Newsdesk Archive
The mystery of how jets of plasma explode from the surface of the sun and erupt into space thousands of times a day may finally be solved, a new study finds.
Long-term power cuts, destruction of electronic devices and increased cancer risk for aeroplane passengers are all potential effects of the Earth being hit by a powerful solar eruption.
One scientist is working on a novel solution for knocking dead, broken satellites out of orbit so they can't cause any damage to other spacecraft: a magnetic grappling beam.
This Saturday at roughly 2:38 AM Eastern Time an asteroid bigger than a football stadium will whiz past Earth at 28,000 miles per hour and almost certainly not hit us. But that won’t be the end of it. The 755-foot-diameter projectile is set to return every year until 2022, during which time who knows what could happen.
The nearest star is Proxima Centauri, located a mere 4.25 light years away. Just for comparison, the Voyager spacecraft, the most distant human objects ever built by humans, would need about 50,000 years to make that journey.
A new study has found that 30 percent of the world’s population is currently exposed to potentially deadly heat for 20 days per year or more—and like a growing forest fire, climate change is spreading this extreme heat.
In the early 2000s, the idea of giving legal rights to nature was on the fringes of environmental legal theory and public consciousness.
Today, New Zealand’s Whanganui River is a person under domestic law, and India’s Ganges River was recently granted human rights. In Ecuador, the Constitution enshrines nature’s “right to integral respect”. What on earth does this all mean?
'Saline agriculture' – the process of adapting farming techniques to salted soils – which could prove key for coastal farms at risk of flooding, and is a new area of focus for researchers at the University of Lincoln.
A global effort to clean up some of the most litter-strewn beaches recovered a mind-boggling 1,863,838 cigarettes - plus 56 toilets and even a piano.
Ocean Conservancy, a U.S.-based non-profit that organises a mammoth coastal litter-pick every year, found that cigarettes were the worst offender in 2016 when it came to water waste, followed by plastic bottles.
The levels of microplastic particles accumulating in the Antarctic are much worse than expected, a team of experts has warned.
The continent is considered to be a pristine wilderness compared to other regions and was thought to be relatively free from plastic pollution.
This not evidence of time travel. These bottles aren't clear, and they don't have labels. They're pitch black—made by indigenous tribes who coated large, woven bulbs with a tar-like substance called bitumen. Scientists have known about these bottles for years. But what they hadn't considered was whether these plastic bottles contributed to the declining health in some old societies
Alt: Ancient Manufacturing Technique Exposed Indigenous Peoples to Dangerous Toxins
Two people walking along a riverbank stumbled across an ancient Native American dugout canoe thought to be up to 1,000 years old.
Robert Cornett and Jeanna Bradle noticed the 33-foot-long craft sticking out of the mud on the Red River north of Shreveport in Louisiana two weeks ago.
The exploded skull of a man who died in the catastrophic eruption of Mount Vesuvius nearly 2,000 years ago has been pieced together giving scientists a unique opportunity to capture the ancient face using 3D imaging.
Archaeologists have found that a 20-foot high mound in Slough, thought to be a Norman castle motte and for centuries the centrepiece of a bizarre Eton College ceremony, is actually a rare Saxon monument, built 1,500 years ago.
Related: Medieval Sword Pulled From Polish Bog
Seven million years ago the sunflower and corn fields in parts of southern Bulgaria were like an African savannah, roamed by gazelles and giraffes.
And perhaps also, amazingly, by the oldest known human ancestor—which most scientists have hitherto believed came from Africa.
DC power lines are being used again thanks to their ability to outperform AC lines over long distances and directly connect with renewable power sources. This makes bringing green energy from distant rural locations to urban centers possible.
Related: Flushing fallopian tubes with poppy seed oil boosts fertility
Renewable sources of energy have generated more electricity than coal and gas in Great Britain for the first time.
National Grid reported that, on Wednesday lunchtime, power from wind, solar, hydro and wood pellet burning supplied 50.7% of UK energy.
Ten percent of all of the electricity generated in the U.S. in March came from wind and solar power, marking the first such milestone in U.S. history, according to a new U.S. Energy Information Administration report.
