Features on ZME Science

Iapetus - the black-and-white walnut Moon

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 […]

Tectonics on Enceladus

As you may or may not know, we’ve launched a new section of our website: Science Questions and Answers – a section aimed at you guys, where you can ask all questions science-related, and share your knowledge with others. We’re still in the beta version, but please, feel free to ask away – we’ll do […]

The island that did not exist

Who doesn’t dream of a deserted tropical island..sandy beaches made of coral sand, with crystal clear water, blue like the sky – you know what I mean. And let’s say it would be somewhere off the coast of Australia, maybe near New Calledonia. That sounds perfect.. it’s a great place, a great place to imagine. Well, […]

Scientists prove 'immortal worms' can regenerate indefinitely and stay forever young

An immortal worm isn’t exactly what comes to mind when researching how to live forever, but this inconspicuous creature could hold some very valuable clues on eternal youth. Biologists from University of Nottingham spurred this big debate in 2008 when they claimed their object of study, the planaria or “flatworm” might actually be immortal. Essentially, this worm […]

The Sword of Goujian - still untarnished after 2700 years

The Sword of Goujian is a masterpiece of craftsmanship.

What makes a song 'catchy' - science explains

Learn what are the elements identified by science that make a catchy tune.

Amazing Brain Art

Brain-Art competition is an annual celebration of the beauty and creativity of artistic renderings emerging from the neuroimaging community. Last month concluded the first edition in which various artists from around the world submitted some incredible work for the competition’s galleries – 3D-rendering gallery, connectome gallery, abstract gallery and humorous gallery. Below are a few […]

12 Jobs You're Not Gonna Believe Were True

A job can be as hard or easy as you make it to be, depending on how much you enjoy or are passionate about your work. However, it’s pretty hard to imagine how some people working particularly bizarre jobs through out history thought or felt. Listed below are a couple of odd jobs that caught […]

Glass Beach, California -- how to turn a dump into something wonderful

A testament to how even a garbage dump can become something beautiful.

The best single handed invasion attempt ever

Well, it is the best, or the worst attempt ever actually, depends on your point of view. First, a little bit on the background: the attacking force was composed of an unemployed French nuclear physicist, André “mad scientist” Gardes. The defending team was a small island south of Britain named Sark, with a population of […]

Mining sulphur in an active volcano

Whenever you think you have the worst job ever, you definitely should think about the sulphur miners from Eastern Java, the men who treat poisoned lungs, burns, scars and constant danger as part of their everyday living. Each day, a few hundred men go deep in the heart of the Ijen volcano, with the sole […]

Skellig Michael - the monastery in the middle of the sea

“An incredible, impossible, mad place. I tell you the thing does not belong to any world that you and I have lived and worked in; it is part of our dream world.”– George Bernard Shaw Skellig Michael (from Sceilig Mhichíl in the Irish language, meaning Michael’s rock), also known as Great Skellig, is a steep […]

The fire waterfall

Yosemite is one of the best places to visit in the whole world, and it’s been fascinating people from all over the world since it was declared a national park in 1890; huge granite cliffs, splashing clear streams, massive sequoia groves and epic waterfalls all contribute to its unique charm. Among these natural wonders, a […]

Squirrels masturbate to avoid STDs

The Cape ground squirrel takes sex very seriously. For the males, the scrotum is about 20% of their body length, and the penis is twice as long; if you don’t believe me, this particular image will probably change your mind – but be warned ! It will be burned onto your brain for quite a […]

The 100 year old Belgian talking tree

Well the title is a bit deceiving, so let me clear this out a bit: this 100 year old Belgian tree doesn’t talk, in the old fashioned way. He does however, run a website, have a few thousand facebook friends and he tweets pretty often. I’ve gotta tell you, I absolutely loved this idea ! […]

The oldest dildo could come from the Stone Age

This is possibly one of the earliest sex toys in human history.

