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Apollo 14 was the eighth manned mission in the United States Apollo program and the third to land on the Moon. Here, we present a stunning photo album with the shuttle, the crew, and the Moon.
A group of researchers at University of Rochester and the University of Ottawa have found a way to bypass Heisenberg’s famous Uncertainty Principle, and measure key quantum properties directly for the first time like the polarization states of light. The technique might provide valuable in encoding qubits, the building blocks of quantum information theory. Heisenberg’s Uncertainty Principle […]
Climate change deniers were ecstatic – our planet wasn’t warming as fast as models predicted it; ha! Everything crumbles down, global warming is a hoax and all is good in the world, right? Wrong. The main question in science is “Why?”, and researchers started asking the question. Are all the models wrong, is there something […]
A group of French researchers have published a paper in which they reveal how King Richard I, also known as Richard the Lionheart, had its heart mummified after he succumbed from gangrene in 1199. Apparently the great monarch’s heart was preserved in mercury, mint and frankincense, among other sweet-smelling plants. As it was customary at the time, Richard’s […]
In an incredible feat of neuroscience and communications, researchers at Duke University School of Medicine formed a link between pairs of rats by electronically linking their brains. As such, the rats could exchange motor and tactile information between each other. In one particular case, the experiment showed that a pair of linked rats – one rat […]
NASA has, for the first time, released a global map of ocean salinity. The first thing that popped up for me was the pulse of freshwater gushing from the Amazon, but other major features are worth noticing. An invisible seam divides the salty Arabian Sea from the fresher waters of the Bay of Bengal and […]
As you sit in the morning and have your daily coffee or tea and enjoy your breakfast, take a moment to think where that food actually comes from. Odds are, it’s not coming from your local farm; nope, odds are, it comes from a handful of companies. Three companies now account for more than 40 […]
Just one of the many reasons why I love geology – paleontologists have unearthed extraordinarily preserved fossils of a 520-million-year-old sea creature, one of the oldest animal fossils ever found. The animal in case is an arthropod called a fuxhianhuiid – you may remember him from this post, in which I described a lovely book […]
Astronomers have made the first accurate measurement of a supermassive black hole’s spin, providing new insights that might help scientists probe the mysteries the surround them. Supermassive black holes have an incredibly huge gravitational pull that doesn’t let anything in its surroundings escape its hungry maw, be it dust, rock or even light. Some are […]
Most animals have eyes in the vicinity of their brains, typically inside the head, since these are very sensible organs that require a very sophisticated neural link. Recently, biologists at Tufts University have shown that they could implant working eyes in other locations as well, after they granted blind tadpoles vision after they implanted eyes in […]
In 1899 the famous Russian paleontologist Alexander Petrovich Karpinsky published a paper in which he described a peculiar fossil resembling what can only be called today as a “buzz saw”, but whose barer escaped scientists. Many speculations have been made since then, but most recently, using advanced SCAN scans, scientists at Idaho State University have asserted that […]
I have nothing but the deepest admiration and respect for fighters – always faithful in the face of peril and always ready to put their necks on the line in order to save people from the hellish depths. As one can imagine, firefighting tech has evolved a great deal from simple fireproof clothing and a […]
For some time now, researchers have been experimenting with the idea of an aircraft that operates with flapping wings, just like insects or birds do, instead of conventional flat and long wings. The idea is that flapping wings allow a much greater degree of control and stability, allowing the aircraft to perform maneuvers otherwise impossible. […]
Cockroaches are maybe the most amazing insects in the animal kingdom – they’re simply made to survive. These little buggers can survive in sub-zero temperatures, can withstand a lethal dose of radiation up to 15 times of that for humans, can live without food for a whole month and … they can live with a […]
If you think weather forecasts are bad enough as it is, then I’ve got some bad news for you – according to a report by the U.S. Government Accountability Office (GAO), the weather monitoring network is in a lot of trouble. The main concern is that U.S.-owned satellites are aging, and there are serious concerns […]
Despite having brains that are still “under construction”, babies are able, even three months before full term, to distinguish between different syllables. It was recently shown that full born babies, even just a few days after they are born, display remarkable linguistic sophistication: they can distinguish between two different languages [1], they can recognizes their […]
Evidence of drowned remnants of an ancient microcontinent have been found in sand grains from the beaches of a small Indian Ocean island, according to a new research. Zircons and volcanoes This evidence was found in Mauritius, a volcanic island 900 kilometres east of Madagascar which serves as an exotic destination for many tourists. Basaltic […]
