Newsdesk Archive
This jumble of eroded blocks lies along the distinctive boundary between the Red Planet's southern highlands and the northern lowlands, with remnants of ancient glaciers flowing around them.
A swath of technologists and physicists believe that ‘simulation theory’ will be proved, just as it was proved that the Earth was not the center of the universe
By comparing your index and ring fingers, a neuroscientist can tell if you are likely to be anxious, or if you are likely to be a good athlete.
There is no truth to the popular belief that members of the so-called baby boomer generation have a greater work ethic than people born a decade or two later. This is according to scientists who completed a comprehensive analysis of relevant studies.
Ovaries may hold the secret for holding back ageing in females. Swapping an older mouse’s ovaries for young ones seems to reverse the effects of ageing on the immune system and metabolism of female mice, making them live longer. Could people reap the same benefits?
Beneath the hot, dry grasslands of East Africa, there lives an animal whose weirdness and hardiness are legendary. The naked mole rat, a hairless rodent with a tiny, pig-like snout and nubby ears, lives in underground colonies of tunnels and nests that can stretch for miles.
A virus stole the gene coding for the poison of black widow spiders, scientists have found.
The WO virus infects bacteria - and is harmless to animals - yet it possesses genes that are closely related to ones found in insects and spiders.
A team of researchers at Tsinghua University in China has found that adding graphene or carbon nanotubes to the food eaten by silkworms causes them to produce silk that is stronger than normal. In their paper published in Nanoletters, the team describes the approach they took and what was revealed when they tested the new kind of silk.
Memory: upgraded. DeepMind’s latest AI has a “working memory” so that it can learn how to solve tasks for itself – such as how best to get from A to B on the London tube network.
Researchers have developed a new method for making effective calculations in "high-dimensional space" – and proved its worth by using it to solve a 93-dimensional problem.
Researchers have developed a new technique for making calculations in "high-dimensional space" – mathematical problems so wide-ranging in their scope, that they seem at first to be beyond the limits of human calculation.
After decades of experiments have failed to find evidence for physicists’ favored dark matter candidate particles, scientists plan searches for alternatives
HOW do you iron out the folds in a universe? Our most precise map of the big bang’s afterglow – the cosmic microwave background (CMB) – is flawed, distorted by the gravity of giant galaxies warping the fabric of space-time. Like creases in a map that obscure part of a coastline or a continent, the distortions hide details about the primordial universe.
The Kuiper Belt has been an endless source of discoveries over the course of the past decade. Starting with the dwarf planet Eris, which was first observed by a Palomar Observatory survey led by Mike Brown in 2003, many interesting Kuiper Belt Objects (KBOs) have been discovered, some of which are comparable in size to Pluto.
Life exists in a myriad of wondrous forms, but if you break any organism down to its most basic parts, it's all the same stuff: carbon atoms connected to hydrogen, oxygen, nitrogen and other elements. But how these fundamental substances are created in space has been a longstanding mystery.
Researchers from the University of New Hampshire have captured unique measurements of the Van Allen radiation belts, which circle the Earth, during an extremely rare solar wind event.
A space nation, independent of countries on Earth, could be founded after a team of engineers, scientists and legal experts put forward proposals for an extra-terrestrial state.
Alt: The first SPACE NATION is revealed: 'Asgardia' will defend the Earth against deadly attacks from asteroids - and now you can sign up to be a citizen
In August astronomers announced that the nearby star Proxima Centauri hosts an Earth-sized planet (called Proxima b) in its habitable zone. At first glance, Proxima Centauri seems nothing like our Sun.
The next time someone asks you where the biggest ocean is, point them toward Jupiter. While Earth harbours about 320 million cubic miles (1.3 billion cubic km) of water, our planet is practically a desert compared to the rest of the Solar System.
The group has put out a call for assistance from other countries with its mission to redirect the giant flying rocks - which travel at about 55,923 miles per hour - away from civilisation.
Along with the hundreds of asteroids already orbiting dangerously close to the planet, scientists anticipate many more will be discovered over the next few years.
For more than 15 years, a lone scientist in southern Finland has spent countless winter nights among the snowy fields and frozen lakes around his village, in pursuit of one of the most ephemeral mysteries of the heavens
Finds at the famous tomb complex point to influences from abroad and a blood-soaked succession after the death of China's first emperor.
It is one of the oldest fragrances in the world. Nicolas Baldovini's team at the Institut de chimie de Nice (CNRS/UNS) has just discovered the components that give frankincense its distinctive odor: two molecules found for the first time in nature, named “olibanic acids” by the scientists.
