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Symbiosis is an absolutely fantastic adaptation in itself, but this case of deep sea symbiosis takes it to a whole new level: basically, a hermit crab uses an anemone as shell; scientists discovered this in a rare place, where to different extreme environments meet. Researchers discovered a junction of two strange environments off the coast […]
The largest solar flare since 2006 occurred Tuesday, when a massive amount of plasma was ejected at a speed of over 4 million miles per hour, causing some significant problems on Earth, forcing planes to reroute, knocking out power grids and blacking out a number of radios. “Super Tuesday? You bet!” joked Joseph Kunches, a […]
NASA admitted to something pretty scary: they were hacked 13 times last year alone, and several times hackers had “full, functional control” of the space agency’s information. According to Inspector General Paul K. Martin, the most powerful attack came from an IP in China, which broke into the network of NASA’s Jet Propulsion Laboratory, one […]
For almost 100 years it carried the blame of sinking the world’s most famous ship, but now, the ill-famed iceberg may be cleared, after some researchers claim they’ve found the true culprit – the Moon. Now don’t get the wrong idea, it was the collision with the ice mass that ultimately brought the demise of […]
Cassini has sent some new remarkable pictures which brilliantly illustrate the difference in size between Saturn and Titan, its largest moon. Saturn dwarfs its moon easily, even though Titan, at 3,200 miles across, is bigger than Earth’s moon, which has a diameter of only 2159 miles. If you look really closely above Saturn’s rings, there […]
Strange, huge explosions apparently fueled by solar energy are detonating just above the surface of Venus, a surprising new study concludes. Explosive Venus This is not the first time this unusual phenomenon, called ‘hot flow anomaly’ (of HFA) was observed; such events have been previously spotted above Earth, and possibly Saturn and Mars – but […]
Paleontologists claim to have tracked the origins of humans and other vertebrates to a worm that swam in today’s Canada. The team concluded that the extinct Pikaia gracilens is the most primitive known member of the chordate family. The chordate family includes fish, amphibians, birds, reptiles and mammals – pretty much all of what we […]
Diversity is one of the most shocking aspects when it comes to life on Earth, and knowing how many species walk this planet alongside us is perhaps one of the most important questions in science. However, despite major advancements being made in the field, an answer to that question is still miles away, as efforts […]
Since the start of the year, I’ve received quite a few questions regarding absolute temperatures – highest and lowest, so I decided to start a brief discussion around the two values, in which I will give the basic facts about them, so feel free to step in and add more info or questions. Absolute zero […]
Xinwei Wang, an associate professor of mechanical engineering at Iowa State studies thermal conductivity – and he had a funny feeling about spiders; so he ordered eight spiders — Nephila clavipes, golden silk orbweavers — and put them to work eating crickets and spinning webs in the cages he set up. Wang has been looking for organic […]
Ground robots are currently typically deployed by the US military in various explosive-ordinance-disposal missions. However, robots are currently unable to fulfill their potential across a greater range of missions mostly due to issues regarding mobility and manipulation. However, DARPA is trying hard to face those obstacles, and when they team up with Boston Dynamics, you […]
It’s been less than a month since we published the last thing about the Cassini probe, and the amazing spacecraft has done it again; this time it detected a thin, oxygen atmosphere, on a moon of Saturn – Dione. The study was published in the Geophysical Research Letters At 1122 km in diameter, Dione is […]
The oldest and thickest Arctic ice seems to be vanishing much faster than the younger, thinner ice at the edges of the Arctic ocean. The bright, white snow mass from the center is the perennial ice sea, which has survived for at least one year, while the larger, light blue area shows the full extent […]
I recently stumbled upon this absolutely dazzling chemistry experiment, and I just had to share it. What you will see is a pretty rare reaction in chemistry – an oscillation reaction. Three clear solutions are combined, and the color gradually changes to amber. Suddenly, the whole thing goes dark blue! Then it stays blue, reverts […]
Women in red dresses have twisted the minds of men for centuries, but a new study shows not only that we find women in red more attractive, but that we also think of them as being more… ahem… available. Basically, men rate women in red dresses as more interested in sex, hinting that men associate […]
During the past months we’ve been reporting several breakthroughs in the field of quantum computing, and now IBM seems ready to truly pave the way for quantum computers. Researchers announced they are now able to develop a superconducting qubit made from microfabricated silicon that maintains coherence long enough for practical computation. Whoa! That probably sounds […]
You probably remember the massive 9.1 earthquake that struck Japan last year and the subsequent problems that followed – most notably the huge tsunamis that struck the Fukushima nuclear plant, bringing it close to a meltdown. Now, according to the first scientific assessment made on the spot, the tsunami was indeed as formidable as the […]
