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A group of researchers at University of British Columbia and the Smithsonian Institution have discovered a new sensory organ in rorqual whales, a subspecies of baleen whales, which also includes the largest animal that has ever lived, the blue whale, capable of reaching 150 tonnes. The scientists involved in the study claim that this organ plays a vital role in […]
Last Saturday, after many meticulous preparatory stages and a couple of exasperating postponements, SpaceX was set to launch its Falcon 9 rocket, along with its Dragon capsule filled with food, supplies and science experiments destined for the International Space Station. A faulty valve, however, signaled officials to abort the launch with just ONE second to go. Years and […]
In an absolutely remarkable discovery, Professor Yun Hang Hu, along with associates at Michigan Technological University, have discovered a chemical reaction which can turn the alarmingly ever increasing greenhouse gas carbon dioxide into a solid-state semiconductor (Li2CN2), while also releasing energy in the process. You couldn’t ask for something better. CO2 is an extremely pesky compound for […]
A new study published by the Department of Energy’s Pacific Northwest National Laboratory found that pollution leads thunderstorm clouds to capture more heat than in normal, clean air conditions, thus becoming a contributing factor to global warming. Thunderclouds or deep convective clouds, by the scientific term, generally form and develop in any geographic location and […]
Nothing short of extraordinary, two people paralyzed from the neck down controlled a robotic arm to perform actions of various complexity, like manipulating objects, simply by using their minds. One of the participants involved in the demonstration of the brain to robotic arm set-up actually controlled the arm to retrieve a coffee recipient and eventually drank from […]
Scientists have uncovered pieces of fossilized amber containing tiny female insects called thrips, which upon closer inspections were found to have particles of pollen dusted over them. The insects found are around 100 million years old, officially making them the oldest pollination record ever found. During the lower Cretaceous Period, which corresponds to the recently discovered […]
According to the World Wildlife Fund‘s annual Living Planet report, humans are using Earth’s resources at a rate 1.5 times greater than the rate of replenishment. “During the 1970s, humanity as a whole passed the point at which the annual Ecological Footprint matched the Earth’s annual biocapacity. This situation is called “ecological overshoot”, and has continued since […]
The Cross River gorilla is a critically endangered gorilla species, native to the border region of Nigeria-Cameroon. Today, only about 250 to 300 individuals are alive, due to habitat loss and poaching, making it the rarest of all four gorilla species. It’s so rare and elusive, that no one has ever been able to record […]
Since the space shuttle program was cancelled last year, NASA has been looking for various alternatives to sending manned crews in space, particularly the International Space Station. A number of private space companies have jumped on the bandwagon since then, spearheaded by SpaceX, which is slated to make its first flight to the International Space […]
Astronomers have observed a huge sunspot group on the surface of the sun, sized at more than 60,000 miles across, which might outbreak in a potentially hazardous solar storm. From time to time, the sun spews huge energy releases called solar flares, which depending on their magnitude (the weakest are “C” class and the most powerful are […]
Horses are arguably one of the most helpful animals man has ever managed to domesticate. At first they were used as source of meat and milk, but it was soon evident that horses were a lot more suited as labor animals than as a direct food medium. Important agricultural advancements were made possible thanks to horses, and […]
Last year, we reported on one of the most gruesome and horrific acts that goes on in nature; it seems so unreal, like if some sort of SciFi monstrous scenario transcended into the realm of reality, that one has a hard time wrapping his head around it. Yes, as some of you might have read previously, I’m […]
Skin and hair color are most inherited from parents, and usually hint pretty accurately to a person’s ethnicity. Dark skin and hair are most common in the regions around the Equator, however natives of the Solomon Islands, an archipelago east of Papua New Guinea, seem to defy common expectations, as around 10% of the population […]
An interesting conversation can instantly make a turn for the worst when bad breath hops into the scene. We’ve all had our share of bad experiences whether we were more or less forced to tolerate the repulsive stench of bad breath or we had a case of bad breath ourselves. Scientists at Nippon Dental University, […]
During the tumultuous Cretaceous and Jurassic periods if you could only choose one word to describe the world, it would’ve certainly be ‘big’. Big dinosaurs, big plants, big trees, big fish and big insects, of course. Chinese scientists have found almost perfectly preserved fossils of two previously unknown extinct flea species in Inner Mongolia, which are roughly […]
Most digital devices today, like displays or blue-ray disks, use lasers which emit the colors red, green and blue, which when combined can render any color in the visible spectrum of light. However, current technology requires a separate laser for each color, since they produce monochromatic light. A team of researchers at Brown University has […]
Evolution, in very loose lines, is defined as the process which allows a species to survive by passing on the differentiating traits most likely to help offspring adapt to the world through means of natural and sexual selection. Considering the world around us has been shaped so much by human hand, a lot of people […]