Computerised tests could train those suffering unrequited love to avoid actions they might later regret, says Cambridge University professor Barbara Sahakian
The US is currently in the grip of a major public health crisis, often called the “opioid epidemic”. Much of the media attention understandably focuses on the comparatively new threats of fentanyl and legal prescription drugs like oxycodone, but new research shows that heroin use has reached a 20-year high in the US. Not only that, "the devil's drug" is now costing the US upwards of $51 billion a year.
Related: Business Health Lifestyle Legal Activism Science Reviews Smoking Marijuana Causes ‘Complete Remission’ of Crohn’s Disease, No Side Effects, New Study Shows
A vaccine developed at The Scripps Research Institute (TSRI) to block the “high” of heroin has proven effective in non-human primates. This is the first vaccine against an opioid to pass this stage of preclinical testing.
A little striped fish that lives among rocks in Lake Tanganyika in East Africa has the unexpected ability to recognise individual faces, which it uses to keep menacing strangers in sight.
A promiscuous salamander has found a simple genetic formula for success: Mate with multiple males and use equal parts of each partner's genetic material in her offspring.
Bacterial secretions put protozoans in the mood for sex. This unexpected aphrodisiac may open the bedroom door for microbiologists to study sexual behaviour in many poorly understood species – and perhaps even in the earliest animals.
New research from the University of Liverpool, published in the journal Nanoscale, has probed the structure and material properties of protein machines in bacteria, which have the capacity to convert carbon dioxide into sugar through photosynthesis.
Would you have pig cells implanted in your brain? Some people with Parkinson’s disease have, in the hope it will stop their disease progressing.
There's something inherently creepy and annoying about drones buzzing over our heads — a frequent backyard irritation in cities like New York. But it turns out, a drone’s spying abilities can be useful: an uncrewed drone discovered a super-rare plant on a steep cliff on the Hawaiian island of Kaua?i.
A new report from USA Today found that drones have been used more than a dozen times to fly contraband into federal prisons over the last five years, as scattered reports suggest the smuggling operations have proven popular.
From "The Jetsons" to "Chitty Chitty Bang Bang", flying cars have long captured the imagination.
While several futuristic projects are under way in different countries, a Dutch design may be the first one sold and soaring into the skies.
Robots that slice, grill, assemble and bag 400 burgers in one hour could soon take over restaurants everywhere.
Momentum Machines first unveiled its autonomous grill master, which can do the work of three human burger flippers, in 2012.
Dubai is introducing a robot to their police force to interact with citizens. Dubai's goal is to have their police force consist of 25% robots by 2030.
In order to probe the AI mind, DARPA is funding research by Oregon State University that will try to understand the reasoning behind decisions made by AI systems. DARPA hopes that this will make AI more trustworthy.
Sophia smiles mischievously, bats her eyelids and tells a joke. Without the mess of cables that make up the back of her head, you could almost mistake her for a human.
Alt: SophiaBot Asks You to be Nice So She Can Learn Human Compassion
Related: Elon Musk Says Deep AI, Not Automation, Poses the Real Risk for Humanity
Cancer patients could soon have their disease diagnosed by artificial intelligence, following the results of a series of trials in hospitals around the world.
IBM, the US computer firm, has revealed that its Watson artificial intelligence system is capable of accurately identifying tumours in up to 93 per cent of cases following tests on real cases.
Researchers at the University of Adelaide have developed an AI that can analyze CT scans to predict if a patient will die within five years with 69 percent accuracy. This system could eventually be used to save lives by providing doctors with a way to detect illnesses sooner.
By 2020, there will be at least 4 internet-connected devices for every person on Earth comprising the Internet of Things. The growth of the IoT is being powered by more 5G access and falling costs, and will equalize opportunities for more people.
Magnetic materials form the basis of technologies that play increasingly pivotal roles in our lives today, including sensing and hard-disk data storage. But as our innovative dreams conjure wishes for ever-smaller and faster devices, researchers are seeking new magnetic materials that are more compact, more efficient and can be controlled using precise, reliable methods.
Our bodies have an internal clock, called the circadian rhythm, which is in sync with the 24-hour cycle of day and night. It is regulated by the body’s core temperature and is linked to sunlight, insofar as the core temperature is affected by sunlight. The rhythm itself triggers important bodily functions like metabolism and the sleep cycle.