50 years after William of Normandy landed on English soil in one of Britain’s landmark historic moments, Cardiff University researchers are aiming to discover what impact the invasion had on diet, cooking habits and health.
1,800 years ago the Roman army built one of its smallest but most heavily defended forts at the site of Vindolanda, which is now a part of the Frontiers of The Roman Empire World Heritage Site.
Archaeologists who work in the Arctic are typically spoiled with pristinely preserved artifacts, but recently the blessing of ice has become a curse: the researchers are struggling to save the wealth of delicate material that is emerging from melting permafrost and eroding coastlines because of climate change.
We've all seen "Jurassic Park." We all know T. rex. But what about B. rex?
Thanks to a team of scientists from the Academy of Natural Sciences of Drexel University, Delaware Valley University, Stanford University and the University of Chicago, a new rex—Latin for "king"—is in the mix
Scientists have obtained remarkable new insights into the asteroid impact that wiped out the dinosaurs.
They have been examining rocks from the crater that the 15km-wide space object dug out of what is now the Gulf of Mexico some 66 million years ago.
When our universe first blasted into existence with a Big Bang almost 14 billion years ago, it looked much different than it does today. Instead of planets, stars and galaxies, there was an inflating ball of hot plasma.
Astronomers have found a dozen very old variable stars deep in the maelstrom of stars at the center of our Milky Way galaxy. The discovery may help researchers decide which of two theories best explains how a “galactic bulge”—the pileups of stars at the galaxy’s center—forms.
NASA's OSIRIS-REx spacecraft fired its Trajectory Correction Maneuver (TCM) thrusters for the first time Friday in order to slightly adjust its trajectory on the outbound journey from Earth to the asteroid Bennu.
The space race that first brought humans to the moon was propelled by a tense international rivalry between the United States and the Soviet Union. A half-century later, Boeing’s chief executive envisions a competition between the aeronautics manufacturer and SpaceX having the same result, minus the cold war.
"We have set a clear goal vital to the next chapter of America's story in space: sending humans to Mars by the 2030s and returning them safely to Earth, with the ultimate ambition to one day remain there for an extended time. Getting to Mars will require continued cooperation between government and private innovators, and we're already well on our way. Within the next two years, private companies will for the first time send astronauts to the International Space Station."
A scientific research consortium on Tuesday announced plans to build and launch a privately financed telescope the size of a small washing machine in hopes of finding an Earthlike planet in the Alpha Centauri system, one of our closest cosmic neighbors.
It has long been believed that Earth's precious metals, such as gold and platinum, formed on the planet over the course of several minor impacts.
But new research is challenging this theory, and suggests that a single huge collision with another world could be responsible for the precious metals.
Nine miles from the volcano the Maasai call the “Mountain of God,” researchers have cataloged a spectacularly rare find: an enormous set of well-preserved human footprints left in the mud between 5,000 and 19,000 years ago.
More than 25 previously unpublished “Dead Sea Scroll” fragments, dating back 2,000 years and holding text from the Hebrew Bible, have been brought to light, their contents detailed in two new books.
Related: Searching for Truth in Bones: The Mysterious Relics of Mary Magdalene
Did an exceptional visual memory give Picasso an edge in his capacity for artistic excellence? Studies show that the drawing ability of children correlates with their visual memory; those who are good at one are likely to be good at the other.
Researchers believe that a Bronze Age skeleton found near the Mycenaean palace of Nestor was once a handsome man with long black hair. Their reconstruction of his appearance was based on an analysis of his skull and an artifact recovered in his rich grave. This is just the latest in discoveries related to the burial of the so-called Griffin Warrior.
Archaeologists have discovered a group of 2,000-year-old tombs using a unique ancient burial method in central China.
A total of 113 human remains have been found and each of them was wrapped with two to three clay containers, reported the People's Daily Online.
Archaeologists have digitally reconstructed a house in Pompeii to show what life must have been like for a rich Roman banker 2,000 years ago.
The Italian city was famously buried in volcanic ash —and frozen in time — in A.D. 79, when Mount Vesuvius erupted.
California has a complicated relationship with wildfires.
Though drought and climate change have helped make conflagrations in the Sierra Nevada increasingly powerful, fires aren’t all bad.
Chinese conservationists believe they may have caught a rare glimpse of a freshwater dolphin that was declared functionally extinct a decade ago having graced the Yangtze river for 20 million years.
Mice court one another with ultrasonic love songs that are inaudible to the human ear. New research shows they make these unique high frequency sounds using a mechanism that has only previously been observed in supersonic jet engines.
