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It is generally believed, and taught in paleontology courses that the oldest evidence of life on Earth is 3.5 billion years old, and was found in Australia, thanks to some bacterial fossils. However, geologists from the University of Texas conducted a study that concluded that the tiny gaps in the Australian chert are nothing more […]
Scientists have dusted and cleaned some X-Ray equipment dating shortly after the discovery of the rays in 1895 and found that it creates some images of stunning quality, compared to its age and simple construction. However, the machine requires a radiation level of 1500 times bigger than a modern X-Ray. The machine, developed by school […]
The situation in Japan is far from calming down; the 9.0 earthquake and the tsunamis it triggered unleashed a chain of events which keep pointing towards a future that can only be dire. In his first official statement since the event, emperor Akihito says events at Fukushima are unpredictable, and he stated that he is […]
It’s been a while since we wrote something about the Large Hadron Collider, but this time, some researchers from the LHC come back with a jaw dropping theory – time travel. If this latest theory of Tom Weiler and Chui Man Ho is correct, than the LHC would be the world’s first machine able to […]
You don’t get any country better prepared for an earthquake than Japan. They know they are at risk, they are prudent, they have the money, the technology, and the work force; and yet, when hit by an earthquake of this magnitude, no matter how well prepared you are, you are in for some massive trouble. […]
The 9.0 (it seems this is the actual magnitude) earthquake that hit Japan on the 11th of March created an absolutely incredible number of aftershocks, some of which were pretty intense on their own. However, a few days before it, as stress built up the subduction area between the Pacific and North American plates, one […]
NASA’s Inspector General’s Office says an investigation is under way after a white powdery substance found at the Kennedy Space Center tested positive for cocaine. I wanted to insert some puns somewhere in this post about astronauts, cocaine, high and outer space, but by the time I finished researching for this post I remembered that […]
The devastating seismic event that struck Japan is affecting the entire world, and even the entire planet. While smoke continues to rise from the catastrophic temblor, Japan seems to have moved 8 feet inland, or even more, according to the USGS. “That’s a reasonable number,” USGS seismologist Paul Earle told AFP. “Eight feet, that’s certainly […]
Last year, researchers reported the finding of the biggest virus yet discovered, so big that it has more DNA than some bacteria; fortunately, this big bad guy only infects a small, unicellular organism and is absolutely harmless to humans. However, the same team of researchers comes back with another discovery, that the virus itself can […]
In the aftermath of the earthquake that violently struck Japan and the tsunamis it generated, the small, industrial city of Hitachi emerged unscathed from what Prime Minister Naoto Kan has described as Japan’s “worst crisis since the Second World War”, making it somewhat of a refuge for the hordes of refugees that flooded from many […]
As a consequence of last Friday’s devastating earthquake near the coast of Japan, the nation’s most powerful recorded earthquake to date actually since it began archiving results in the late 1800, scientists have assessed that the Earth axis has tilted by a few inches and that the chronological day has been shortened by a millionth […]
It’s no mystery for anybody that the earthquake in Japan is one of the largest ever to be recorded in history, and it’s no mystery for anybody that Japan is an area with numerous seismic events, but the magnitude of this one exceeded greatly all expectations, even the most pessimistic one. The 8.9 magnitude (or […]
This picture, created by a computer model at NOAA displays the expected heights of the tsunamis created by the 8.9 earthquake in Japan (which may be “upgraded” to 9.0 – calculating magnitudes is a pretty delicate issue). Of course the largest wave heights are expected near the epicenter, off the coast of Sendai, Honshu, Japan. […]
The damage caused by the 8.9 earthquake in Japan is far from being over – asa matter of fact, unfortunately, it may very well just be starting. The earthquake and the tsunamis it created cut down power supply throughout a major part of Japan, and so the cooling system of several power plants was unable to […]
The earthquake that occured yesterday near the coast of Japan, the 4th most powerful earthquake ever to be recorded, is causing even more problems, after the direct damage, the aftershocks, the tsunamis, and the fire tsunamis; this time, things can get way, way bigger and worse, and the disaster toll keeps rising. An explosion at […]
The earthquake that struck Japan is much worse than original estimates ! The original 7.9 magnitude actually just got upgraded to 8.9, which makes it 10 times more powerful, and the 4th most powerful earthquake in the past 100 years. Sadly, reports of injured and killed people keep coming in, and will likely not stop […]