Summer is set to kick-off with a series of beautiful Venus related events, from an astronomical point of view at least. This week, the planet will appear at its brightest in the night sky, as it nears almost ideal observational circumstances – close distance to Earth and sun phase. Also, at the beginning of June, […]
A team of researchers at Penn State University has identified 24 new species of skinks, a subspecies of lizards, native to the Caribbean Islands, turning the region’s fauna from one of the smallest lizard groups in the world to one of the largest. However, half of these new species are considered already extinct or very […]
Astronomers classify galaxies into three basic types: elliptical (flat, elongated shape), spiral (most easily recognizable and common – described by their disk shape and outward spiraling arms) and irregular (usually described by a irregular shape, typical to very young galaxies). One of the most fascinating galaxies known to man is the Sombrero galaxy, shaped like a hat […]
The Amur leopard is a beautiful leopard subspecies native to the region of the Russian far east, which since 1996 has been classified as critically endangered. Only a handful of specimens remain today, however a photo which surprised an Amur leopard in China suggests that the species’ numbers are steadily increasing, and conservation efforts are […]
“Would you make the same decisions in a foreign language as you would in your native tongue?” asks Boaz Keysar, a psychologist at the University of Chicago, who recently published a study that discusses this highly interesting question. The scientists involved in the study found that, indeed, counter to popular belief thinking in a foreign […]
A team of international scientists claim that they’ve found evidence of the first non-human species that cultivates planets for non-food purposes. The extremely fine feathered bowerbirds, native to Australia and Papua New Guinea, display an unique courtship behaviour, where males build a home-like structure, called bower, and decorate it with sticks, little stones, and brightly coloured […]
Scientists have described and proven how many of the world’s phenomenae function, from the very fundamental laws of Newtonian mechanics, to the discrete behaviors of quantum physics, eventually peering through some of the Universe’s most well kept secrets. It’s remarkable then, how little we know about how heat is conducted through and between materials. A better […]
The age-old question of who came first – the chicken or the egg – has been pondered countless times, and put great thinkers throughout history in a predicament. An oddity of nature which recently occurred on a Sri Lankan farm may offer clues towards answering the riddle. There a hen gave birth to a chick without […]
One of the cutting edge technologies currently used today in manufacturing allows for printing materials directly onto a surface to create electrically functioning devices which are very thin and flexible. The best example of such an application are organic light-emitting diodes (OLEDs), widely used as displays for most new generation smartphones commercially available now. The […]
A moonless night might offer the best setting for the best view of the upcoming Lyrid meteor shower in years this very weekend. The best time to catch it on display will be on Saturday night, although the skyline fireball display is set to rage on well into the following morning. The Lyrids are somewhat […]
Graphene has been countless times hailed as the material at the forefront of the coming technological leaps ahead in the future, thanks to its extraordinary properties and countless applications. Electronics is where graphene shines the most, though, and now scientists at University of Wisconsin-Milwaukee have managed to synthesize a semiconductor variant of graphene which might lead […]
Some time ago we told you about one of the most fascinating facts this blog has ever published, namely how there are “nomad” or “rogue” planets outside our solar system, which travel aimlessly through interstellar space without having to circle a certain star. It’s estimated that there are actually more such nomad planets haunting through […]
It seems we’ve been privileged with yet another time-lapse video showing our marvelous blue marble planet in all its splendor as seen daily by astronauts stationed at the International Space Station. This time, the whole video was shut from the ISS cupola, a dome-shaped structure fitted with seven specially developed windows, which astronauts use for observations, amplifying the sense of […]
Dmitri Krioukov, a physicist at University of California in San Diego, was recently fined by a police officer for allegedly driving through a stop sign. Confident that he did nothing of the sorts, Krioukov sought justice like most of us would, in court that is, however during the hearing he presented a somewhat atypical piece of […]
Sometime at the beginning of the year I mentioned in post that once stepping into the age of Terahertz electromagnetic waves (T-rays), which can penetrate any molecule and and then interpret it for identification, we will come to know a slew of new, grand applications, from surveillance , to medical, but possibly the most interesting […]
Researchers at North Carolina State University have developed a new technique of cooling electronic devices which they claim and prove through their findings that it can lead to an increase of performance by improving the rate of heat exchange, while also lowering the cost of manufacturing. The scientists’ findings might lead to a new generation […]
