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Australia seems poised to become one of the global leaders in terms of renewable energy; after a study showed that the country could realistically go 100% renewable energy in just 10 years, now, a different study concluded that wind energy is already cheaper than fossil fuels. The research was led by Bloomberg New Energy Finance, […]
Society treats the sky like an “open sewer” – pumping carbon waste into the air the same way it pumped waste into waterways, and with the same results. People are getting sick, Gore explained, comparing the climate crisis to 19th-century cholera epidemics, including one in London where the outbreak was traced to a single water […]
Hunters are having a blast in northern California, with a simple purpose: hunt as many coyotes as possible. As you could guess, the event’s organizers tried to keep it as secretive as possible, but the local press estimated over 200 hunters participated in the (more or less) annual event. Opponents of the hunt – which […]
NASA’s Landsat Data Continuity Mission spacecraft aboard a United Launch Alliance Atlas V rocket is cleared for flight, and with the weather forecasts remaining excellent, it seems everything is set for the launch. The Landsat satellite operations began all the way back in 1972, providing a huge amount of useful satellite information. This eight generation […]
A lot of worry was spurred when a malfunction at Curiosity’s drilling mechanism jeopardized the entire mission, but now, everything seems to be working out just fine; the rover conducted its first test drill without any negative events. However, the real work is just beginning, as the first drilling-sampling operation took place. This is the […]
The apparently evergrowing consumption of coffee and caffeinated products continues to worry scientists, and until now, a maximum safety level had not been established. A common story When Matthew Penbross woke on a morning in August 2007, he wanted to be prepared. A natural desire, considering he was competing in the motocross races near Port […]
A new study has shown that children develop an interest in animals very early – toddlers toddlers prefer to look at an animal (even a snake or spider) than play with a pile of attractive toys. The paper was published by a team led by Vanessa LoBue from Rutgers University, and it investigates young children’s […]
Overfishing is a dramatic problem in most areas of the oceans, and many people are desperately trying to protect what’s left of the ecosystems; thankfully though, the European Union has approved a major reform by an enormous majority. The European Parliament was having its say in the on-going attempt to shake up Europe’s controversial Common […]
Our galaxy is teeming with billions of planets very much like our own, a new research suggests – many of them circling a star similar to our Sun. Earlier research suggested that if you want to find planets like our own, you must first find stars like our own; but a fresh analysis from the […]
It’s a big day for math wizzez around the world – the largest known prime number has just shot up: (257,885,161 – 1) breaks a four year dry spell in finding new prime numbers. Prime numbers are numbers that can only be divided by themselves and 1. Going up from 2, the prime numbers are […]
It was a mystery that kept astronomers scratching their heads for years, but now, it finally seems to be cracked: particles from inside the solar system bounce off a “ribbon” of energy boundary and neutral atoms from that collision stream inward. Why and how this happens remained a mystery for quite a while. Basically, this strange […]
A massive earthquake struck Wednesday east of Kira Kira in the Solomon Islands, with several already confirmed victims and injuries. “At 12 minutes past midday, a 7.9 earthquake in the Santa Cruz Islands (near the Solomon Islands) occurred. A shallow event.” He said. “The nearest part from our location estimate is an island called Ndeni, […]
William Kennewel wasn’t a big fan of water – drinking soda instead of it pretty much all the time; now, he has become living proof of the damage soft drinks can cause to your teeth. “I’m told a normal person has about 23 teeth, but … I only had 13 left and they had to […]
A while ago, I was telling you about the big garbage island in the middle of the Pacific ocean, and why you should use and reuse canvas bags instead of going for the plastic bags. But here are some quick facts about reusing bags. An average reusable bag requires the same amount of energy as […]
Her name is Wisdom, and she’s absolutely awesome! She’s the world’s oldest known living wild bird, at 62, and she produced a healthy living chick, surprising the entire world. It’s remarkable enough that she reached this age, with the lifespan for the typical albatross being somewhere between 30 and 40 years, but giving birth, and […]
British researchers from the University of Newcastle have discovered by mistake (how else?) that a species of sea urchin has the ability to use nickel and CO2 and turn it into shell. The natural ability of the sea urchins to absorb CO2 could be a model for an effective carbon capture and storage system. Lately, […]
