If you’re a fan of potato chips, the next best thing might just be a crispy, lightweight sheet of preserved jellyfish. Scientists have come up with a new way to prepare these animals for consumption, improving on a centuries-old technique. And they say that eating these creatures would both help us battle jellyfish blooms in certain
Month: July 2017
The physics behind fungal spore momentum may not keep all of us up at night, but for a select group of scientists, the issue has proved vexing for over a century. Now, researchers in the US have solved the mystery of how fungi launch their reproductive seedlings, showing how the merging of minuscule water droplets
Robovacs like the Roomba may be awesomely convenient helpers around the home, but buying a robot to clean up after you could come at a hidden cost. Unguarded comments from the leader of iRobot – the maker of the Roomba – have lit a firestorm of controversy over this previously most uncontroversial of tech, after
Flying warehouses, robot receptionists, smart toilets… do such innovations sound like science fiction or part of a possible reality? Technology has been evolving at such a rapid pace that, in the near future, our world may well resemble that portrayed in futuristic movies, such as Blade Runner, with intelligent robots and technologies all around us.
Using the flatworm’s ability to survive and even regrow its head after decapitation, researchers have shown the animal will shy away from a light source even when it no longer has eyes. And these eyes can do more than you think; the study also found that in spite of being little more than dimples with
An organic compound used in the manufacture of plastics has been detected in the atmosphere of Saturn’s largest moon, Titan. While polymers of the chemical vinyl cyanide have plenty of uses on Earth in making acrylic garments and tent fabric, it’s feasible that under conditions on Titan they could form flexible structures similar to our
We’re still making many discoveries about the animals that roamed the Earth more than 66 million years ago, and a newly identified dinosaur bears a remarkable resemblance to a modern-day bird, the cassowary. The similarities are so strong that palaeontologists are now studying the flightless cassowaries to get a better idea of how their ancient equivalents
Astronomers have now discovered plenty of exoplanets – planets outside our Solar System orbiting suns like our own – but the hunt for smaller exomoons around these planets goes on. Now astronomers think they might have found the very first. The potential exomoon has been revealed thanks to the magnifying power of NASA’s Kepler telescope,
If you ask Craig Kletzing, the recordings echo the chirping of crickets. To his wife, they sound like a chorus of alien birds. But there is no life where these sounds are made, in the dazzling and dangerous stream of highly charged particles that surrounds our planet. For years, Kletzing has been monitoring the radio waves that
It all started when a Ukrainian programmer and aspiring rapper dropped a handful of hydrogel balls on his piping-hot pancake griddle. The beads, used by gardeners to hydrate plants because they’re about 98 percent water, began to bounce. The man recorded their jig of little hops for several minutes, complete with the horrible screeching sounds the spheres
A genetic analysis of 4,000 year old human remains identified as of Canaanite origin has revealed it’s unlikely that the ancient population was wiped out, putting a new spin on an ancient story. Ancient Hebrew texts describe how the Israelites reduced the cities and settlements of the Canaanite territory to rubble, but it seems the
Finnish researchers have created a batch of single-cell protein that is nutritious enough to serve for dinner using a system powered by renewable energy. The entire process requires only electricity, water, carbon dioxide, and microbes. The synthetic food was created as part of the Food From Electricity project, which is a collaboration between Lappeenranta University of
A key sign of a recession is when the market can’t respond to greater supplies of raw materials with increased demand. Long before this century’s Great Recession the first galaxies in the Universe experienced a Great Galactic Recession lasting over a billion years. In work recently published in the Monthly Notices of the Royal Astronomical
An expedition has been launched to help solve the mysteries of Zealandia, an underwater continent to the east of Australia. The drill ship JOIDES Resolution is visiting Townsville today before a two-month expedition that is part of the International Ocean Discovery Program (IODP). The expedition led by The Australian National University will also look
Scientists have created an ultrathin energy harvesting device that generates electricity from human motion. The material could be placed in the fabric of clothing to charge your smartphone, fitness tracker and other personal electronics while you go about your daily life. “In the future, I expect that we will all become charging depots for our personal