IBM has teamed up with Zapadoslovenska energetika (ZSE), the biggest electric company in Slovakia, for a feasibility study which aims to prepare Bratislava, the nation’s capitol, for plug-in electric vehicles. With this in mind, the companies will look at the best way to develop a “green highway” between Bratislava and the neighboring Austrian city of Vienna, which is about […]
A remarkable paleontological discovery surfaced from China recently, after scientists reported they’ve found fossils belonging to the Yutyrannus huali,a very close relative of the Tyrannosaurs Rex, which prove that its entire enormous bus-sized body was covered in feathers. This officially makes it the biggest animal covered in feathers ever found, and also forces paleontologists to rethink […]
Encompassing years worth of work, the Sloan Digital Sky Survey (SDSS-III) has now precisely measured the distance between over a quarter of a million galaxies. As part of the project, called the Baryon Oscillation Spectroscopic Survey, or BOSS, scientists built a massive map of all the studied galaxies so far, some more than six billion years ago […]
While on the macro-scale conventional scales make us of gravity to measure mass, on the microscale there are a myriad of factors that interfere with measurements. Scientists at Universitat Autònoma de Barcelona have successfully created a scale made out of a single carbon nanotube which can accurately measure the smallest unit of mass, a yoctogram (one […]
The Sandman would have certainly approve of the latest experimental tech to come off MIT. Researchers from the university have demonstrated how tiny computer pellets, just a few millimeters in size, were automatically bound together to form a simple 2-D shape. The same algorithm might be used in a future refined version which could allow this kind […]
Backed by an international consortium, ten years from now the world’s largest and most sensitive radio telescope in the world will be built – the Square Kilometer Array (SKA). The project will consist in thousands of antennas displaced across thousands of miles, with a collecting area equivalent to one square kilometer (hence the name), that […]
Boston Dynamics is at the forefront of robotic research and development at the moment, fact very easily attested just by checking out a few of their amazing robots developed during the past year alone, like the cheetah-bot which broke the robot land speed record, the gecko-like bot which can climb walls effortlessly or the terrifyingly […]
One of the most outstanding dreams astronomers and other scientists hope to accomplish is to someday encounter proof that extraterestrial life exists. Intelligent life might be extremely far off, however microbiological life should without a doubt be present elsewhere other than our planet or solar system. For life to blossom, however, the right conditions have […]
Plastic surgeons at University of Maryland performed the most complex facial reconstruction surgery to date, which included the replacements of both jaws, teeth, facial soft tissue from the scalp to the neck and sensory muscles indispensable to facial expression. The procedure was part of a 72 hour transplant marathon, aftern an anonymous donor generously donated […]
Hailed as yet another big step towards devising working quantum computers, scientists at Ruhr-Universität Bochum (RUB) have successfully managed to generate quantum qubits inside a semiconductor for the first time, instead of vacuum. A qubit is the quantum analog of a bit. While a bit must be read either as a 0 or 1, the qubit can […]
In the year 2011 alone, the US faced 14 extreme weather events, while Japan registered record rainfalls and the Yangtze river basin in China suffered a record drought. The year 2010 saw Russia in the midst of its hottest summer in centuries, while Pakistan and Australia received record-breaking amounts of rain, highly atypical for the region. […]
This Friday, ground mission control ordered the current stationed astronaut crew at the International Space Station to head for the escape capsules as a safety precaution in light of a threatening space junk flyby. This is the third time in 12 years an ISS crew had to take this extreme measure. The space debris in […]
Neurons are the absolute core components of the nervous system that transmit information through electrical and chemical signals. I once wondered how neural activity might sound like, and I imagined something like a huge gridline sprinkled with electricity bolts though out. I didn’t know about the SpikerBox, back then, though. It’s a gadget, developed by educational […]
When the brain deems an experience meaningful enough, it will transfer that information from short-term storage, where typically information like where you put your car keys or the phone number of a person you just met gets stored temporarily, to your long-term memory, offering the possibility to be accessed at a later time. Neurologists claim […]
You might have thought I made a typo and that I was probably meaning to say $500 million, but truth be told I’m only citing SpaceX founder Elon Musk word for word, and while most of you might view the man insane, what great visionary wasn’t cast under the same shadow in the beginning, only […]
After a three year effort, researchers at Virginia Tech have successfully managed to create a silicone robot that functions underwater by mimicking the motion of a jellyfish. The robot can propel itself thanks to the heat-producing reactions catalyzed by its surface, and since it uses hydrogen and oxygen found in the water as fuel, the Robojelly can theoretically […]
The now retired Concorde turbojets were the fastest civilian airliners in the world, capable of carrying passengers from Paris to New York in just 3.5 hours, traveling at supersonic speeds. However, lack of market appeal, combined with high maintenance costs, lead to its regrettable retirement from service with no civilian airliner to replace it, not even to […]