Contrary to what you might think, this is not some rainbow slime dripping on the rocks – this is the wicked opal. Opal has quite some unique properties in the geological world; it doesn’t have a crystalline structure so you can’t really say that it’s a mineral, but a mineraloid, yet somehow you see it […]
Gold prospecting’s future may very well lie in a Petri dish – a species of bacterium forms nanoscale gold nuggets to help it to grow in toxic solutions of the precious metal, according to a new study published in Nature Chemical Biology. The bacteria could be used to collect gold from mine waste, says Frank […]
Iapetus is the third largest moon of Saturn, with a radius of about 42% that of our moon, and a mass that weighs up to only 2.5%. But Iapetus has a number of shocking features, unique throughout the entire solar system. The Walnut Moon This is the equatorial ridge that runs along the center of […]
The (still debated) asteroid that slammed into the Earth 65 million years ago and played a crucial role in wiping dinosaurs out, may have actually been a binary system- 2 asteroids engaged in an orbit around each other. Double trouble The surprising claim comes from analyzing the proportion of asteroid craters on Earth that were […]
The remains of the legendary Richard III have been found beneath a Leicester car park – where else? DNA, carbon dating and the whole shebang showed, beyond reasonable doubt, that the remains belong to the king, explained lead archaeologist Richard Buckley, from the University of Leicester, so the finding I was telling you about a […]
After the successful test in which the Iranians sent a monkey into outer space and back safely, their goal of sending a man to the Moon by 2025 seems quite feasible. Ok, so some liked this, the US didn’t really like it but that’s a different story – but Iran’s space program is not really […]
The Uroburos is a mythological symbol representing a serpent or dragon eating its own tail – a symbol of cyclicality and eternal return. The Cassini spacecraft watching Saturn recently caught a glimpse of a storm that looks remarkably like the mythological creature – only it choked on its own tail. The storm came out incredibly […]
Open-fire stoves represent the biggest domestic environmental threat today, killing 3.5 million people a year—more deaths than caused by malaria and HIV/AIDS combined. But now, cookstoves that produce biochar could provide a viable alternative, saving millions of lives and giving a boost to local agriculture. Cookstoves are common in many parts of the world, from […]
Your work is appreciated, and we are thankful for it! If you have any stories or anything at all from your work, be sure to share it with the rest of us – we’ll definitely post it. As a small symbol of our appreciation, here’s a picture of a badger and a fox cub who […]
Owls are fascinating animals, but by far their greatest trick is turning their heads at 270 out of the 360 degrees. If we (or any mammal) would attempt this, we would cut the blood supply to our brains and pass out. But as it turns out, the bird’s bone and vascular structures are smart enough […]
Water and energy are two of the things we pretty much take for granted – but we shouldn’t. Water is not infinite, and if you consume it at a high enough rate, it will run out; meanwhile, there’s a tight connection between living standard and energy consumption – and as the population continues to increase […]
Dean Keith Simonton, a psychology professor at the University of California, has published a comment piece in the journal Nature, where he makes a rather shocking and disturbing claim: mankind will never produce a genius like Newton, Einstein or Darwin. He claims that this will happen because we’ve already discovered all the most basic […]
Ridges of Martian impact craters could be fossils of cracks in the Martian surface, formed by minerals deposited by flowing water, according to a new research. The findings, accepted for publication in Geophysical Research Letters, one of the most prestigious journals in the field, could explain a mysterious network of ridges that vein across the […]
They say that the bully is actually the victim – and studies on adolescent rats seem to support this idea; younger rats subjected to a stressful environment turn out to be aggressive adults, behaviors that may be explained by accompanying epigenetic changes and altered brain activity. Whoa, let’s slow down a little. Much like humans, […]
Birds may not be the smartest bunch out there, but man do they know how to navigate! Pigeons can get around towns and even continents with stunning accuracy – except for a particular spot in New York. Whenever homing pigeons were launched from that particular spot, they would always get lost. They could easily go […]
In case you didn’t know, China has a massive problem with smog; the dark shroud has covered a large part of the country, with Beijing suffering for several days now. But instead of getting better, the situation seems to be worsening day by day; now, Shanghai seems to be feeling the effects of the smog […]
If you think intestinal parasites are a recent problem, you’d better think again. Ancient tapeworm eggs found in 270-million-year-old shark poop suggests these parasites may have plagued animals for much longer than previously believed. Tapeworm are nasty parasites that clink to the walls of the intestines of virtually all vertebrates (animals that have a backbone); […]