The Opportunity Rover is one brave little guy – he managed to defeat even the most optimistic of predictions, functioning several years after its primary objective was fulfilled. But now, he is little more than a bluish speck on this picture of the Santa Maria crater on the surface of Mars, taken by the Mars […]
It’s been a busy tectonic month, and things aren’t about to chill down. A massive 7.9 magnitude Earthquake has just hit the Northern coast of Japan, triggering a more than four meter tall tsunami that wiped down cars and other property along the coastline, but it’s still unclear how many people were injured or killed. […]
Girls like pink, boys like blue. Girls have long hair, boys have short hair. And so on, so on – my mom says this is all common sense, I say this is social programming that propagates stereotypes, and the latest research relating to this is a study called Math–Gender Stereotypes in Elementary-School Children recently published […]
It’s been quite a while since we published anything about the Cassini mission, but that doesn’t mean it hasn’t been active. The information it keeps sending back to Earth is priceless, and at some points, totally surprising. This was also the case of the Saturn Moon Enceladus, which appears to give out much more heat […]
We now know that pre-modern human tool use dates back far beyond we previously might have thought, each discovery proving that our early ancestors showed sign of intelligence and early social evolution. A recent finding in central China of a prehistoric tool mill dating back 600,000 years ago used by Homo Erectus in the Lushi […]
We probably all know (especially thanks to the abundancy of TV series) what Crime Scene Investigators (CSI) are. Probably not so many people know exactly what geophysics is. As the name says it (geo=earth), geophysics studies the phyisical properties of the Earth, such as gravity, electromagnetism, plate tectonics, and extremely numerous other ones; it is […]
Usually, we tend to think of Neanderthals as being our bigger and stronger but not-so-intelligent cousins, but that may very well not be true; it has been shown on several occasions that Neanderthals were quite smart, and they could figure out a whole lot of things by their own, without immitating humans. In recent years, […]
Elephants are absolutely amazing animals, from numerous points of view; they are extremely loyal and loving creatures, they have evolved up to the point where they have almost no natural enemy (except man), and they are smart – very smart ! Joshua Plotnik, a comparative psychologist at the University of Cambridge in England and head […]
Whenever you hear about chemical warfare, modern times come to mind; if someone were to ask you when chemical warfare did its first victims, what would you say ? The 20th century, maybe late 19th ? Probably something like this. After all, it would be almost impossible to consider something like this 2000 years ago […]
Two days ago, the whole world was teeming with excitement, after some NASA researchers reported finding traces of alien life in meteorites; now, even their employer distances itself from them, and the whole scientific world seems to frown upon this work. However, in what is a very unusual move, NASA has denied any involvement with […]
As I was telling you just earlier, the Kilauea volcano erupted, with a fissure throwing lava up more than 20 meters towards the sky in a dazzling display of volcanic power. The Hawaii eruption took place just after one of the volcano’s floors collapsed, thus creating the necessary conditions for lava to come out to the […]
Dr. Allison Harvey, professor of clinical psychology at the University of California Berkeley, said there are two main reasons why the use of electronics may affect our sleep.
Hawaii isn’t all warm breezes, mojitos and surfing; it’s what geologists call a hot spot, one of the most active volcanic regions on the face of the planet, so it was little surprise when Kilauea erupted; after all, it is one of the most potent volcanoes in the world, being in a constant eruption since […]
Wherever it’s possible, life finds a way; the old saying seems to be more and more actual these days, with NASA and other space agencies reporting interesting discoveries that point towards life existing in many more other places other than our own planet. After rewriting the biology books with the arsenic eating microbe, NASA researchers […]
Neuroscientists are always looking for new and interesting ways to manipulate individual neurons and neural networks-- shooting magnetic waves at our brains may be the best route yet.
Yes, you’ve read that right. There are over 50 billion planets in our galaxy alone, according to the Kepler telescope, scientists now estimate that not only there are over 500 bilion planets in the galaxy, but that there are over 500 million life-cable planets out there as well. These numbers obviously come from Nasa’s own […]
With each passing year, science is becoming more and more visual, and the pictures we get to see are more and more spectacular; from horror movie viruses, to nanolandscapes or computer simiulations, these are the winners of the 2010 Science and Engineering Visual Challenge.
