Newsdesk Archive
The skies may be safer than we assumed. Many asteroids are weak and brittle – which could be good news for us on Earth.
More than 90 per cent of asteroids and comets larger than a kilometre across in Earth’s neighbourhood have already been discovered, and scientists think the region is mostly clear of them.
Sharks swim around a platform off Mexico's east coast as scientists drill deep into the ocean floor, extracting the remains of the asteroid widely blamed for the demise of the dinosaurs.
A newly-classified fossil gives clues to how life in the oceans recovered from a mass extinction about 250 million years ago.
The reptile is an early relative of the ichthyosaurs - a large group of marine reptiles that swam at the time of the dinosaurs.
Two new horned dinosaurs, one from Utah and the other from Montana, each sported distinctive facial horns and spiked neck shields, according to two separate papers published in the journal PLOS ONE.
Related: Did dinosaurs have lips? Ask this University of Toronto paleontologist
Palestinians to announce a list of heritage sites in urgent need of protection from Israeli violations.
A rich trading town dating back about 3,600 years has been under excavation in the Gaza Strip on the coast of the Mediterranean Sea. Archaeologists have uncovered stunning gold jewelry, scarabs and Cypriot pottery in the town, Tell el-Ajjul, which was on one of the ancient world’s major trade highways.
A mysterious set of 9,000-year-old bones, unearthed nearly 20 years ago in Washington, is finally going home. Following bitter disputes, five Native American groups in the Pacific Northwest have come together to facilitate the reburial of an individual they know as "Ancient One." One of the most complete prehistoric human skeletons discovered in North America, "Kennewick Man" also became the most controversial.
Archaeologists are revealing the location of the site where they believe San Antonio's first mission once stood, saying the Alamo had two predecessors.
"There were three locations of Mission San Antonio de Valero," said Kay Hindes, city archaeologist.
Painted human mandibles that may have been worn like necklace pendants have been discovered at a ceremonial site in Mexico that dates back around 1,300 years.
In the same ceremonial area, numerous whistles and figurines were also discovered. Made out of ceramic, these objects had been smashed into thousands of fragments, not a single example found intact.
Ancient, magical spells of love, subjugation and sex: It may sound like a "Game of Thrones" episode, but these evildoings are also found on two recently deciphered papyri from Egypt dating to around 1,700 years ago.
Antibiotics strong enough to kill off gut bacteria can also stop the growth of new brain cells in the hippocampus, a section of the brain associated with memory, reports a new study in mice. Researchers also uncovered a clue to why -- a type of white blood cell seems to act as a communicator between the brain, the immune system, and the gut.
Related: Common antimicrobial agent rapidly disrupts gut bacteria
Most attempts to tackle climate change focus on cutting greenhouse gases from cars and factories, but a small group of scientists think the key may lie in cutting emissions of a different kind.
Related: No junk-food diet: Even in cities, bees find flowers and avoid processed sugars
New gene-editing technology gives scientists the ability to wipe out the carriers of malaria and the Zika virus. But should they use it?
The amount of water vapor in the air – humidity – profoundly alters our experience of the environment around us. A hot, dry morning in the desert of California feels miles apart from a hot, sticky one in the Cambodian jungle.
Chances are you’ve never heard of Allan Sandage, but the late astronomer was a major figure in 20th century astronomy, particularly known for his work on how stars evolve. Late in life, he discovered two other scientists had beaten him to that breakthrough, but Sandage died before he could finish investigating. His posthumous paper correcting the historical record has just appeared in the Publications of the Astronomical Society of the Pacific.
Using recent advancements in Australian telescope technology, a Monash University-led research team has made an unexpected discovery that a large group of stars are dying prematurely, challenging our accepted view of stellar evolution.
It is an well-known fact that all stars have a lifespan. This begins with their formation, then continues through their Main Sequence phase (which constitutes the majority of their life) before ending in death. In most cases, stars will swell up to several hundred times their normal size as they exit the Main Sequence phase of their life, during which time they will likely consume any planets that orbit closely to them.
Imagine if we sent up a visible signal that could eventually be seen across the entire universe. Imagine if another civilization did the same. Photonics advances allow us to be seen across the universe, with major implications for the search for extraterrestrial intelligence, says UC Santa Barbara physicist Philip Lubin.