The billionaire entrepreneur and founder of SpaceX wants to make humanity a "multi-planetary species”
Musk's Mars vision centers on a reusable rocket-and-spaceship combo that he's dubbed the Interplanetary Transport System (ITS). Both the booster and the spaceship will be powered by SpaceX's Raptor engine, still in development, which Musk said will be about three times stronger than the Merlin engines that power the company's Falcon 9 rocket.
The planet Jupiter is a beast: Three-hundred-and-seventeen times the mass of the Earth, mostly made of metallic hydrogen, and at the center of an astonishing collective of orbiting natural bodies.
China says it has launched the world’s first quantum satellite, a project Beijing hopes will enable it to build a coveted “hack-proof” communications system with potentially significant military and commercial applications.
Related: Theresa May to launch wide-ranging internet regulation and security changes despite not winning majority
One of the more intriguing unsolved modern mysteries is the fast radio burst (FRB) phenomenon. Over the last several years, radio telescopes on Earth have been detecting more and more very brief, very powerful radio signals which originate from deep space. While astronomers have been able to locate the source of several of these signals, the exact mechanisms of their production remain a mystery.
Einstein’s greatest theory has aced another test. Two stars are speeding around the big black hole at the Milky Way’s core in just the way his general theory of relativity predicted.
“It’s the first time that general relativity is really tested around a supermassive black hole,” says Aurélien Hees at the University of California, Los Angeles.
Earth and its parent galaxy are living in a cosmic desert — a region of space largely devoid of other galaxies, stars and planets, according to a new study.
The findings confirm the results of a previous study based on observations taken in 2013.
Researchers from the University of Zurich have simulated the formation of our entire universe with a large supercomputer. A gigantic catalogue of about 25 billion virtual galaxies has been generated from 2 trillion digital particles. This catalogue is being used to calibrate the experiments on board the Euclid satellite, that will be launched in 2020 with the objective of investigating the nature of dark matter and dark energy.
Neuroscientists have used a classic branch of maths in a totally new way to peer into the structure of our brains. What they've discovered is that the brain is full of multi-dimensional geometrical structures operating in as many as 11 dimensions.
Science also has a romanticizing problem—with plants. Viewed under a romantic light, they appear less like passive biological mechanisms than like active, discerning beings. The nadir of this perspective came in 1973, with The Secret Life of Plants, a book that, most memorably, encouraged the idea that plants are almost telepathic. “This might seem harmless enough,” Michael Pollan, author of The Omnivore’s Dilemma, wrote a few years ago in an article for The New Yorker, titled “The Intelligent Plant.” “There will probably always be a strain of romanticism running through our thinking about plants.
Have you ever seen a plant seed look like it's thinking? Researchers have found two small groups of cells inside plant embryos that operate in a similar way to the human brain, and help decide when the plant should start sprouting.
Bali's famous rice terraces, when seen from above, look like colorful mosaics because some farmers plant synchronously, while others plant at different times. The resulting fractal patterns are rare for man-made systems and lead to optimal harvests without global planning.
More than one million people have signed a petition demanding the EU ban the Monsanto weedkiller glyphosate over fears it causes cancer, campaigners said Thursday.
The petition comes as the European Union is deciding whether to renew the licence of the controversial herbicide produced by the US agro-chemicals giant.
A team of researchers affiliated with several institutions in Japan and Germany has found evidence that suggests the middle of Earth's mantle holds as much water as the planet's oceans. In their paper published on the open access site Science Advances, the group describes their theory and their experiments to try to prove them correct.
A team of researchers re-examined historical evidence around the Pacific and discovered the origin of the tsunami that hit Sanriku, Japan in 1586 -- a mega-earthquake from the Aleutian Islands that broadly impacted the north Pacific. Until now, this was considered an orphan tsunami, a historical tsunami without an obvious local earthquake source, likely originating far away.
Megaliths around the world - from Stonehenge to Sacsayhuaman - have intrigued the modern world, with an air of mystery surrounding their construction, and their function.