According to a recent study published by researchers from the Kavli Institute for Particle Astrophysics and Cosmology (KIPAC), our galaxy may be ‘infested’ with nomad planets, which wander aimlessly instead of orbiting a star. Furthermore, the study concluded there may actually be 100,000 times more “nomad planets” in the Milky Way than stars. If this […]
Implantable medical devices, capable of delivering drugs or performing micro-surgery from inside the body, have been the subject of scientific research for decades now. A number of exciting prototypes have been developed in the past few years, as miniaturization allowed it, however reliability flaws rendered them unpractical. A new tiny device developed by Stanford electrical engineers, was presented […]
The world’s longest kidney transplant chain which just ended at Loyola Medical Center in Maywood, Illinois, USA was possible thanks to the people who just ‘paid it forward’. The chain started when Rick Ruzzamenti, a man who describes himself as being “impulsive” decided to donate his kidney, after being motivated by a friend who had […]
For decades, classrooms were caught in a debate between creationism and evolution, and now, teachers will once again be caught in a somewhat similar discussion regarding climate change. Planting the seeds of ignorance Recently leaked documents from The Heartland Institute, a conservative think tank, revealed plans to pay a non-climate scientist to create school curricula […]
Unexpected new findings from University of Maryland researchers show that a portion of our planet’s mantle survived Earth’s rough formation, including a collision with a planet-sized body which many believe led to the creation of the Moon, as we see it today. “It is believed that Earth grew to its current size by collisions of […]
It looks like not all is going bad for Italian researchers, after the trial of the seismologists: physicists from Italy have discovered the first evidence of a nucleus that doesn’t exist in nature and survives only for 10-10 seconds when created in a laboratory. Strange matter Hypernuclei contain all sorts of protons and neutrons, but […]
Alan Turing is considered by most to be the father of the computer; the British mathematician had one of the most tragic fates ever suffered by scientists. Aside from defining concepts such as ‘algorithm’ and ‘artificial intelligence’, he also put up an idea that repetitive biological patterns are generated by a pair of morphogens that […]
I will take the risk of being quite subjective: the trial against the Italian seismologists just got a lot more absurd. Six seismologists and one government official are charged with manslaughter after telling the public there is no major risk of an earthquake, right before the deadly temblor in 2009. Yesterday, the much anticipated and […]
Perhaps the most famous thing left behind on the Moon is a footprint, a boot-shaped impression in the moon dust, photographed and viewed by millions of people. If everything goes according to plan, in the future, many people visiting the Moon will look at it and refer to it as ‘the first’. But about 100 […]
After two decades of drilling in the frozen wastelands of Antarctica, Russian researchers have finally managed to drill down to lake Vostok, which has been sealed under kilometers of ice for over 15 million years. When they first announced they reached the water, biologists were ecstatic; not only did they get a unique chance to […]
The speed at which someone walks and the likelihood of dementia don’t have absolutely anything in common at a first glance, but according to a study published in the British Medical Journal in 2009 there is a ‘strong association’ between the two. They also said at a conference that grip strength in middle-aged men was […]
Some black holes are just meant to survive, regardless of what they go through. This is probably the case with the HLX-1 black hole, 20.000 times more massive than the Sun, which is practically floating on the outskirts of a galaxy. The problem with this supermassive black hole is that judging by its size, should […]
When we started putting satellites on orbit, few could have pondered the idea of space junk, and even fewer would have guessed that a time will come when we will have to clean up after our spatial enterprises. But the time came, and really soon, and space junk is a real problem. This is why […]
Researchers successfully tested gene therapy in rats to stimulate the production of a chemical which naturally occurs in the brain and stops seizures from taking place. About 3.000.000 people are suffering from epilepsy in the US alone, and a major characteristic of this lifelong disease is uncontrollable seizures which prevent sufferers from normally carrying on […]
Four hundred of the most popular lipsticks in the US contain trace levels of lead, according to tests conducted by the federal government – a number much bigger than what was expected. Five of the L’Oreal and Maybelline lipsticks ranked among the top 10 most contaminated brands, as well as two Cover Girl and two […]
Seropositive volunteers participated in what can turn out to be a revolutionary test, conducted in Belgium, at the Antwerp Institute of Tropical Medicine, Antwerp University Hospital and Antwerp University, involving a new therapeutic vaccine that uses cells from their own bodies; the cells are then charged and reinjected into their system. A cure for AIDS […]
