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Some species of bacteria can survive virtually anywhere: in acids, in nuclear waste, at extremely low or high temperatures, at extreme pressures, and so on; extreme microbes that survive on gases thrown out by Siberian hot springs may have played an extremely important role in the formation of our planet’s atmosphere and its composition, a […]
Over 50 species of pupfish are known from the US to Venezuela, and they are all pretty much the same – except for the ones in two places: the Yucatan peninsula in Mexico and a Caribbean island. Generally speaking, the species of pupfish do the same things. “They look the same and they act the […]
The box jellyfish (commonly known as the sea wasp) is not only the most venomous creature in the world, but it also holds a few other major surprises. They may seem like rather simple creatures at a first glance, but researchers are now convinced they are nothing like this; as a matter of fact, they […]
Space shuttle Endeavour was set to launch a few days ago, and everything seemd to go according to plan; however, technical difficulties are forcing the NASA engineers to delay the launch at least until the end of the week (probably more), which is bad news for everybody who had planned a visit to the launch […]
The quantum world is entirely different from what we see around us; it has its own laws, its own algebra, etc. It’s a really bizarre place, but that can yield wonderous developments as well. Since the quantum laws are so different, it’s hard to actually observe them, so instead, thought experiments are used. But for […]
The planet in case is 55 Cancri e, and it’s 60 per cent larger in diameter than Earth but eight times as massive, which makes it twice as dense as Earth, and almost as dense as lead. Earth like rocky planets Generally speaking, planets come in two flavours: rocky earth-like planets, or gas giants […]
As I was telling you a few days ago, after Discovery, Endeavour is also preparing for its last trip, led by space veteran Mark Kelly. The weird thing is that Endeavour, which will be retired after today’s last mission, is at the moment also NASA‘s youngest orbiter, which kind of speaks a lot about NASA’s […]
Deadly tornadoes are rampaging the United States, killing an estimated number of 193 people in five states already, and showing people that this is just a taste of what’s to come. The majority of deaths (128) has been in Alabama, and authorities seem pretty unprepared to takek care of the situation. Alabama Governor Robert Bentley […]
When Biosphere 2 was launched in 1991, the idea seemed to be absurd. A few years after that, it suddenly seemed to be a great idea, and the results were eagerly awaited; but the results didn’t came… Biosphere 2: the making The point was to make a terrarium, connect it with some other enclosures, and […]
We already know about numerous extremophiles, microbes that can live in incredibly extreme conditions, which would easily kill almost every other creature. There are bacteria which survive in extremely high or low temperatures, in substances with an extreme pH, surrounded by nothing but solid rock, in the depths of the ocean, and so on. But […]
The situation at the Fukushima nuclear plant was dangerous for several weeks, but the danger of nuclear power plants has greatly been exaggerated. To get an idea about what the situation is at Fukushima right now, if you are in Tokyo right now, the radiation you are exposed to is about as big as you […]
The world scientific community is absolutely abuzz with the rumour that the Higgs boson, the elusive God particle, may have just been detected. The rumour started after an internal note was leaked from the Large Hadron Collider (LHC); it’s not yet exactly clear if the memo is authentic, but it seems real enough to have […]
Nostalgia time folks; you might want to sit down for this, because this time it’s the typewriter edition. The last typewriter factory (yes, it still existed in 2011), Godrej & Boyce in Mumbai, India, is closing its doors. A little typewriter history The first typewriter was invented less than 150 years ago, in 1870, and […]
Carl Sagan must be twisting and twitching in his grave. SETI, the project which became synonymus with searching for extraterrestrial intelligent life, was unable to gether the $5 million it needed – which is just 0.0074% (!) of the United States military budget; talk about priorities… Anyway, SETI has shut down its telescope array, which […]
Endeavour will pretty soon begin its retirement, just like fellow space orbiter Discovery did just a while ago. However, Endeavour’s last flight will almost certainly be captain Mark Kelly’s last one too. Kelly, 47, showed his flying skills with twin brother Scott, and signed up for the Navy, then became pilots, and finally, became astronauts; […]
Telephones became mobile phones, mobile phones became smartphones, and smartphones will become… mind phones ?! According to neuroscientists at the University of California, San Diego, that’s not very far away from us. How did they come to this conclusion ? Well… They had subjects sit in front of a screen displaying a keypad, with different […]