8 surreal natural landscapes

The Wave, Arizona The Wave is an astonishing sandstone formation that fascinates photographers and attracts numerous hikers every year. It formed in the early Jurassic (190 million years ago) when dinosaurs ruled the Earth and compacted through the years, calcifying in vertical and horizontal layers. The lovely curves we see today are a result of erosion […]

The April awesome animal award goes to THE SIBERIAN SALAMANDER

There are so many things we have yet to understand about the animal kingdom it makes you wonder how much we know about it after all. Therefore, ZME Science will present to you one animal each month; one animal that really makes yo go “what ?!”. There’s no connection to the month itself, no order […]

Cano Cristales - the world's most colourful river

Caño Cristales is a river located in Northern Columbia, with a length of almost 100 km and a width of under 20 meters. If you look at it, you’d be tempted to think this is some sort of illusion or photographic trick, but you’d be wrong. It’s quite remote, and you can get there only […]

Underwater... lakes !

Boy I’ve gotta tell you, my jaw really dropped when I heard this one. There are actual lakes, on the bottom of oceans, especially in the Gulf of Mexico region; they’ve got their own shores and all. The brine water of these lakes actually hosts unique wildlife, creating an absolutely amazing environment. The fact that […]

Busting 8 of the weirdest science myths

Well you’ve probably all seen the Myth Busters. I’ve watched some episodes and loved most of them, so I’m hoping I can give them a hand. I haven’t watched all the episodes so if they (or anybody else) already took care of these myths well… oh well. The duck’s quack doesn’t echo This is one […]

The main types of quartz -- in beautiful pictures

Quartz is a hard mineral consisting of silicon and oxygen. It’s one of the most common minerals in the Earth’s crust There are several different types of quartz, including amethyst, citrine, milky quartz, rose quartz, or agate. –yes, all of those are essentially quartz, and they’re all beautiful. Let’s have a look at them. “Plain” […]

The Sky Burial

First of all, it has to be said that this once common burial practice in Tibet is pretty hard to ‘digest’ for our ‘civilized’ world, and there’s a big chance you’ll find the pictures shocking. As adepts of Buddhism, Tibetans believe the single most important part of a person is its spirit, and after death, […]

The 8 coolest ways the Earth might be destroyed

We’ve all seen at least one movie in which our planet is destroyed, but most of them were quite repetitive and kind of uninteresting. Our planet deserves so much more! Black holes Well, it seems the more we understand things about black holes, the more we find out things we don’t know, and the more […]

8 examples of photometeors w/ pics

The response to the awesome phenomena article was amazing, I’d really like to thank you all! I was really surprised to see how many of you actually contributed and sent me more pictures of awesome phenomena, so I’ll definitely do a follow up in a few days, mentioning who gave me the tip, so keep […]

8 totally awesome natural phenomena you probably didn't know about

The Maelstrom When you hear a name like maelstrom, you just know it’s about something wicked. Introduced in English by Edgar Allan Poe from the Nordic languages, from which it came from the Dutch word maelstrom (maalstroom in modern spelling), it literally means crushing current, which is quite a very good description. A maelstom is […]

39 unbelievable underwater pictures that will blow your mind

First of all, I don’t know for sure if any of these are shopped or tampered in any way; underwater photography is really peculiar and has its own ways of manipulating light and perspective. But let’s not worry about that for the moment. Let’s just sit back, relax, and enjoy our planet’s wonderful waters. […]

9 reasons why there wasn't stress in the good old days

Turns out, heroin was much easier to get a few decades ago.

Girl that doesn't age baffles scientists: a 16 year old is an infant

Physiologically speaking, Brooke Greenberg is an infant with the mind of toddler. Only thing is that she turned 16 just this Janary. It’s hard to estimate the parents opinion, especially as I wasn’t able to find almost any constructive data. “Why doesn’t she age?” Howard Greenberg, 52, asked of his daughter. “Is she the fountain […]

1911 : the year Niagara froze

A while ago I wrote a post about what I believe the most spectacular waterfalls in the world are, but you guys gave me some excellent feedback and I fould out about more amazing waterfalls, so thanks a whole lot!! I’ve kept researching waterfalls and I found something that really totally took me by surprise: […]

5 pandemics that plagued mankind before COVID-19

In late 2019, weird reports of a virus started emerging from a city most people have never even heard of (Wuhan). It didn’t cause a wave at first. Most people were just going about their lives, blissfully unaware of what was about to happen: a pandemic that would take the whole world by storm, causing […]

The most distant object in the universe found so far

ESO’s Very Large Telescope has shown something that scientists concluded is the signature of the explosion of the object furthest away from Earth we have found so far, a redshift of 8.2; it’s estimated that the explosion took place more than 13 billion years ago (!!), just 600 million years after the Big Bang. They […]

The 10 most amazing unexplained artifacts

Some of these are truly puzzling, some are shrouded in conspiracy theories.