The possibility that we earthlings are not truly alone in the universe has gained some added credibility, thanks to a new study that coincides with NASA’s recent planetary discoveries. The research, published in the journal Astrobiology last week, suggests that more planets in the Milky Way galaxy may harbor advanced civilizations than we previously imagined.
An international team of astronomers reports the discovery of a Neptune-mass exoplanet with a density comparable to Earth's. According to the research, the newly detected alien world, designated EPIC212521166 b, is the most massive planet with a sub-Neptune radius found to date. A paper detailing the finding was published online on May 13 in a pre-print version on arXiv.org.
Astronomers have found the first evidence of comets around a star similar to the sun, providing an opportunity to study what our solar system was like as a ‘baby’.
New findings based on a year's worth of observations from NASA's Van Allen Probes have revealed that the ring current - an electrical current carried by energetic ions that encircles our planet - behaves in a much different way than previously understood.
Pluto may be long gone, but NASA’s New Horizons spacecraft is by no means finished with the outer solar system. For the second time, New Horizons has observed 1994 JR1, a 90-mile wide Kuiper Belt Object (KBO) that orbits over 3 billion miles from the sun.
Uber has finally released the first official photo of the self-driving cars that it is testing on the streets of Pittsburgh, almost a year to the day since reporters in that city first spotted an earlier prototype. The car, a hybrid Ford Fusion, is collecting mapping data as well as testing its self-driving capabilities, and is equipped with "radars, laser scanners, and high resolution cameras to map details of the environment,"
In its first five years, the Google Cultural Institute scanned and archived 200 works of art in super-high-resolution gigapixel images. Now in just the past few months, it has managed to scan another 1,000.
Related: Scan your doodles to find the perfect matching photo online
A new body-scanning mirror could soon have you asking, "Mirror, mirror on the wall, who's the fittest of them all?" But unlike the magic mirror from Snow White's tale, this new device will objectively respond with your body dimensions, weight and muscle mass, all displayed on a 3D avatar of your physique.
People who experience migraines that are made worse by light might be better off seeing the world in green.
While white, blue, red and amber light all increase migraine pain, low-intensity green light seems to reduce it. The team behind the finding hope that specially developed sunglasses that screen out all wavelengths of light except green could help migraineurs.
Exposure to bright light alters your metabolism, reports a new study. Scientists found bright light exposure increased insulin resistance compared to dim light exposure in both the morning and the evening. In the evening, bright light also caused higher peak glucose (blood sugar) levels. Over time, excess blood glucose can result in increased body fat, weight gain and a higher risk for diabetes.
Most of us like to think that we have moral standards, and there may be a psychological reason why.
A study published (paywall) today (May 16) in the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences indicates that when we act unethically, we’re more likely to remember these actions less clearly.
Related: Eyewitnesses' memories darken skin color
Germs could play a role in the development of type 1 diabetes by triggering the body's immune system to destroy the cells that produce insulin, new research suggests.
Technique tested on Britons' genomes provides first look at human genetic adaptation over the past 2,000 years.
Alt: Humans are still evolving: Huge DNA study tracks how the British have changed since the Romans were in charge
One civilization's trash is another civilization's treasure. A ship in Israel's Caesarea Harbor was filled with bronze statues headed for recycling when it sank about 1,600 years ago. Now, thanks to a chance discovery by a pair of divers, archaeologists have salvaged a haul of statuary fragments, figurines and coins from the seafloor.
The discovery was made during excavations inside the Church of Raphael in the royal complex in Dongola, northern Sudan. The temple is located next to the relics of a medieval palace.
DNA from an ancient woman who lived in what’s now Romania indicates that people in Asia trekked to Africa starting between 45,000 and 40,000 years ago.
Traditional owners in WA's Pilbara region have asked Rio Tinto to redesign mine expansion plans, following the discovery of Aboriginal artefacts in a rock shelter dating back 40,000 years.
The company came across what has been described as "an abundance of flaked stone material, and faunal material including egg shell not often recovered in the Pilbara" in 2008, while surveying about 20 kilometres west of the town of Tom Price.