The continuous expansion of human cities are forcing habitats, as well as plants and animals, to retreat more and more; however, more and more often there is nowhere else to retreat. As a consequence, plants and animals alike face extinction, and cannot escape this grim fate. Out of the 1,357 plant species that once thrived […]
In the years of the Cold War and the space race, the Soviets were extremely preoccupied with convincing their people (and the world) that they are by far the best; quite often, they used posters and images to send out the message they want to. Here are some of the best posters they used to […]
The great San Francisco earthquake took place on April 18, 1906, rupturing along the San Andreas fault for a total of 477 kilometers. The earthquake was so strong that it can be felt from Los Angeles to Nevada and Oregon, even though it had an esimated magnitude of 7.9, which makes it 10 times less […]
After decades in which environmentalism wasn’t really taken serious, big steps are being made in the right direction; however, without any legal guidelines, it’s often hard to implement measures that can protect nature and fight climate change. But now, the intriguing idea of giving legal rights to natural systems is getting more and more attention. […]
More than one quarter of children aged 16 and below living in the UK can expect to live to be 100, according to figures published by the Office for National Statistics; they also concluded that 11 million people who are alive today will reach that mark, which is quite surprising if you ask me, especially […]
You’d expect this from the Times, and it wouldn’t be so much of a surprise. But David Owen’s article entitled “Economy vs Environment” definitely says a lot about how things are going at the New Yorker these days; it was published three weeks ago, but I just came across it, and it’s never too late […]
This is one of those studies which makes you realize that being a researcher definitely has some unexpdected perks; it was funded by ERSC, and let me tell you, to get a grant from them, you really have to have a solid project, because the approval rate is somewhere around 17%. What they concluded from […]
I recently came across this poll, which was conducted about a year ago. Ok, so it’s not extremely actual, but one year can’t change the data significantly. So, almost 1 in 3 Texans believes that humans and dinosaurs roamed the earth at the same time, and over half of them don’t believe humans evolved from […]
I was telling you a while ago about the revolutionary material called graphene. Graphene is a one atom thick layer of carbon packed in a honeycomb lattice. Now, a team led by Professor Andre Geim, recipient of the Nobel Prize for graphene, showed that electric current (which is basically a flow of electrons) can magnetise […]
The world we live in is getting closer and closer to Star Trek everyday. Scientists announced today they were able to teleport special bits of light from one place to another. While this doesn’t mean that we will be (ever) able to teleport people, it involves some pretty awesome mind bending physics. Teleportation relies on […]
This weird armored mollusk is called a chiton, and scientists are amazed by it. They discovered eye-like structures on its body decades ago, but they had no idea what they were made of, if they could see or just sense light, or even if they were eyes at all, because they were structurally very […]
Staphylococcus aureus is a nasty fellow; it can be responsible for a variety of diseases, and it’s pretty resistant to a variety of treatments. But sometimes, it can get an upgrade, and become way more resistant to drugs, which means the staph bacteria becomes much more dangerous and much less treatable. So it’s definitely not […]
In a move that should make amateur and professional astronomersecstatic, NASA has released a trove of data from its sky-mapping mission, allowing scientists or pretty much anybody with an internet connection to access information and pictures about millions of stars, galaxies, asteroids, etc. Much of the information here is just an update for previous data, […]
Global warming shows more and more effects with eacy passing day. Russian arctic foxes are threatened by their red relatives, for the first time. For the first time in history, a red fox has been seen intruding on an arctic fox breeding den. The arctic fox is not prepared for a fight, because they are […]
Life on an oil platform is tough; it’s hard living on a piece of metal in the middle of the ocean, but you know that no matter what, safety comes first. So one can only imagine how many safety and probably structural precautions the people at Floatel Jupiter ignore, because that platform sunk like a […]
In a breakthrough discovery that could revolutionize transplants, British researchers have managed to create human kidneys from stem cells, which could lead to transplant patients growing their own organs; the artificial organs were created using human amniotic fluid and animal foetal cells. The kidneys are now about half of centimeter long, which is about what […]
[Whimsical article ahead, proceed at your own risk] In a surprising turn of events, semen from a species of duck has been found to totally destroy Esterichia Coli, a rather commonly and dangerous bacteria. Male mallard ducks, the… main contributors of the study are famous for their extremely long and spiral shaped genitalia, as well […]