Lava versus ocean: what happens when the two meet (awesome photo alert)

Lava, the molten rock that flows from inside the Earth, can destroy everything in its path. Water, meanwhile is like an arch nemesis of lava. So what happens when the two meet? Water and fire It’s beautiful, sure — but it’s hella dangerous. When lava enters the water, a number of things happen. It’s a […]

The science of 2008

Probably 2008 will remain in history as the year of the economic crisis, or perhaps of the LHC, or perhaps the year we landed on Mars… either way, it was a year filled with many problems, and many achievements; the achievements were mostly scientific, while the problems could find their solution… in the same field. […]

Meet the world's only immortal animal

If you’re thinking McLeod, you couldn’t be further from the truth. What you have to do is think small; not microscopic, just big enough to see with your naked eye. Turritopsis nutricula is a hydrozoan, and it’s considered by scientists to be the only animal that cheated death. Solitary organisms are (according to current belief) […]

The continents and their highest points

There's a great deal of geographical variation on Earth. H

Understanding thunder and lightning

In ancient times, people looked up to the sky and thought it was the home of the gods; they found a divine explanation for pretty much all natural phenomena, and thunder was usually a tool of the gods. Strange enough, but today things aren’t really that different. Sure, you’ll say, we know it’s a discharge […]

9 amazing displays of fossil art

Art is a relative term, especially in these modern times. In its most accepted term, art is the deliberate process of arranging certain elements in such a way that appeals to the senses, trying to achieve beauty. But what these elements are and how they are arranged is up to the artist. So it shouldn’t […]

The man who got his head into a particle accelerator

We’ve all heard stories about soviet scientists, and Hollywood played quite an important role in that. Really few of those stories are actually true, but here’s one that will probably baffle you; it did this to Russian physicists and doctors. First of all, it has to be said that by the time the USSR divided, […]

7 wonders of modern engineering

In a previous article you had the chance to read about the seven wonders of the ancient world, which remained famous for thousands of years and still amaze people from all over the world due to their magnificent traits. But time passed and nowadays people take pride in other accomplishments, from scientific experiments to stadiums. […]

9 Dinosaurs that marked the planet

How the dinosaurs appeared is clear, but it’s not so clear how they dissapeared. One thing’s for sure, they ruled this planet for a significant amount of time. But how much truth is behind this avalanche of publicity and fiction, and which dinosaurs are the true leaders of these amazing lizards?? Here’s just a small […]

Junk Mail around the world produces as much CO2 as 9 million cars

Who here doesn’t spam? No, not the damn meat, I’m talking about spam mail. Yup, there you go. You go to your inbox every morning to check your mail, hoping to find that letter from your ant in Brussels, but instead you get flood with loads of trash mail. Well, besides the fact that junk […]

How are rainbows made? The colorful physics behind

What are Rainbows? Rainbows are some of the most spectacular phenomena in nature; they’ve fascinated and stimulated our imagination since the dawn of mankind, and continue to do so to this day. There are all sorts of legends surrounding them, from the treasure at the end of the rainbow to the house of gods for which […]

The 4 most spectacular waterfalls in the world

Photo by Wolfgang Staudt In the previous post of this waterfall series, I wrote a list of the 5 tallest waterfalls in the world. I bet some of you were surprised not to hear more famous waterfalls or to see that the ‘big boys’ are not that spectacular – not the massive amount of water […]

The 5 tallest waterfalls in the world

There's something special about the raw power and beauty a waterfall. There's no sight quite like it. These marvelsserve as a testament to the power and beauty of our planet's diverse landscapes. But while some waterfalls, like Niagara or Iguazu, stand out in terms of water flow, others tend to be taller and slimmer.Now, imagine […]

The 5 tallest mountains on Earth

A rundown of the five tallest mountains in the world.

7 animals that lived along with your grandparents but are now extinct

It's a chilling list.

How aztecs did the math

The Aztecs were the dominant civilization in Mexico for several hundred years, when their “reign” was stopped by the Spanish in the early 1500s. An astonishing thing about them (among others) is the fact that they left behind really extensive mathematical writings, intriguing scholars ’til this day. Two manuscripts in particular have been object to […]

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