So what then do you think people of future millennia might imagine the monolithic 'sound mirrors' that haunt the coastline of southern England were used for? Not even a century after their construction, most of the general public would have little idea when, or for what purpose, they were built.
Historic England’s Scientific Dating team have been running a project on the dating of the Late Neolithic palisaded enclosures around West Kennet in Wiltshire.
Staff and students from The University of Western Australia’s School of Indigenous Studies have made an exciting discovery during a University excursion on Rottnest Island (Wadjemup).
Scientists say they have found the earliest evidence of humans affecting the environment based on samples taken from the Dead Sea that date back thousands of years.
The researchers went down 1,500 feet below the seafloor and analyzed sediment, giving them a window into what the region looked like as long as 220,000 years ago.
For three years they relied on the stars. Without modern navigational instruments, the ocean swells and birds were used to guide them. Navigators had to memorise the nightly courses of more than 200 stars, along with their precise rising and setting locations on the horizon.
The Norte Chico Civilization was an ancient civilization / complex society belonging to the Pre-Columbian era. This civilization flourished in Peru about 5000 years ago, and hence has been considered to be the oldest known civilization to have existed in the Americas. The Norte Chico Civilization is notable today for its monumental constructions, including massive ceremonial pyramids and complex irrigation systems. This ancient civilization lasted until around 1800 BC, after which the settlements were abandoned.
Ancient frescoes have been rediscovered inside the 1,600-year-old Domitilla catacombs in Rome, Italy.
Italian art experts used laser technology to remove old grit and grime that covered the art that is centuries old.
The Egyptians used to believe that literacy was divine, a gift from baboon-faced Thoth, the god of knowledge.
Scholars no longer embrace that theory, but why ancient civilisations developed writing was a mystery for a long time. Was it for religious or artistic reasons? To communicate with distant armies?
Related: Deciphering Cuneiform: Helping Scholars to Get a Handle on Life in Ancient Mesopotamia
Using advanced imaging technology, Tel Aviv University researchers have discovered a hitherto invisible inscription on the back of a pottery shard that has been on display at The Israel Museum for more than 50 years.
Gihon Spring, just downhill from the ancient city of Jerusalem, was crucial to the survival of its inhabitants, and archaeologists had uncovered the remains of a massive stone tower built to guard this vital water supply. Based on pottery and other regional findings, the archaeologists had originally assigned it a date of 1,700 BCE. But new research conducted at the Weizmann Institute of Science provides conclusive evidence that the stones at the base of the tower were laid nearly 1,000 years later.
Like an act of moving meditation, the synagogue attendant smooths over a week’s worth of footprints on the sand floor of Mikvé Israel-Emanuel in Willemstad, Curaçao. He glides a rake in long arcs until the sand resembles freshly poured concrete, occasionally kicking up a swirl of dust that catches the warm light pouring through the windows.
At an ancient site of human sacrifice in China, war captives may have been kept as slaves for years before they were killed, a new study finds.
Archaeologists have previously uncovered evidence of ritual human sacrifice in many ancient societies, including the ancient Greeks, the Vikings, the ancient Maya, and the Aztecs and the Incas, as well as in ancient China.
Our study is part of a broader endeavour by biologists to try to understand what the biological function of play might be. It is very likely that play does have a function beyond simply being fun, given how much time and energy is dedicated to it by humans and so many other species, from orangutans to octopuses. It is highly unlikely that so many animals would have evolved to spend so much time and energy on a behaviour that didn’t benefit them in some way.
Billions of dollars are being donated without strong evidence about which ways of giving are effective
Philanthropists are flying blind because little is known about how to donate money well.
Related: Why Dr. Bronner's Soap is Paying Millions on MDMA Research - The company's goal is to "fund and fight for what’s right."
Today, Sudan lives under 24-hour armed guard, safe from the poachers who’ve slaughtered thousands of rhino for their horns in recent years. Despite the fact it has no medicinal value, powdered rhino horn still fetches more than gold dust in the Far East, for its perceived power as an aphrodisiac and anti-cancer treatment.
Add the Czech Republic to the growing list of countries saying “no” to fur farms. Today, the Czech Parliament adopted a bill that will ban fur farming as early as 2019 and by 2021 at the latest.
