge explosion (a gamma ray burst) that took place shortly after the birth of the Universe (12 billion years ago) has reached Earth, and was observed by researchers. Gamma Ray bursts are the strongest explosions since the Big Bang – in just 10 seconds, they release more energy than our sun in […]
A spacecraft from Earth is about to do something no other spacecraft has done before: take off, orbit a comet, and send a lander to it. The European Space Agency (ESA), NASA’s European counterpart has developed the Rosetta probe to hurl towards Comet 67P/Churyumov-Gerasimenko. The mission is simple in principle, but the work behind it is […]
We’ve probably all experimented it: you don’t have anything useful or even fun to do, but you don’t want to go to bed just yet – so you just browse your computer or tablet for a few minutes… or hours. Now, researchers from the University of Utrech have come up with a scientific explanation for […]
When we think of CO2 emissions, we generally tend to think of air pollution and global warming; we tend to ignore the fact that a huge part of all the CO2 emissions is absorbed by the oceans, and the oceans are becoming more and more acidic. The process is just getting started, and it’s gonna […]
Astronomers operating the Hubble telescope have captured the most comprehensive (and most colorful) picture ever assembled of the evolving Universe. This was part of a study called the Ultraviolet Coverage of the Hubble Ultra Deep Field (UVUDF) project. Prior to this study, there was a significant lack of data for astronomers. They knew a lot about the […]
An international team of astronomers reported the discovery of two new planets orbiting a very old and nearby star to the Sun named Kapteyn’s star; one of the planets, Kapteyn b, is potentially habitable – it has the right size, and is at the right distance from its start to host liquid water. What makes it even […]
Would you believe me if I told you that under this rusty, abandoned metal cap there lies the deepest hole ever dug by mankind? That beneath this metal seal, which measures only 9 inches in diameter, there are 12,262 meters (40,230 ft) of nothingness? You might have your doubts — but hear me out. A journey […]
With the football (soccer) World Cup in sight, many are worried about the negative environmental impact the competition will have, in a country already torn apart by poverty. But some are trying to look at this as an opportunity to help preserve biodiversity, especially the armadillo, the endemic species which inspired this year’s World Cup […]
Dr. Rainer Krähenmann is a Project Leader at the Neuropsycho-pharmacology and Brain Imaging Department of Psychiatry at the University Hospital for Psychiatry in Zürich, Switzerland. He is interested in researching the neural correlates of both altered and pathological states of consciousness. Currently, he is involved in an fMRI study investigating the functional networks of hallucinogen-induced […]
The British summer has always been a subject of fascination and annoyance, for its fickle, rainy nature. But a new study using supercomputers has shown that climate change will cause even more intense storms and rainfall, with flash flooding becoming a common occurrence. The study published in the journal Nature Climate Change shows the first evidence that […]
Optimists make the most of life? A new study has shown that cynics are much more likely to develop dementia in later stages of life. Cynicism is an attitude of scornful or jaded negativity, especially a general distrust of the integrity or professed motives of others. Researchers from the University of Eastern Finland in Kuopio have conducted a […]
Researchers have erased and then reactivated memories in rats, profoundly impacting the animals’ reaction to past events. This is the first study ever to demonstrate the ability to selectively erase and then reactivate a memory by stimulating nerves in the brain at frequencies that strengthen synapses, the connection between neurons. The Eternal Sunshine of the Spotless […]
When I read this, I initially thought it was a joke – but sadly, that’s not the case. While the IPCC and virtually the entire scientific community is worried about climate change, warning about droughts and heat waves which will cause famine and water shortages, the GOP held a meeting where they decided that the IPCC is, […]
A new study reports that almost 30 percent of the world’s population (2.1 billion people) is now obese or overweight. The highest proportion of overweight and obese people – 13% of the global total – live in the United States, a country which accounts for only 5% of the world’s population. Obesity rates have increased virtually […]
OK, we’ve heard of tornadoes plenty in the last years. As if that wasn’t enough, we’ve even seen water tornadoes and fire tornadoes, but mosquito tornadoes? It’s like the tornado version of Captain Planet… with mosquitoes. OK, spoiler alert: this is not actually a tornado – it’s a huge, vertical swarm of insects, so maybe even […]
OK, wasps are nothing to joke around with. They are the scumbags of the animal kingdom – they’re always up to no good. The thing is, they’re really good at being up to no good! After all, they used to grow in dinosaur feces, and they’ve been around for over 100 million years – more […]
Extinction and emergence of species are natural phenomena – but the rate at which extinction is happening now is anything but natural. A new study has shown that humans are causing species to become extinct 1000 times faster than they naturally would. Killing the world, one species at a time The new estimate of the […]
Blue lava? Not quite It’s a volcano, but not the kind of volcano we’re used to seeing. This is called a Cerulean eruption, and the blue tint that surrounds the lava comes from flames produced when escaping sulphuric gases burn. The volcano contains large amounts of pure sulfur, which emits an icy violet color as it burns, […]
I like it when people talk about climate change. I even like it when they speak against climate change – as long as they bring arguments and act rationally. People shouldn’t be forbidden from talking about these kind of things, one way or another – everybody should be encouraged to look at the scientific facts, […]
It’s time for another featore on ZME Science! We always present you the latest and most interesting research, but we don’t spend nearly enough time talking about the people who do the research. Here, we’ll be showing you not only a review of the most fascinating studies of the week, but who the people behind […]
We’ve already written about the damage done to the Antarctic ice sheet, and how sadly, its collapse seems irreversible. A new study has analyzed some of the consequences of that collapse – it could devastate global food supply, drowning vast areas of crop lands across the Middle East and Asia. The report urges the Obama administration […]
A small island, unique wildlife 1100 km off the coast of Mexico, there lies a small chunk of rock called the Clarion Island. Formerly called Santa Rosa, the island has an area of under 20 square km; no one lives there, and aside for a few Mexical sailors which come and go every couple of […]
Researchers have discovered the earliest evidence of a bird pollinator visiting flowers, presumably to feed on the nectar – if true, this means that bird pollinator/plants interactions were already taking place 47 million years ago. When you think about pollinators, you mostly think about bees or butterflies – but birds are significant pollinators too. Birds, particularly […]