We’ve never shun away from praising the almost miraculous properties of graphene, the wonder material set to become even more paradigm shifting than plastic. Graphene has found been found to have the potential to revolutionize a myriad of scientific fields, from genetics, to electronics, to nanotech, to security, to just about anything you could think of. The energy […]
Princeton University political scientists have found as part of a recent study looking to assess the performance of state supreme court justices that appointed justices generally bring a higher quality of information to the decision-making process, are less biased and are generally less prone to error as elected justices. For their study, Matias Iaryczower, an assistant […]
Earlier today I wrote about some recent findings that suggest humans have evolved unique brain structures from other primates. Don’t be fooled however in thinking many of the activities we undertake every day are solely found in human culture. Dolphins communicate with each other much like humans do and besides tool use, chimps know that […]
Most of the time, when you’re sick, you want to deliver drugs and imaging agents to diseased cells or tumours where they’re needed most – that’s a problem researchers have solved quite a while ago, we can get particles pretty much wherever we want to. The thing is, most of the time, these agents are […]
The longest creatures to ever walk the Earth were the long-necked, long-tailed dinosaurs known as the sauropods. But why did these huge vegetarians grow such huge necks, reaching up to 15 meters? That’s six times longer than that of the current world-record holder, the giraffe. “They were really stupidly, absurdly oversized,” said researcher Michael […]
Humans were granted with an evolutionary edge that differentiated us from other primates and may have helped us become the dominant species on planet Earth. A recent study which scanned the brains of humans and rhesus monkeys found that humans have at least two functional brain networks absent in rhesus monkeys. Previous genetic research concluded […]
I had no plans whatsoever for this Sunday evening. To be quite honest, I didn’t feel like writing an article as I was enjoying my tea and yogurt cake. But then, I came across this; and I just had to get on it as fast as possible, because this is big news people. The Obama […]
It’s remarkable what state technology has reached today, and it’s only getting faster, more powerful and smaller. If merely a decade ago you were to tell someone that it would be possible for a human to control a robotic arm by the power of thought only, chances are you would have been labeled as mad. […]
According to a new study, the generally accepted theory on lunar formation may have to be reexamined. A relatively recent study has found water in the Moon’s original crust, which means that water found in those rocks didn’t come from an outside source, but was already there when the Moon was formed – something impossible, […]
Particles and unparticles Ok, we know a lot about particles – from electrons and neutrons to the more elusive quarks and leptons, and to the holy Graal of the Standard Model – the Higgs boson; but what’s an unparticle? Well, the Standard Model is just a theory, and there are other theories out there. Unparticle […]
Pollination is the game, “summon bees” is the spell, and electricity is the mana – that’s how I’d try to explain it to a gamer. A little more on the serious side, flowers advertise presence of nectar to bees using electrical signals, basically indicating if they’ve been visited by another bee or not. Usually, plants […]
There seems to be a general belief, especially among parents, that if you send children to music lessons the experience will make them smarter. However, a group of researchers at University of Toronto, intrigued by this highly thrown about, yet never proven, link between the two conducted a study to see if this belief genuinely holds. Their findings suggest, […]
Can you imagine an imaginary menagerie manager imagining managing an imaginary menagerie? Sorry about that folks – that was a bit twisted right? Just earlier you’ve used your lips, tongue, jaw and larynx in a highly complex manner in order to render these sounds out loud. Still, very little is known of how the brain […]
It’s a rather well-attested fact that men are significantly better than women at spatial navigation, something that holds across a wide variety of species, not just humans. General belief holds that evolution triggered this response since our ancestors needed to return home after traveling vast distances in search of food, while the females stayed home. […]
Researchers at Northwestern University claim they have uncovered the mechanisms that lead to difficulty in reading. Apparently, there is a direct correlation between one’s ability to encode speech sound in the brain and ease of reading. The scientists also devised an experiment and saw that children with reading impairment significantly improved after being fitted with […]
The recent historical flyby of 2012 D14 – the largest asteroid ever to pass this close to Earth in recorded space observational history – as well as the modest in size, but monumental in punch meteorite that exploded over Russia caused an whole frenzy around them on the web. Thing is, meteorites and asteroids have […]
Paleontologists have found evidence of animal life dating back at least 635 million years. Those animals acted much like today’s sponges, stuck in the sea floor, filtering water particles for useful nutrients in the sea. But just over 100 million years later, during the Cambrian explosion, life really started to pump its engines. All sorts […]