Scientists have unearthed evidence of one of the largest asteroids ever to assail the Earth.
Delving into some of the oldest known sediments on the planet, researchers in northwestern Australia discovered a trove of tiny glass beads known as spherules, vaporized remnants of an asteroid slamming into the surface.
Scientists ringing alarm bells about the melting of Antarctica have focused most of their attention, so far, on the smaller West Antarctic ice sheet, which is grounded deep below sea level and highly exposed to the influence of warming seas. But new research published in the journal Nature Wednesday reaffirms that there’s a possibly even bigger — if slower moving — threat in the much larger ice mass of East Antarctica.
Related: '99 Percent Chance' 2016 Will Be Hottest Year
Some 3.4 billion years ago, giant meteoroids slammed into a frigid ocean covering Mars's northern hemisphere. The impacts kicked up enormous waves that raced across the water and swamped the shoreline, research suggests.
On the scale of planetary catastrophes, such tsunamis would have dwarfed most Earthly ones.
A mysterious Martian haze is defying everything scientists know about the Red Planet's atmosphere.
The strange phenomenon was spotted in March and April of 2012 over 155 miles above the planet's surface, according to a recently published report in the journal Nature.
The ocean of Jupiter's moon Europa could have the necessary balance of chemical energy for life, even if the moon lacks volcanic hydrothermal activity, finds a new study.
Jupiter is walloped by impacting meteors and other bodies big enough to generate fireballs visible from Earth an average of 6.5 times per year, a new study shows.
Jupiter's Io is the volcanic epi-center of our solar system. But once you absorb the fact that the Jupiter's innermost moon is slathered in sulfurous lava erupted from 400 active volcanoes, you might turn your attention to scattered bumps and lumps that turn out, on closer inspection, to be Io's version of mountains.There are about 100 of them, and they don't look anything like the low lying volcanoes.
Two million Americans become infected with some drug-resistant bacteria annually in the United States and at least 23,000 deaths are attributable to drug resistant infections. Antibiotic resistance is a scourge on the world that can be fatal, and it will be even more so if we don’t devise alternative treatments, or improve our cache of available antibiotics.
A handful of scientists around the United States are trying to do something that some people find disturbing: make embryos that are part human, part animal.
The researchers hope these embryos, known as chimeras, could eventually help save the lives of people with a wide range of diseases.
A gene that scientific dogma insists is inactive in adults actually plays a vital role in preventing the underlying cause of most heart attacks and strokes, researchers have determined. The discovery opens a new avenue for battling those deadly conditions, and it raises the tantalizing prospect that doctors could use the gene to prevent or delay at least some of the effects of aging.
Legend says King Arthur was taken to the Isle of Avalon after he was injured in a battle with his enemy Mordred before disappearing.
But now a historian claims to have found where the great British ruler is buried - in a field in Shropshire.
The foundations and shoulder-high walls of the Curtain theatre, where Shakespeare performed as an actor and may have staged the first performances of Romeo and Juliet and Henry V, have been uncovered in a development site in Shoreditch.
Related: Shakespeare Curtain Theatre: Remains reveal toy used for sound effects
A 2,000-year-old military barracks has been found, complete with ancient human skeletons, deep beneath the streets of Rome during the construction of the city’s long-delayed third metro line.
The chance discovery beneath a nearly 2,000-year-old pyramid leads to the heart of a lost civilization
In the fall of 2003, a heavy rainstorm swept through the ruins of Teotihuacán, the pyramid-studded, pre-Aztec metropolis 30 miles northeast of present-day Mexico City.
The intact tomb of a Thracian warrior dating back some 5,000 years has been excavated in Turkey, the Istanbul Archaeology Museum announced. Experts are calling it the biggest archaeological find so far this year in Turkey—a country with many important archaeological sites.
American and Egyptian archaeologists have discovered a rare structure called a nilometer in the ruins of the ancient city of Thmuis in Egypt’s Delta region. Likely constructed during the third century B.C., the nilometer was used for roughly a thousand years to calculate the water level of the river during the annual flooding of the Nile. Fewer than two dozen of the devices are known to exist.