As our search for alien planets improves and intensifies, astronomers are starting to pay more and more attention to one crucial aspect of alien planets: whether they fit into the ‘habitable zone‘ – the so-called Goldilocks area in which a planet is not too close and not too far from its star – just perfectly […]
A facelift of the Colosseum brought to light centuries of markings and inscriptions on its walls, but archaeologists have little idea to what they mean. Removing the accumulated grime and calcification, experts discovered layers of inscriptions on the section of a wall depicted above, ancient designs in red and fade grey blended with black left […]
You’ve got me, I’m love watching anime. I wouldn’t say I’m a huge fan or that I have enough time to watch as much as I’d like, but some series definitely sparked my interest – and there’s millions of others like me out there. So what made these atypical Japanese cartoons so loved throughout the […]
Close, but not too close – an asteroid like that can crash on our planet every 1200 years, but there’s no reason to worry, even though it will make a flyby on February 15, passing at a distance of only 26.780 km. For comparison, the distance to the Moon varies from around 356,400 km to […]
Usually, whenever celebrities advocate some cooky thing that supposedly does a whole lot of good, it’s just a trend or a cooky idea — but Cameron Diaz is really on to something here: she wants you to stop flushing every time after you pee. Every flush takes somewhere between 4 and 10 liters of water […]
Remember how a few days ago, the entire media and popullation of China was outraged by the smog covering a significant part of China, including Beijing ? The extent of the smog was so big you could easily see it from outer space. Well, predictions claimed the smog will dissipate in a few days, but […]
Hawaiian surfer Garrett McNamara has nerves (and other body parts) of steel! According to all reports, he broke his own Guinness world record with a ride on a wave that was about 30 meters (about 100 feet). The stage was set in Nazare, Portugal, as a jetski towed him to a monstruous setting, with constant […]
We love cats so much, with their fluffy fur and cuddly personality, that we sometimes forget just how deadly of a predator they really are. According to a new study, they are responsible for the deaths of between 1.4 and 3.7 billion birds and 6.9-20.7 billion mammals annually. The study, which was published in Nature […]
A former soldier who sadly became a quadruple amputee during his time in Iraq after an explosion three years ago has undergone a very rare double arm transplant at John Hopkins Hospital. Brendan Marrocco, 26, of Staten Island, who underwent the marathon surgery last month has gone through a lot; he was the first first […]
My apologies, ladies and gents! I’ve been neglecting this section of our site, as some of you have told me via email (feedback is always welcome, by the way). So after a short pause, we’re bringing it back, stronger than ever: Here’s the GeoPicture of the week: This is a lake called Langisjór, covering an […]
It’s a well known fact that yoga does good to the mind and body, but the extent of that benefit is something still debated. Now, yoga supporters have just gotten a big hand from a study conducted by psychiatrists. “Yoga has also become such a cultural phenomenon that it has become difficult for physicians and […]
Is someone chopping onions? Common dolphins have been seen to aid a dying companion, trying as hard as they could to support him and help him breathe. This is the first time that a group of dolphins has been observed trying to aid a dying companion; five individual dolphins formed a raft with their bodies […]
The American (NASA) and European (ESA) space agency have teamed up to create a new spacecraft that will hold a groundbreaking telescope. The mission, Euclid, will look at billions of galaxies, create a more accurate map of the Universe, and also map out the mysterious dark matter and dark energy. Dark Matter and Dark Energy […]
It’s a bird! No, it’s a plane! No, it’s… microbes ?! High up in the atmosphere, 10.000 meters above ground, researchers have found over 100 species of bacteria doing just fine in stormy clouds. Each year, hundreds of millions of tons of dust, water and man-maned pollutans make their way into the atmosphere, often traveling […]
A historic expedition that took over 10 years of planning and 3 years of preparation, a national effort from both researchers and students, finally concluded today. The team from Montana State University managed to drill into a lake that has been frozen for hundreds of thousands of years. After hauling equipment hundreds of miles across […]
Pound for pound, spider silk is one of the strongest materials in the world; it’s about five times stronger than a piano wire – and a piano wire has to put up with a lot of pressure. Researchers have long tried to develop materials which mimic the remarkable properties of spider silk, but only now […]
I recently came across a map of the population density done in 1918, and I’d really like to share it with you, as well as discuss some aspects. Here it is: Also, here is a map of the population density now. At a first glance, they seem strikingly similar, the same yellow (low density) areas, […]