Researchers in Portland, Oregon have, for the first time, edited a human embryo in the US. This work adds to the promise of CRISPR, and it stands as an important step toward the birth of the first genetically modified humans. By now, most of us know what CRISPR gene editing is. At the very
Talking to yourself in the third person can help you keep your emotions in check, based on new research that aims to find simple and effective ways to reduce the impact of stress and other negative feelings. The study found that a few silent words about yourself in the third person used up as much
New research suggests up to half the matter in the Milky Way – including the atoms that make up all of us – could have come from outside our own galaxy, much more than scientists previously thought. That’s based on supercomputer simulations that identified a new phenomenon called intergalactic transfer, and it could help us
For a select few who have stood on the brink of clinical death, the process of dying is often accompanied by feelings of peace, bright lights, and a sense of disconnection with the body. A new study on the prevalence and order of these commonly reported experiences has found not all people experience the steps
As far as brain regions go, the hypothalamus is something of a multi-tasker: it helps control our temperature, hunger, sleep, emotions, and sex drive. But that’s not all. A new study suggests it’s also responsible for keeping us young, thanks to a supply of neural stem cells that regulate our ageing. Sadly, these disappear
The search for life elsewhere in the universe is one of the most compelling aspects of modern science. Given its scientific importance, significant resources are devoted to this young science of astrobiology, ranging from rovers on Mars to telescopic observations of planets orbiting other stars. The holy grail of all this activity would be the
A fresh analysis of the tardigrade’s genome has revealed new secrets about the world’s toughest animal, while casting doubt on a previous conclusion. By comparing the genes of taken from two different species from the phylum Tardigrada, researchers determined how the group is related to other animals while pinpointing the genes that allow individuals to
The most powerful kind of cosmic explosions known to science are called gamma-ray bursts – aka ‘death from space’ – galactic events so fierce their awesome intensity is only surpassed by the Big Bang itself. Now, an international team of astronomers has observed one of these violent outbursts of energy in unprecedented detail, witnessing a distant,
Octopuses are super weird creatures. They are total escape artists, have three hearts just because, and they can regenerate limbs if they happen to need it. But until watching this BBC video from The Hunt, we were firmly of the belief that octopuses domain was the water… but after watching, we’re not so sure.
An aluminium cargo container, built more than 15 years ago to move large equipment to space, will be transformed into a prototype of a space habitat where astronauts would live during long missions. The project is a step toward NASA’s next big human spaceflight project called the Deep Space Gateway, a “spaceport” in the Moon’s
Researchers have started developing artificial intelligence with imagination – AI that can reason through decisions and make plans for the future, without being bound by human instructions. Another way to put it would be imagining the consequences of actions before taking them, something we take for granted but which is much harder for robots to
While the planet is working on cutting emissions to curb climate change, some scientists are saying we can also help our planet out by directly messing with our atmosphere. Collectively known as geoengineering, these technology-based climate hacks could be our ticket to actively cooling down the planet, but they are untested and potentially dangerous, and
Scientists have observed how a magnetic dipole field can create what looks like a glowing, localised fireball inside a plasma chamber. By placing a regular dipole bar magnet near the surface of the cathode, the researchers were able to generate an intense “glowing, fireball like structure” inside the plasma chamber, which varied in its brightness
When a battery runs low it usually needs to be manually recharged, but new approaches are being developed to help this energy source last indefinitely. Self-sustaining batteries are needed for activities that use sensors. These include long-term tracking of wildlife like flying foxes, multi-year biodiversity assessments in Australian rainforests and the Amazon, and studying the
New research shows that the outskirts of our Solar System are littered with many more large comets than has been previously estimated. These massive icy wanderers can take hundreds or thousands of years to circle our Sun, so it’s no wonder that we’re still learning more about them. And now astronomers have a fresh perspective
How far away is a robot that could help you around the house with domestic tasks such as putting away the groceries, cleaning up messes and answering simple questions? Although self-driving cars are already here and now, roads are a lot more consistent to navigate than the average – and wildly variable – family home.