New bioarchaeological evidence shows that Nubians and Egyptians integrated into a community, and even married, in ancient Sudan, according to new research from a Purdue University anthropologist.
Earth scientists from Rice University, Yale University and the University of Tokyo are offering a new answer to the long-standing question of how our planet acquired its oxygenated atmosphere.
Humans tend to dismiss Neanderthals as dimwits, yet the brains of our doomed cousins were actually larger than our own. “If you go to a site from 150,000 years ago,” says Miki Ben-Dor, a Tel Aviv University archaeologist, “you won’t be able to tell whether Neanderthals or Homo sapiens lived there, because they had all the same tools.” Which helps explain why, to fathom how our fates diverged, he recently scrutinized Neanderthals’ bodies instead of their skulls.
Researchers said Tuesday they had uncovered fossils showing that complex life on Earth began more than 1.5 billion years ago, nearly a billion years earlier than previously thought.
But the evidence, published in Nature Communications, immediately provoked debate, with some scientists hailing it as rock solid, and others saying they were wholly unconvinced.
Ancient footprints as well as prehistoric tree stumps and logs have become visible along a 200-meter stretch of a coastline at Low Hauxley near Amble, Northumberland, in what is believed to be Doggerland, the Atlantis of Britain.
The Daily Mail reports that the forest existed in the late Mesolithic period.
They don’t snore, but might creak during their slumbers. For the first time, trees have been shown to undergo physical changes at night that can be likened to sleep, or at least to day-night cycles that have been observed experimentally in smaller plants.
Branches of birch trees have now been seen drooping by as much as 10 centimetres at the tips towards the end of the night.
Related: Last stand for Europe's remaining ancient forest as loggers prepare to move in
The features that make cities unique are important to understanding how cities affect weather and disperse air pollutants, researchers highlight in a new study.
They're our microscopic allies in making dirt a major resource for storing excess carbon.
Around the globe, 2016 has been a dusty year. Just this month, massive dust storms enveloped Guazhou County in China, engulfing five-story buildings.
A craft beer company has brewed up a brilliant idea.
Saltwater Brewery in Delray Beach, Florida, has created edible six-pack rings that feed, rather than kill, marine life if the rings end up in the ocean and an animal happens to eat it. The rings are created from beer by-products during the brewing process such as barley and wheat and are completely safe for humans and fish to eat.
Scientists have discovered how a tiny yet abundant ocean organism helps regulate Earth's climate. They showed that these tiny, hugely abundant bacteria could make the environmentally important gas, dimethyl sulfide.
Related: Polluted dust can impact ocean life thousands of miles away, study says
Researchers have found that two strains of E. coli bacteria, each resistant to one antibiotic, can protect each other in an environment where both drugs are present.
WWF researchers are celebrating the first live sighting of a Sumatran rhino in Kalimantan, the Indonesia part of Borneo, since it was thought to be extinct there.
Related: Fractured Monkeys - A new study of one of the world’s most endangered primates finds new clues to its conservation
Worldwide, fishing has historically been a critical source of food and jobs, and given its importance, many governments support their local industries with subsidies to keep fisheries competitive in the global market. Now, fish stocks are collapsing after more than half a century of decline.
The most powerful proton conductor in the natural world is a weird, jelly-like substance that lives inside a shark's head.
That's according to a study published Friday in the journal Science Advances, which found that the material that makes up electricity-sensing shark organs called the ampullae of Lorenzini is almost as conductive as some of the most high-tech materials made by man.
Scientists believe they have an uncovered an evolutionary throwback in a rare deep ocean whale that washed ashore on a South Australian beach.
The beaked whale, found dead on Waitpinga beach in February, confounded examiners from the South Australian Museum who discovered two mysterious teeth previously unseen in that family of deep diving mammals.
I hate preaching to the converted. If you were Buddhists, I’d bash Buddhism. But you’re skeptics, so I have to bash skepticism.
Related: Legend of Old Stinker: Hull residents report multiple sightings of '8-foot tall werewolf'
There's no one single cause that drives us to strap on a tinfoil hat—instead, a variety of factors interact with each other to push us in that direction. A recent paper in the Journal of Personality and Individual Differences reports a correlation between stress and conspiracy theory belief, suggesting that a very common experience could be one of these factors.