Life on Earth started out in a ‘small little pond’, just like Darwin, the father of evolution, proposed more than 140 years ago, according to a provocative new study. According to this study, the primordial cells were ‘created’ (though germinated would be a better word) in pools of condensed vapor which appeared as a result […]
Based on how the tectonic plates are moving now, no later than one hundred million years, Asia and the Americas will merge into one huge supercontinent, named Amasia. Geophysicists have long theoretized this, but a team of researchers from Yale University offered a new view on how Amasia will be formed. Continental drift Continental drift […]
NASA is trying to push an idea that has been around for quite a while: a “human-tended waypoint” near the far side of the moon, a mission perfect for an international partnership and with a huge scientific value. I really, really recommend going to NASA’s page for a lovely inside scoop. NASA declared that they […]
The financial problems for NASA continue to deepen, as the Obama budget slashes another $226 million from the US space agency’s Mars exploration program, relying on a possible but uncertain partnership with Europe; and this is not the worst news. The biggest budget cuts are aimed at robotic exploration. The budget stated that “support for […]
Kenneth Boehr was doing the usual chemistry class, not expecting more than you would from any other ten year old students. The same for Clara Lazen, one of his students, who started working on a molecule building kit, while looking at the periodic table she was handed; she handed her teacher a model constructed from […]
Have you ever seen a model of the solar system? They’re just great! But most of them have one big fault – they’re not to scale. But that’s not the case with the biggest model in the world, located in Sweden, which stretches around the entire country and represents everything to scale. The Sun is […]
No less than 1 million birth control pills have been taken from the shelves by big pharma Pfizer in the United States because they might not contain enough contraceptive to prevent pregnancy. Whoa! Wait just a moment there. They might not have enough contraceptive? As in, if I took the pills, I might get pregnant? […]
For the first time, a NASA spacecraft has detected matter from outside our solar system – matter that drifted from some other part of our galaxy right to us. This interstellar material was spotted by Interstellar Boundary Explorer (IBEX), a spacecraft with the purpose of studying the outskirts of our solar system from its orbit […]
In the not so distant future, scientists could be able to eavesdrop on a patient’s inner monologues or communicate with those who cannot speak, thanks to a breakthrough made by researchers from the University of California, Berkeley. They have astonishingly managed to crack the ‘code’ of a brain wave by decoding electrical activity in a […]
We were telling you a few days ago about a solar storm set to hit Earth, but as it turns out, this isn’t all bad news. In its way towards our planet, the storm also hit Mars, with the NASA Mars rover, revealing some interesting information regarding the amount of radiation an astronaut would be […]
Monday marks the beginning of the new Chinese Year, the Year of the Dragon and Chinese communities all around the world are preparing for the extravagant festivities which will take place, including vibrant parades and huge manifestations. However, along with the joy of a new year, the dragon also brings a warning, regarding population growth […]
Graphene is starting to show its really interesting and exciting properties; recently, scientists have managed to put together two separate properties which usually don’t go together: it is iridescent like a butterfly’s wing, and superhydrophobic, like a rose petal or this material. The engineered surface could have applications in liquid transportation and analysis, or due […]
According to a new report released by the Chinese authorities, global warming “threatens China’s march to prosperity by cutting crops, shrinking rivers and unleashing more droughts and floods“. China, the world’s second largest economy and biggest polluter understands that “greenhouse gases from industry, transport and shifting land-use poses a long-term threat to China’s prosperity, health […]
There has been a lot of fuss lately about shale gas, which has become increasingly important in the past decade, particularly due to hydraulic fracturing (or fracking), a modern technique used to extract it from the underground. Many have proposed natural shale gas as a supposedly clean bridge fuel, fit to address climate change and […]
Federal regulators have designated almost 42,000 square miles of ocean as critical habitat for the leatherback turtles, the largest turtles in the world; even though this is a much welcomed initiative, the surface is far, far less than environmentalists and biologists were expecting. A haven for turtles This protected area is the first of its […]
Ever since researchers started studying the Earth’s spin, they noticed that the spin isn’t perfect. Many believe this is a result of the different elements in the Earth’s core, mantle and crust, which have different densities and generate different friction. Most researchers studying this wobble agreed that the mantle would have to respond to the […]
An artificial brain has taught itself how to estimate the number of objects in an image without actually counting them, showcasing abilities displayed by many animals, as well as humans. Due to the fact that the model wasn’t preprogrammed with numerical abilities (it can’t count), it is believed that this skill emerged as a result […]