The massive, global risk that global warming poses has once again been highlighted by researchers – this time, by geologists studying fossil records. It’s good to learn from your mistakes, but it’s even better to prevent than treat, and learn from the past (even though it’s not your past) – and paleontology is really good […]
Every bottlenose dolphin makes its own distinctive sound, a high-pitched “eeee” through which they announce their presence. However, dolphins are also great at mimicking sounds, being able to copy even intricate computer generated sounds; this made researchers curious to see if dolphins can in fact mimic each other’s sound, and how they use this ability […]
As climate change and global warming become ever pressing issues on the desks of the world’s governments, so do the much awaited measures become more prevailing, albeit not nearly as thoughtfully as they should be addressed. Today, renewable energy sources like solar and wind have actually ceased to become regarded as “alternative”, since actually more […]
Paleontologists have long believed that complex organic molecules couldn’t survive fossilization; but to contradict this long standing belief, some 350-million-year-old remains of aquatic sea creatures uncovered in Ohio, feature exactly that type of molecules. The animals i n case are called crinoids, but are probably better known today as “sea lilies”; they are absolutely […]
A new study by scientists at University of British Columbia and Université Paris Descartes found that babies growing up in bilingual environments are more than well equipped to tackle the challenge of distinguishing between the two from a very early age – as young as seven months old according to the findings. Scientists, linguistics and […]
Now, I’m not advocating alcohol consumption, but truth be told most of us take alcohol for granted, and I’m not referring to abusing either. Millions of years ago, our ancestors and primate relatives had a very poor ability of metabolizing ethanol — the alcohol in beer, wine and spirits — and were it not for their […]
A British academic has stumbled upon a 500 year old warrant for one of the most famed people in history: Niccolo Machiavelli. Prof Stephen Milner from Manchester University discovered the historic document almost by accident, as he was browsing through town criers and the proclamations in the Florence archives. The 1513 proclamation, which called for […]
A team of international researchers from US and China have employed a novel method to link enzymes together and then encapsulate them in a polymer shell. This enables the enzymes to work sequentially in chemical reactions, just like in nature. To illustrate their enzyme batch, a group of mice were intoxicated with alcohol and then injected […]
The weekend that has just passed was a tight one for asteroid news. At the center was of course the much raved about “2012 DA14” – the closest asteroid of this significant size to flyby Earth since recorded history – which actually speared passed Earth at an altitude of 27,700km, a few thousand kilometers below the […]
Most brain-machine prosthetic research today is focused on supplementing a missing sense, like medical devices that restore hearing or sight. In a novel research, however, scientists at Duke University Medical Center have literally granted rodents a sixth sense after they implanted them with an experimental prototype that allows rats to “touch” invisible infrared light. At first, six rats […]
While the world was asleep, a few days ago North Korea made its latest nuclear test, the third that we know of. This has prompted intense international pressure on the North Korean regime, as you might imagine, what’s interesting, rather frightening actually, is that seismic activity shows the nukes are getting ever bigger. Pyongyang said […]
Myth, wonder, mysticism these are just a few concepts that has entertained and has fascinated the human mind for thousands of years. Be it from boredom of life’s seemingly casual existence or drawn by aspirations of a higher self, many people have been, currently are and will be for a long time seduced by what […]
Researchers at University of Utah have recently demonstrated that it is indeed feasible to construct a topological insulator from organic compounds. Topological insulators are deemed very important by scientists because of their unique property of conducting electrons on their edges, while at the same time acting as an insulator on the inside. These capabilities make it […]
Highschool students whose friends have higher grades than them have a significant tendency to raise their own grades over the course of a year, a study conducted by Hiroki Sayama from Binghamton University and his collaborators from Maine-Endwell High School in Endwell, New York, including 4 high school students. Previous research had already shown that […]
Chances have it, if you’re working in the field of manufacturing, medicine, research or even sales, that some of your co-workers are robots. Which is no wonder, since robots today are a lot cheaper and efficient than most humans when simple or repetitive tasks are required, or on the contrary when high precision and delicate […]
Using 21st century nanotechnology, researchers have discovered a new mineral in samples from a meteorite discovered in Antarctica in 1969. The meteorite is 4.5 billion years old and originates from an asteroid orbiting between Mars and Jupiter. The new mineral has alluded scientists for some time since its discovery by a Japanese expedition team to Antarctica […]