New research demonstrates the effectiveness of ketamine to treat depression in a mouse model of the disease and brings together two hypotheses for the cause of depression.
A hallucinogenic drug derived from magic mushrooms could be useful in treating depression, the first safety study of this approach has concluded.
Related: Why psychedelics could be a new class of antidepressant
Exposure to natural settings has been linked with a vast array of human health benefits, from reduced rates of depression to increased immune functioning. Two recent studies found evidence suggesting that urban green spaces, such as parks and gardens, may also improve cognitive development and buffer against the effects of health inequality.
Incorporating omega-3, vitamins and mineral supplements into the diets of children with extreme aggression can reduce this problem behavior in the short term, especially its more impulsive, emotional form, according to University of Pennsylvania researchers who published their findings in the Journal of Child Psychology and Psychiatry.
Related: The six elements of an effective apology, according to science
A growing body of research is revealing associations between birth defects and a father's age, alcohol use and environmental factors, say researchers. They say these defects result from epigenetic alterations that can potentially affect multiple generations.
“We can turn water into wine in 15 minutes.” So claims the Ava Winery, a San Francisco start-up that is making synthetic wine without grapes – simply by combining flavour compounds and ethanol.
Scientists have discovered a previously unknown property of spider silk, and used it to create a remarkable new “hybrid” material. The new bio-inspired thread, which acts like both a solid and a liquid, could lead to a host of new materials and technologies.
Researchers at the University of Maryland were able pull away color and chemicals from a block of wood to leave it impressively see-through. The result is a material that is both stronger and more insulating than glass, with better biodegradability than plastic. "We were very surprised by how transparent it could go," said Liangbing Hu, who wrote about the project in Advanced Materials.
If trying to order dinner or find your hotel abroad fills you with fear due to your abysmal grasp of foreign languages, don't panic.
A forthcoming in-ear gadget is claimed to be able to translate speech like the Babel Fish in The Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy, or the Universal Translator gadget in Star Trek.
Physicists are putting themselves out of a job, using artificial intelligence to run a complex experiment. The experiment created an extremely cold gas trapped in a laser beam, known as a Bose-Einstein condensate, replicating the experiment that won the 2001 Nobel Prize.
All throughout the universe, there are stars in varying phases and ages. The oldest detected Kepler planets (exoplanets found using NASA's Kepler telescope) are about 11 billion years old, and the planetary diversity suggests that around other stars, such initially frozen worlds could be the size of Earth and could even provide habitable conditions once the star becomes older. Astronomers usually looked at middle-aged stars like our sun, but to find habitable worlds, one needs to look around stars of all ages.
A big methane spike that NASA's Mars rover Curiosity detected two years ago was not due to seasonal changes on the Red Planet, NASA scientists said.
For a few weeks in late 2013 and early 2014, Curiosity noticed that atmospheric methane — a gas that could possibly be an indication of microbial activity — surged from an average background level of about 0.7 parts per billion all the way up to 7 parts per billion.
It has long been held to be one of the most famous UFO incidents of the 20th century, if not of all time.
Related: Video captures mysterious bright white UFO 'shaped like an angel' in the skies over Alicante
Related: Super Bright Fireball Spotted Across U.S. Northeast
Related: UFO 'filmed exiting Earth's atmosphere and joining second object'
Related: Scientists Captured Raw Footage Of UFO At Hessdalen Observatory [Video]
The Kepler satellite was designed to search for Earth-sized planets in the habitable zone of stars by measuring dips in a star's brightness as orbiting planets move across the stellar disc (transits). Its sensitive camera stares at more than 150,000 stars towards the constellations of Cygnus and Lyrae, and so far has found over 5000 exoplanet candidates. But Kepler also monitors the light fluctuations in all the other stars, even dips not caused by transits, and has found some bizarre situations.
Planetary Resources, a company hoping to make asteroid mining into a trillion dollar industry, earlier this year unveiled the world's first 3D printed object made from bits of an asteroid.
Establishing a human colony on the Moon and travelling to Mars has been the stuff of dreams since the dawn of the space age.