They have a reputation for being sinister loners, creatures that swim the seas in solitary silence before pouncing on unsuspecting prey. Think of the deadly predator in Jaws and you have the perfect stereotype of a shark.
Clowns are creeping across America, lurking in the woods and generally freaking out the general public.
Over the past few months, “clown sightings” have become a thing, occupying a dark crevice in the popular imagination that was once filled by UFO or Slender Man sightings. And like all viral trends, this one is spreading
Among a group of older women, self-reported caffeine consumption of more than 261 mg per day was associated with a 36 percent reduction in the risk of incident dementia over 10 years of follow-up.
Related: Japanese City Takes Community Approach To Dealing With Dementia
Related: Pomegranates, turmeric and red grapes: the key to long life?
Related: How a sprinkle of cinnamon can soothe your stomach: Spice aids digestion by reducing temperature in the organ by 2C
Will astronauts traveling to Mars remember much of it? That's the question concerning University of California, Irvine scientists probing a phenomenon called "space brain."
The European Schiaparelli probe may have to contend with relatively dusty conditions when it arrives at Mars.
The spacecraft is aiming to make a dump-down on the planet’s Meridiani Plain a week on Wednesday.
Much like meteorologists predict weather on Earth, planetary scientists are getting better at anticipating massive dust storms on Mars. And they say the next one will happen soon.
"Mars will reach the midpoint of its current dust storm season on October 29th of this year. Based on the historical pattern we found, we believe it is very likely that a global dust storm will begin within a few weeks or months of this date,"
The discovery of alien life could be a step closer after scientists found a newly discovered planet is “likely” to harbour life forms.
A team at the Marseille Astrophysics Laboratory (CNRS) believes planet Proxima b, which was first spotted in August, has seas and could even be an “ocean planet” with water covering its whole surface.
Researchers have developed a neuro-inspired analog computer that has the ability to train itself to become better at whatever tasks it performs.
Donor’s cells integrated with no sign of rejection to regenerate recipient’s heart.
Today’s Nature study reveals that cardiac muscle cells grown from the stem cells of one macaque monkey can be used to regenerate the hearts of other macaques.
At first, the drone took some explaining. Anxious villagers buzzed with rumors of a new blood-sucking thing that would fly above their homes. Witchcraft, some said.
The truth was more practical: A United Nations project would explore whether a small unmanned aerial vehicle, or UAV, could deliver HIV test samples more efficiently than land transport in rural Malawi.
As cities expand, eating up swathes of countryside in the process, agricultural pioneers are finding new ways to grow the fresh produce we need, in containers, empty buildings and any other spare space they can find to create new vertical farms.
By the time three federal government agencies issued their joint statement halting construction of the Dakota Access pipeline on September 9, there were some 5,000 protesters on site in Cannon Ball, North Dakota challenging the project.
More than 100 scientists from 28 countries have called for global action to protect seagrass meadows.
Seagrasses are flowering plants that form dense underwater beds in shallow water.
After being directed for almost 30 years at substances that destroy ozone, the Montreal Protocol will for the first time target a group of greenhouse gases. Beginning today in Kigali, Rwanda, member states of the United Nations are finalizing the terms of what could be the largest commitment to reducing global warming since the Paris Agreement on climate last December.
The snowcapped skyline of the Andes is beating a hasty retreat. Since the mid-1970s, the area covered by glaciers in Peru’s Cordillera de Vilcanota range has nearly halved, with most losses occurring below 5000 metres.
Using Landsat images taken every decade, glaciologists at the Federal University of Rio Grande do Sul in Brazil measured the snowline of the southern Peruvian range and found the ice caps that feed the glaciers shrinking.
A megadrought spanning several decades could be almost certain to hit the American southwest this century if greenhouse gas emissions are not curbed, a new study says.
Researchers have discovered a mysterious patch of Earth in China that remains frozen, even throughout the hottest summers.
Patches of permafrost aren't unusual in particularly cold or elevated parts of the planet, but the weird thing about Pingquan County in Northern China -where the "cold Earth" has been discovered - is that it isn't really either of those.
Researchers in southern California have discovered a new type of earthquake that can occur a lot deeper than expected - more than 24 km (15 miles) deep, in Earth's upper mantle.
For the first time, the bright, shimmering auroras that dance across the sky have been directly linked to specific disturbances in Earth's magnetic field.
A bizarre microbe found deep in a gold mine in South Africa could provide a model for how life might survive in seemingly uninhabitable environments through the cosmos. Known as Desulforudis audaxviator, the rod-shaped bacterium thrives 2.8 kilometers underground in a habitat devoid of the things that power the vast majority of life on Earth—light, oxygen, and carbon.