Almost all Nobel prize laureates are active in an artistic field as well as in science. They are 25 times more likely (that’s 2500%) than an average adult to sing, dance or act, and 17 times more likely to be an artist. This proves wrong the general belief that there aren’t any useful connections between […]
The effects alcohol has on our brain are still not perfectly understood, and the general opinion and even some studies are biased because… well, generally speaking, alcohol is bad for you, and we tend to forget that students drink, teachers drink, scientists and artists drink. But according to a study conducted by the Waggoner Center […]
Cyanide is nasty. I don’t care if you’re a venomous snake, an elephant or Charlie Sheen, cyanide is something you don’t want, which makes it an excellent defense mechanism. Lotus corniculatus, commonly known as the bird’s-foot trefoil, a plant common throughout Europe, Asia and Africa has evolved so that it’s leaves have a cyanide reservoir, […]
Everybody was eager to see where the four space ships who will soon be retired will go; the idea was to chose a museum which somehow has connections with the space program, and where a lot of people can see it. Well, what city has more connections with the space program than Houston ? It […]
Yellowstone is without a doubt one of the most fascinating places on the face of the planet. But it doesn’t only attract families or people who want to relax, but it attracts scientists as well, and among them, geologists and geophysicists hold a top spot. University of Utah researchers made the first large-scale picture of […]
In the theoretical and absurd case of a pigeon going on a police identification line, do you think it would use the same processes you’d use ? If your answer is “yes”, you may seem a bit strange… but you’re right. A study published by researchers from the University of Iowa found that pigeons recognize […]
DNA nanotechnology is one of the most exciting branches of nanotechnologies, especially because it uses the ability of natural DNA strains to self assembly. Prof. Alexander Heckel and his doctoral student Thorsten Schmidt of Goethe University set out with exactly that thought in mind when they created two DNA rings with the size of only […]
Today, we celebrate 50 years since Yuri Gagarin went into outer space, thus becoming the first human being to do this. But there’s more to him than just that. Here’s a list of some of the things that make him awesome: 1. He was the first man to go into outer space, of course. 2. […]
Yuri Gagarin, a soviet astronaut was the first man to ever go into outer space, exactly 50 years ago, when his shuttle, Vostok, went into outer space and completed an orbit around the planet. Interestingly enough, Vostok 1 marked his only spaceflight, but what a spaceflight it was ! Many milestones were reached since spatial […]
The topic of modification of data in scientific research is definitely a hot one; the frequency at which researchers fabricate or falsify data is extremely hard to quantify and make a statistic from it. Many different studies or surveys have tried to do this, but the results varied greatly and were difficult to compare and […]
In a recent act that just baffles my mind, Tennesee, not one of the US brightest states, has passed a bill that makes it easier for virtually any creationist teacher to include religion in science class. They did this by including mythology in science classes to promote critical thinking. Now I wonder, do you think […]
The Berkeley Earth Surface Temperature project was launched by physics professor Richard Muller, a long time critic of studies led by the government regarding global warming. So he and a team of physicists and statisticians set out to challenge the general consensus on global warming, and prove that skeptics have good reasons to doubt. But […]
Tuesday will mark the 50th year since human space flight, since the day Yuri Gagarin left Russia and became the first man to go in outer space, as well as the 30th anniversary of the launch of the shuttle Discovery, the legendary but already retired space shuttle. This is the day when NASA will announce […]
In a surprising move that didn’t get quite a lot of attention, the FBI released an online document archive they’re calling the Vault, in which they openly address, among other things, the alleged aliens and flying saucers found at Roswell. Yes, it’s about little green men, like the ones who are usually portrayed in movies. […]
It’s not that uncommon for two stars to dance, but when three of them get together, and dance without singing, now that’s something uncommon. What do I mean ? Well, binary star systems are not really only in Star Wars, they’re quite common throughout the galaxy, but as it turns out, trinary systems might not […]
NASA engineers and technicians are making the last adjustments to the Mars Rover, which is about the size of a small SUV; the rover is set to be sent to Florida for launch later this year, so everybody’s in a hurry and trying to make everything as fast as they can, without making any mistake […]
Volcanoes have fascinated human beings since the dawn of time; thankfully, now we know enough not to think of them as powerful earth/fire gods, but to understand them as the magnificent phenomena they are. However, there are still many things we still haven’t been able to figure out them, and even if we would have, […]