Related: Romania to ban wild animals in circuses
A new agreement hopes to save the world's rarest cetacean from extinction. But whether it will work on the ground remains to be seen, experts caution.
The agreement includes a permanent ban on gillnets, in addition to the retrieval of all abandoned “ghost” nets within vaquita habitat.
Nations responsible for much of the world's ocean plastic pollution have promised to start cleaning up their act.
At a UN oceans summit, delegates from China, Thailand, Indonesia and the Philippines said they would work to keep plastics out of the seas.
Humans produce more than 300 million metric tons of plastic every year. Almost half of that winds up in landfills, and up to 12 million metric tons pollute the oceans. So far there is no sustainable way to get rid of it, but a new study suggests an answer may lie in the stomachs of some hungry worms.
Related: Plastic in rivers major source of ocean pollution: study
Some biodegradable plastics could in the future be made using sugar and carbon dioxide, replacing unsustainable plastics made from crude oil, following research by scientists from the Centre for Sustainable Chemical Technologies (CSCT) at the University of Bath.
Scientists and engineers from the University of Bath have developed biodegradable cellulose microbeads from a sustainable source that could potentially replace harmful plastic ones that contribute to ocean pollution.
Carbon is an element of seemingly infinite possibilities. This is because the configuration of its electrons allows for numerous self-bonding combinations that give rise to a range of materials with varying properties. A team of scientists has developed a form of ultrastrong, lightweight carbon that is also elastic and electrically conductive. A material with such a unique combination of properties could serve a wide variety of applications from aerospace engineering to military armor.
Researchers have developed a compound that draws moisture from the air and splits it into oxygen and hydrogen. The hydrogen can be captured as a clean fuel source.
Alt: Solar paint offers endless energy from water vapor
The long range of airborne drones helps them perform critical tasks in the skies. Now MIT spinout Open Water Power (OWP) aims to greatly improve the range of unpiloted underwater vehicles (UUVs), helping them better perform in a range of applications under the sea.
Glass and steel makers produce large amounts of wasted heat energy at high temperatures, but solid-state thermoelectric devices that convert heat to electricity either don't operate at high enough temperatures or cost so much that their use is limited to special applications such as spacecraft. MIT researchers have developed a liquid thermoelectric device with a molten compound of tin and sulfur that can efficiently convert waste heat to electricity, opening the way to affordably transforming waste heat to power at high temperatures.
Machine learning, the field that's driving a revolution in artificial intelligence, has cemented its role in modern technology. Its tools and techniques have led to rapid improvements in everything from self-driving cars and speech recognition to the digital mastery of an ancient board game.
A prescription for wormholes that transmit light invisibly between remote regions has been devised by a team of researchers. These 'electromagnetic wormholes' are the light-based equivalent of space-time wormholes, the staples of science fiction that permit time travel and create short cuts across intergalactic space. They could one day be used in three-dimensional (3D) video-display units wired up with invisible light-carrying cables.
To anyone but a physicist, it sounds like something out of "Star Trek." But lepton universality is a real thing.
It has to do with the Standard Model of particle physics, which describes and predicts the behavior of all known particles and forces, except gravity. Among them are charged leptons: electrons, muons and taus.
The Hubble telescope just weighed a star using a technique the famed physicist described but said humanity would have “no hope” of using.
Alt: Astronomers saw one star warp another’s light in a way that Einstein thought we’d never see
Humans observing the sky as they walked out of Africa millennia ago would have seen different night skies than the ones people see today. And humans in the far future will see another, different celestial landscape.
The tomb of King Senwosret III, one of the most renowned pharaohs of ancient Egypt’s Middle Kingdom, is expected to open to the public in about a year or two, allowing tourists to appreciate the architecture of Egyptian builders who constructed the burial complex almost four thousand years ago, according to Dr. Josef Wegner, Associate Curator of the Egyptian Section of the University of Pennsylvania Museum of Archaeology and Anthropology (Penn Museum). He has been excavating in Abydos for decades.
When archaeologist Geir Grønnesby dug test pits at 24 different farms in central Norway, he nearly always found thick layers of fire-cracked stones dating from the Viking Age and earlier. Carbon-14 dating of this evidence tells us that ago, Norwegians brewed beer using stones.