Bears are some of the most amazing and loved animals out there, and to find out that up until a few months ago nobody made a thorough study about their hibernating was really sad for me. Until this, almost everything we knew about hibernating was that… well, bears do it’; they go into their dens […]
On Monday the sun fired up an X class solar flare, the most powerful of its kind, the effects of which are expected to be felt by us today (Thursday) and tomorrow (Friday), and are expected to last somewhere between 24 and 48 hours. This may lead to disruptions in radio communications, interfere with satellites […]
Yesterday night, the IBM developed supercomputer “Watson” won in a two-round Jeopardy contest, aired in three episodes, against the two most famous, top-scouring human players, Ken Jennings (the longest consecutive winner in Jeopardy history) and Brad Rutter (most earnings won in the game). Who ever had the highest total score at the end of the […]
Nowadays Brits may be some of the most civilized people on Earth, but 15.000 years ago, things were really different. Ancient Britons devoured their dead and made ritualic goblets from their skulls, a study conducted by London’s Natural History Museum concluded. The gruelsome discovery was made in Southern England, more specifically in Gough’s Cave in […]
The fight against Alzheimer’s is a harsh and rugged one, and despite numerous advancements, there still isn’t a definitive cure for the disease around – or a fail proof way to detect it in the early stages.. Still, if you can’t defeat it, it’s still better to slow it down a little, and that’s exactly […]
The Voynich manuscript is perhaps one of the most mysterious manuscripts of all time; it contains 240 pages written in an unknown languages, with strange drawings, and with no clues of an author. It has been studied by some of the world’s sharpest minds in code breaking, but it defied all deciphering attempts. Recently, researchers […]
It’s time we face it, a big one is coming – and soon ! All the predictions point towards a major earthquake near the San Andreas fault in a short time, and Los Angeles will suffer the most of it. A recent study published in the Bulletin of the Seismological Society of America confirmed that […]
A research published earlier today in Stem Cells relates how stem cells scientists in Australia have managed to show that patients suffering from hearing disorders emerged during childhood could benefit from a stem cells procedure collected from one’s nose. The research focused on early-onset sensorineural hearing loss, which is caused by a loss of sensory […]
While in a bar, sipping a nice refreshing brew, it is not uncommon for people to engage in all sorts of discussions, ranging from Monday night football, to Kim Kardashian, to…science! You don’t need to be a scientist to talk about science either, and in Michigan a praising new phenomenon has emerged, science bars and […]
Numerous oil fields that could become an extremely valuable resource in the US and in the world have been out of reach ever since they were discovered; but that is all about to change thanks to a new drilling method that is currently being developed. The new drilling could help reduce oil imports for the […]
Researchers from the Oxford University have outdone themselves, successfully generating 10 billion bits of quantum entanglement in silicon for the first time, which represents a significant step towards an ultrafast quantum computer, because entanglement is the key element that should make quantum computers way more powerful than “traditional” computers. In order to achieve this, the […]
A groundbreaking research conducted by the University of Manchester showed that terrain thought to be ruled only by giant dinosaurs was shared by numerous other smaller species. Dr. Peter Falkingham made a very interesting discovery, showing that dinosaurs can create lasting footprints, but under the right circumstances, combined with the right animal weight. The research […]
In a recent study published in the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences, scientists have shown that our closest relatives behave very similarly to humans when put in a situation where close cooperation is needed for maximizing results. The research, conducted by a team of scientists from Georgia State University, was tested on three […]
The fascination with T. Rex goes back a really long time, and whether you're a world class paleontologist, or some average Joe who loved Jurassic Park, T. Rex was definitely on your mind at some point. The biggest and most fierce hunter there was - or was he ? Scientists have been debating his diet for half a century, with one side claiming it fed by scavanging, while the other one was defending the dinosaur as a fearsome hunter.
Researchers get paid to do the weirdest things nowadays; recently, a team including Lukas Schärer and his wife Dita Vizoso, both of the University of Basel in Switzerland spent hours and hours watching and analyzing worms having sex (which, basically could be classified as worm porn) in order to find out why some flatworms have […]
Superfluidity is a weird property, by all standards. Basically it is a state of matter in which all the viscosity of a fluid vanishes; what happes is you take some atoms, and you chill them, and then chill them some more, until they get close to absolute zero (-273.15 degrees Celsius, the temperature below which […]
When NASA satellites and biology come together in the same sentence, you just know something awesome is going to come up; this was the case with a phytoplankton bloom observed off the coast of Argentina. Two strong currents stirred the needed combination of nutrients, sald and microscopic organisms, and then sunlight did all the rest […]