Physicists have hypothesized the existence of fundamental particles called sterile neutrinos for decades and a couple of experiments have even caught possible hints of them. However, according to new results from two major international consortia, the chances that these indications were right and that these particles actually exist are now much slimmer.
MIT physicists are proposing a new experiment to detect a dark matter particle called the axion. If successful, the effort could crack one of the most perplexing unsolved mysteries in particle physics, as well as finally yield a glimpse of dark matter.
Coronal mass ejections (CMEs) are huge explosions of plasma from the Sun that race toward Earth in a matter of hours and can cause serious harm to satellites, astronauts, and power grids. For years, scientists have debated over which physical processes could possibly trigger CMEs. Now, Ha and Bellan provide experimental support for one such mechanism.
For at least a billion years of the distant past, planet Earth should have been frozen over but wasn't. Scientists thought they knew why, but a new modeling study from the Alternative Earths team of the NASA Astrobiology Institute has fired the lead actor in that long-accepted scenario.
A Viking-era rune stone that went missing for almost two centuries has been found after a Swedish archaeologist stumbled on it almost by chance.
The find took place during installation work of a lightning conductor at Hagby Church, west of the central Swedish university town of Uppsala. It was found underground a few metres from the building.
An ancient feast, left untouched for 1,600 years until it was unearthed this summer in the foothills of southern Alberta will be preserved inside Edmonton's Royal Alberta Museum.
The roasting pit was excavated from Head-Smashed-In Buffalo Jump, on Blackfoot First Nation territory.
For years, cognitive scientist Lars Chittka felt a bit eclipsed by his colleagues at Queen Mary University of London. Their studies of apes, crows, and parrots were constantly revealing how smart these animals were. He worked on bees, and at the time, almost everyone assumed that the insects acted on instinct, not intelligence.
The scariest part of JAWS is right there in the title. Rows and rows of triangular teeth closing in from the ocean dark, ready to swallow us whole or worse. But there were creatures with mouths far more frightening than that of any shark.
The scientists call their method Ancestral Sequence Reconstruction. It is based on the idea that evolution has optimized proteins to function optimally in species that may have very different physiologies. Ancestral Sequence Reconstruction highlights the notion that evolution is toward fitness in a specific context, rather than toward an absolute idea of “highest” or “best.”
A Chinese government investigation has revealed that more than 80 percent of the data used in clinical trials of new pharmaceutical drugs have been "fabricated".
Emotions can be tricky enough for humans to read, let alone machines, but a new system can predict people's feelings with 87 percent accuracy by bouncing wireless signals off them, researchers say.
It has been a common belief that low-emissions vehicles, like hybrids and electric cars, are more expensive than other choices. But a new study finds that when operating and maintenance costs are included in a vehicle's price, cleaner cars may actually be a better bet.
Related: Some new Volvos will talk to each other to warn drivers of slippery roads
Dire predictions that the Arctic would be devoid of sea ice by September this year have proven to be unfounded after latest satellite images showed there is far more now than in 2012.
A new report from the Institute of Policy Studies provides the most accurate calculation of government spending on climate security to date. The picture isn’t pretty. We’re spending 28 times as much on military security than climate security. A public sector investment of $55bn per year is required to meet the challenge, according to the study. With $21bn in the 2017 budget, a shortfall of $34bn is left.
MAUNA KEA, Hawaii — Little lives up here except whispering hopes and a little bug called Wekiu.
Two years ago, this mountaintop was the scene of a cosmic traffic jam: honking horns, vans and trucks full of astronomers, V.I.P.s, journalists, businesspeople, politicians, protesters and police — all snarled at a roadblock just short of the summit.
A star that has such strange characteristics that it made some people think it was proof of intelligent aliens is still baffling scientists.
Last year, astronomers announced that the star, named KIC 8462852, was intermittently dimming in a way that wasn’t expected and couldn’t be explained.
Alt: “Tabby’s Star” Keeps Getting Stranger
NASA's Hubble Space Telescope has seen planet-size cannonballs of hot gas whipping through the space near a dying star, but the origin of these plasma balls remains a mystery.
A rocky planet discovered in the "habitable" zone of the star nearest our Sun may be covered with oceans, researchers at France's CNRS research institute said Thursday.
A team including CNRS astrophysicists have calculated the size and surface properties of the planet dubbed Proxima b, and concluded it may be an "ocean planet" similar to Earth.
Boeing Co. once helped the U.S. beat the Soviet Union in the race to the moon. Now the company intends to go toe-to-toe with newcomers such as billionaire Elon Musk in the next era of space exploration and commerce.