Related: Humans on Mars: Scouting Needed for Red Planet Resources
A couple of months ago I talked about the connection between global warming and the Zika virus. Today I would like to discuss another interesting side effect we might observe in the next decades thanks to global warming. The ice caps will melt. Big deal, we already knew that. But have you ever thought of the stuff trapped in that ice that’s going to thaw? What if some of that stuff isn’t really dead, just dormant, waiting to come back? Sounds like fiction, but it’s not.
Nice mystery here! I have been contacted by independent researcher MADELEINE DAINES who has has been working through the contents of the Cuneiform Digital Library where she has found a fragment of a Sumerian tablet dating to 3500 BC and bearing a deeply puzzling image...
Scientists have found evidence of a huge asteroid that struck the Earth early in its life with an impact larger than anything humans have experienced. Tiny glass beads called spherules, found in north-western Australia were formed from vaporized material from the asteroid impact, 3.46 billion years ago.
A curious prehistoric site on a hilltop in northern Ohio may reflect the spiritual cosmology of the ancient hunter-gatherer people who built the site around 2,300 years ago, according to a new study.
More than 50 years after weird radio echoes were detected coming from Earth's upper atmosphere, two scientists say they've pinpointed the culprit. And it's complicated.
In 1962, after the Jicamarca Radio Observatory was built near Lima, Peru, some unexplainable phenomenon was reflecting the radio waves broadcast by the observatory back to the ground to be picked up by its detectors.
Just over one hundred years after Albert Einstein proposed his general theory of relativity, scientists have mapped nearly 3,000 ancient galaxies to confirm its rules held true in the early universe.
Physicists have just discovered a new form of light that doesn't follow our existing rules of angular momentum, and it could shake up our understanding of the electromagnetic radiation and lead to faster, more secure optical communication.
Self-driving cars are expected to usher in a new era of mobility, safety and convenience. The problem, say transportation researchers, is that people will use them too much.
Related: London is set for driverless car roll-out – so what comes next?
Researchers from MIT have designed a new ingestible "robot" that could one day be used to patch internal wounds, deliver medicine, or remove accidentally swallowed objects from the stomach. The design consists of a specially folded sheet of dried pig intestine (usually used in sausage casing) and a tiny magnet. Folded up, this capsule can be swallowed by a patient. It then hits the stomach and unfolds in the acidic juices, where it can be guided to complete certain tasks using external magnets.
No, it’s not science fiction. Indian researchers are embarking on a study to try to literally revive the brain dead. A person is both medically and legally dead when the brain stops working, an irreversible condition known as brain death. Now, if one group of scientists have their way, the definition of death might get a bit more complicated—they are kicking off a clinical trial in which they will try to regenerate a portion of the brain in 20 people with brain death.
Stanford study shows how details gleaned from telephone ‘metadata’ by National Security Agency pose a threat to privacy of ordinary citizens
Fans of the 1982 Harrison Ford movie “Blade Runner” — the best sc-fi film ever, in my embarrassingly considered opinion – will remember the Voight-Kampff machine.
In the film, the machine was used to detect replicants -- artificial humans -- by monitoring empathetic responses. Similar to a polygraph test, the Voight-Kampff machine measured involuntary biological functions like respiration, heart rate and pupil dilation.
Well this is a bit weird. Researchers have found out that it's possible to tell what film is playing in a cinema by merely sampling the air coming out of the theater.
A team of investigators at Harvard-affiliated Brigham and Women’s Hospital (BWH) has found evidence that suggests that bacteria living in the gut may remotely influence the activity of cells in the brain that are involved in controlling inflammation and neurodegeneration.
Getting warm has a dramatic antidepressant effect, according to a new report published in the prestigious journal JAMA Psychiatry. But is it hot science or a hot mess?
The Hawaiian Islands, situated in the middle of the Pacific Ocean are a central target for earthquakes and tsunamis from almost all directions. Researchers from the University of Hawaii in Mãnoa (UHM) predict that a 9.0 earthquake in the Aleutian Islands will trigger a mega tsunami within the next 50 years causing catastrophic damage.
Alt: Do All Trees Snap at About 94 Mph?