Moses saw a burning bush. Paul saw Jesus on the road to Damascus. St. Teresa had ecstatic visions. When psychologist William Richards looks at religion, he sees mystical experiences everywhere. The same sort of experiences, he reasons, that come from mind-altering drugs. That’s why he’s giving magic mushrooms to religious leaders, for a research project
We’re always hearing how robots are going to take our jobs, but there might be a way of preventing that grim future from happening: by becoming workplace cyborgs first. A company in Wisconsin has become the first in the US to roll out microchip implants for all its employees, and says it’s expecting over 50
There’s way more water locked inside the Moon than we previously thought, according to a new analysis of satellite data. This unexpected finding about our planet’s grey companion is giving scientists new insights into how the Moon formed and what its internal structure is like. And it has potentially huge implications for any of our
Most of us don’t spend our days ploughing fields or wrangling cattle. We’re part of the 99 percent of Americans who eat food, but don’t produce it. Because of our intimate relationship with food, and because it’s so crucial to our health and the environment, people should be very concerned about how it’s produced. But we don’t
Experts have long thought it was out there, but now we’ve got confirmation – there’s a second garbage patch of plastic out in the Pacific Ocean, which may cover as much as 2.6 million square kilometres (a million square miles), or 1.5 times the size of Texas. Like the patch of floating debris in the
There’s no denying that the ancient art of origami paper folding has given the world reams of brilliant miniature sculptures, and now NASA wants to take that intricate craftiness off-planet. The space agency is teaming up with crowdsourcing site Freelancer to find origami experts that can help it come up with a design for radiation
The summer can be a great time to start a new relationship. Maybe it’s that lingering ‘school’s out’ mentality that makes us feel young and carefree. Or, hey, maybe it’s that people look better when they aren’t bundled up in an oversized turtleneck sweater. Dating site Match told Business Insider that July tends to be
It’s been exactly 80 years since the theoretical physicist Ettore Majorana predicted that there were neutrally charged particles that were indistinguishable from their own antiparticle. None have been spotted in the wild, and not for want of looking. Physicists now have the next best thing – a particle-like system that behaves just like the kind
If we ever needed a timely reminder that in the world of academic publishing not all scientific journals are created equal, we now have it. To test just how low the quality bar is for exploitative predatory journals, a prominent neuroscientist has tricked four publications into accepting a totally fake paper about midi-chlorians – the
If you’ve been keeping up with the news in the UK, you might have heard about a morphing UFO appearing at a number of locations across Cornwall last week. We’re telling you guys straight up – this is not aliens, despite some hashtags on the footage. While it’s a little annoying that we’re not
You’ve used Google Street View to check out a new apartment, map traffic before you hit the road and search for haunting slices of the everyday world. Now, the comprehensive terrestrial mapping system has gone Extra-Terrestrial, allowing users to peer inside the International Space Station (ISS) from their computer 248 miles (400 km) below with
It’s not enough for some people on this planet to say they have their mother’s eyes – they can now claim to have their great, great, great… (a few thousand greats later) …great grandmother’s saliva. A variation on the gene for our spit’s mucus shows signs of having been passed down from a distant ancestor.
In May this year astronomers detected a strange signal that lined up with a star 11 light years away. As usual, if it’s a little out of the ordinary we love to make a list of possibilities with ‘alien technology’ at the bottom, and then hope it’s aliens. Of course it never is, and this
Our brain waves can synchronise with others when we’re in conversation with them, according to new research. It’s not quite mind reading, but it could teach us more about the nature of language and relationships. Based on readings from electroencephalography (EEG) machines, the study shows remarkable similarities between brain activity as two people chat to
Make some room tortoises and whales, because it looks like tubeworms have the real secret to longevity. A new study has found that these deep-sea animals from the Gulf of Mexico can live to be between 100 and 300 years old. “At more than 250 years old, Escarpia laminata achieves a lifespan that exceeds other
Finding time to stop, plug in and recharge could become history, with scientists developing a new electrode design that could charge batteries in seconds instead of hours. They say it could solve not only the pain of recharging phones, but also solve one of the primary issues holding back the electric vehicle market. Previous
One thousand years. That is the minimum length of time it would take us to get to the nearest star – Proxima Centauri – using current methods. But since we discovered that this star houses a potentially habitable planet, scientists have been more enthusiastic about the idea of interstellar travel than ever before. “It’s
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