THEY are both breathtaking, in quite different ways: the thin air 4200 metres up, and the majestically rugged, alien landscape at my feet.
I am on the summit of Mauna Kea, the highest point in Hawaii. The red-brown basalt and barren surface of the dormant volcano conjure up images of Mars.
Related: Alaska Has Been Mapped as Precisely as Mars
How do you make half the mass of two continents disappear? To answer that question, you first need to discover that it's missing.
That's what a trio of University of Chicago geoscientists and their collaborator did, and their explanation for where the mass went significantly changes prevailing ideas about what can happen when continents collide.
Boys conceived using an assisted reproductive technique in which sperm is injected directly into the egg have lower fertility than average, scientists have found.
The results come from the first generation of boys conceived using a technique called intra-cytoplasmic sperm injection (ICSI), who are just reaching adulthood, and show that the young men have lower sperm quantity and quality than those conceived spontaneously.
This week, Perdue announced that it has ended the routine use of all antibiotics in its entire operation. It only resorts to the use of antibiotics when chickens are getting sick. According to the company, that happens to about 5 percent of its flocks. That leaves 95 percent of the company's production eligible to be sold under the label "no antibiotics ever."
Related: Revealed: MRSA variant found in British pork at Asda and Sainsbury's
Related: What’s 11,000 Times Dirtier Than a Toilet Seat?
Different genes are involved during the adaptation of a domestic animal to life in the wild than when a wild animal becomes domesticated, concludes a new study. The results increase our understanding of what happens as a species evolves.
Paleontologist and evolutionary biologist Steven Stanley of the University of Hawaii has challenged the notion that the Permian-Triassic mass extinction event 252 million years ago killed off up to 96 percent of all marine life.
About 20 million years ago, a car-size shark swam along the ancient coastlines of the Atlantic and Pacific oceans, hunting for medium-size fish with its pointy teeth, a new study finds.
A team of Japanese and Mongolian paleontologists have discovered the largest dinosaur footprint ever found in the Mongolian desert. The footprint is as big as a fully grown person, measuring 42 inches long and 30 inches wide. It belongs to the Titanosaur, a dinosaur who, as its name suggests, was very, very large
Brazilian scientists have announced the discovery of what they say is the largest dinosaur ever found in South America’s biggest country.
The director of Rio de Janeiro’s Earth Sciences Museum, Diogenes Campos, said on Wednesday he named the 25-metre-long dinosaur “Austroposeidon magnificus.”
It’s been an open secret for almost two years that something important was buried next to the historic Haymarket Martyr’s Monument in Forest Park.
A new research project, '1,000 Ancient Genomes', seeks to map the genetic variation among 1,000 prehistoric individuals who lived in Europe and Asia between 1,000 and 50,000 years ago. This data will help researchers give a complete picture of genetic variation among humans from different times and geographic areas.
Neandertals are the comeback kids of human evolution. A mere decade ago, the burly, jut-jawed crowd was known as a dead-end species that lost out to us, Homo sapiens.
But once geneticists began extracting Neandertal DNA from fossils and comparing it with DNA from present-day folks, the story changed.
The human-headed winged bull of Nimrud that was destroyed by Islamic State last year will come back to life for tourists visiting Rome’s Colosseum in an exhibition designed to ignite a debate on the preservation of cultural heritage.
Archaeologists have discovered evidence of what they believe is the earliest known journey in British history: a 250-mile trip from York to Wiltshire made 7,000 years ago by a Mesolithic hunter-gatherer and his dog.
Archaeologists have created a new database from the teeth of prehistoric humans found at ancient burial sites in Britain and Ireland that tell us a lot about their climate, their diet and even how far they may have travelled.
Even today, giving birth can be one of the most dangerous moments in a woman's life. In ancient times it would have been even more so. Matriarchal societies would have tried to ensure the safest environment possible for expectant women.
There's now another reason for new moms to treat themselves during breastfeeding: their milk will be hard at work as a teacher. Mothers' breast milk teaches babies' developing cells to defend against infection, according to new research led by University of California, Riverside.
Related: Breastfeeding saves mothers' lives, too, study shows
Related: The Breast Has Its Own Microbiome--and the Mix of Bacteria Could Prevent or Encourage Cancer
Related: Morning sickness linked to lower risk of pregnancy loss
Related: Harsh Parents Raise Bullies--So Do Permissive Ones
Scientists have uncovered the first evidence that the human ovary may be able to grow new eggs in adulthood.
If confirmed, the discovery would overturn the accepted view that women are born with a fixed number of eggs and that the body has no capacity to increase this supply.