Farmers skinned cats about 1,000 years ago in Spain, possibly for the medieval cat-fur industry or a "magical" pagan ritual, a new study finds.
Scientists found evidence of the skinning at the archaeological site of El Bordellet in eastern Spain, where medieval artifacts were discovered during highway construction in 2010.
By combining genetic data with archaeology, researchers analyzed the DNA of over 300 ancient Eurasians and Near-Eastern Europeans to find that these people may have roamed surprisingly far. They found that 50 percent of ancient skeletons were in graves more than 100 miles from their place of origin, 30 percent were up to 620 miles away, and the remaining people had roamed as far as 1,900 miles from their homes.
The prehistoric people of Central and South America are known worldwide for their fantastic architectural and cultural achievements. However, North American natives are not known as great builders. But that does not mean they didn’t build.
The Mesa Verde archaeological region, located in the American Southwest, was the home of a pueblo people who, during the 13th century A.D., constructed entire villages in the sides of cliffs.
Recently researchers found evidence that the people at Mesa Verde had sophisticated mathematical knowledge, using the golden ratio, a mathematical ratio also used at the Giza Pyramids, to help construct a Sun Temple.
A forgotten city thought to date back as far as the 10th century AD has been uncovered by a team of archaeologists in eastern Ethiopia.
Artefacts from Egypt, India and China have been found in the city in the Harlaa region.
The Fra Mauro map (mid-15th century) provides a rare lens into the geographical worldview and mental landscapes of the medieval world. By connecting identifiable geography from this map to historical place names, we have begun to discover lost, medieval cities in Ethiopia.
There is increasing evidence that anatomically modern humans (AMH) left Africa 100,000 years ago. Archaeological evidence indicates that AMH were in Arabia, China, Crete, and Brazil over 100,000 years ago. It has been shown that AMH left Africa before 60 thousand years ago.
If the road to hell is paved with good intentions, then the road to progress is paved with…the destruction of ancient civilizations?
In May of 2013, archeologists in Belize were horrified to discover that a construction crew had gutted a major Maya archeological site in order to use the pyramid’s stone for roadwork.
The remains of a major Aztec temple and a ceremonial ball court have been discovered in downtown Mexico City, shedding new light on the sacred spaces of the metropolis that Spanish conquerors overran five centuries ago, archaeologists said on Wednesday.
The excavator of Mohenjodaro and Chanhiyun Jo Daro [Chanhu-daro] Ernest Mackay wrote that "like the cities of Mohenjo-daro and Harappa, Chanhu-daro has produced a great variety of toys and playthings. Evidently the people of the Harappa period, like the Indians of today, paid attention to the enjoyment of the younger population
Wild capuchin monkeys readily learn skills from each other—but that social learning is driven home by the payoff of learning a useful new skill. It's the first demonstration of "payoff bias" learning in a wild animal
Not only dogs but also wolves react to inequity -- similar to humans or primates, suggests new research. Wolves and dogs refused to cooperate in an experiment when only the partner got a treat or they themselves received a lower quality reward. The sensitivity to inequity is not likely to be an effect of domestication, as assumed so far. It is rather a behavior inherited from a common ancestor.
When others suffer, we humans empathize. Our feelings of empathy take different forms, such as distress when we imagine and internalize someone's pain and compassion as we sympathize with their condition. These different feelings involve distinct patterns of brain activity, according to a study. Feelings of empathy may seem subtle and personal, but this study found that the brain patterns associated with these feelings are consistent and predictable across individuals.
Babies can recognise faces while still in the womb, new research suggests.
Incredible moving images of unborn infants before their birth, shows that they turn their heads towards shapes which resemble faces - with the position of eyes and nose picked out.
Related: For humans, the appeal of looking at faces starts before birth
Related: Stop lying to your 4-year-old, new Stanford study says
Our DNA influences our ability to read a person's thoughts and emotions from looking at their eyes, suggests a new study.
If off-the-wall thinking gives you a headache, scientists might have the solution.
Researchers have found that suppressing activity in part of the brain involved in planning and reasoning can boost an individual’s ability to think in creative ways and solve mind-bending problems.