Science

Not all flowers smell like roses. An unusual plant in Greece gives off the scent of decaying insects, probably as a way to attract and trap coffin flies (Megaselia scalaris). The stinky flower is called Aristolochia microstoma, and according to scientists, it’s the first known case of a plant that reeks of dead invertebrates to

At 5:29 am on the morning of 16 July 1945, in the state of New Mexico, a dreadful slice of history was made. The dawn calm was torn asunder as the United States Army detonated a plutonium implosion device known as the Gadget – the world’s very first test of a nuclear bomb, known as

There once was a time when humans held everything we knew in our heads. That might sound impossible these days when the internet is at our fingertips, but for millennia, it was our only way of passing on knowledge. Now, some researchers want to remind us that there is still place for ancient memory techniques

The mystery of fast radio bursts (FRBs) continues to fascinate astronomers. No one is quite sure what’s behind these super-short, super-intense radio wave pulses from deep space, but now astronomers have tracked down five FRBs to their home galaxies. It’s the Hubble Space Telescope that has come up with the goods again. The ultraviolet and

When Naomi Oreskes lectures about climate change, she gets the same question over and over again. “A member of the audience will say: ‘Well, what can I personally do? What can I do as an individual to fix this problem?'” Oreskes, a science historian at Harvard University, told Insider. “Much less frequently do they say:

We have developed and tested a secure new computer processor that thwarts hackers by randomly changing its underlying structure, thus making it virtually impossible to hack. Last summer, 525 security researchers spent three months trying to hack our Morpheus processor as well as others. All attempts against Morpheus failed. This study was part of a program

TAMPA, Fla. — Starfish Space, a startup founded by former Blue Origin and NASA engineers, is developing space tugs to help manage rapidly growing megaconstellations. SpaceX is planning to launch tens of thousands of Starlink broadband satellites to join the more than 1,600 it already has in orbit, and a growing number of constellation operators

When it comes to dividing animals along sex lines, evolution is known for getting creative. The chromosomes that determine baby-making functions have been reinvented so often throughout the ages, it’s hard to keep track. Some groups, like mammals, are thought to be fairly consistent in how they genetically cast lots in the game of reproduction.

Sailing through the smooth waters of vacuum, a photon of light moves at around 300 thousand kilometers (186 thousand miles) a second. This sets a firm limit on how quickly a whisper of information can travel anywhere in the Universe. While this law isn’t likely to ever be broken, there are features of light which

New research with an artificial robotic digit has yielded surprising results – in just a few days, people using the thumb were able to operate it naturally to perform complex tasks like building towers from wooden blocks, or stirring your coffee while holding it. Not only that, but neural scans showed that the presence of

We sort-of take it for granted that there’s a supermassive black hole at the center of the Milky Way galaxy, but we can’t really go there and check. What if something else is actually lurking in this messy, dusty region? We partially infer the presence and properties of a supermassive hole called Sagittarius A* (Sgr

Humanity’s vast problem with single-use plastics doesn’t come out of nowhere. Before this avalanche of transient, throwaway waste is disposed of in landfill or by burning – unless it finds its way into the natural environment – somebody gets paid to produce it, making money by bringing this inevitable pollution into existence. Now, we know

The United States’ offshore wind industry is tiny, with just seven wind turbines operating off Rhode Island and Virginia. The few attempts to build large-scale wind farms like Europe’s have run into long delays, but that may be about to change. On 11 May 2021, the US government issued the final federal approval for the

The Indian space ecosystem is transforming. Public sector space programs are orienting toward exploration, commercial space endeavors are proliferating, national space policy is shifting, and the students who will carry India to new achievements in space are increasingly looking to opportunities in science, technology, engineering and mathematics (STEM). There remain significant obstacles for India to

We can now add “being fired out of a gun at high speeds” to the growing list of weird things tardigrades can survive. How do we know? Scientists actually did it – and, believe it or not, it’s for a good cause. They wanted to know if tardigrade-like organisms could survive certain conditions in space,

What’s the price of an accurate clock? Entropy, a new study has revealed. Entropy – or disorder – is created every time a clock ticks. Now scientists working with a tiny clock have proven a simple relationship: The more accurate a clock runs, the more entropy it generates. “If you want your clock to be

In caves on the Indonesian island of Sulawesi, ancient peoples marked the walls with red and mulberry hand stencils, and painted images of large native mammals or imaginary human-animal creatures. These are the oldest cave art sites yet known – or at least the oldest attributed to our species. One painting of a Sulawesi warty

On 8 May 2021, a piece of space junk from a Chinese rocket fell uncontrolled back to Earth and landed in the Indian Ocean near the Maldives. A year ago, in May 2020, another Chinese rocket met the same fate when it plummeted out of control into the waters off the West African coast. No

Ghost forests could be an invisible source of greenhouse gas emissions, researchers warn. As rising seas poison trees along the Atlantic coast of the United States, a new study suggests that these ghost trees are beginning to ‘fart’ carbon dioxide and methane. Technically, all trees do a little bit of farting. Live trees are known

When you think of micro- or nanotechnology, you likely think of small electronics like your phone, a tiny robot or a microchip. But COVID-19 tests – which have proven to be central to controlling the pandemic – are also a form of miniaturized technology. Many COVID-19 tests can give results within hours without the need

WASHINGTON — A SpaceX Falcon 9 launched another group of Starlink satellites May 15 on a mission that included two rideshare payloads. The Falcon 9 lifted off from Kennedy Space Center’s Launch Complex 39A at 6:56 p.m. Eastern. The rocket’s first stage, making its eighth launch dating back to the Demo-2 commercial mission nearly a

History tells us that in the year 365 CE, the Mediterranean region was rocked by a thunderous earthquake estimated as a magnitude 8.0 or higher. The quake and subsequent tsunami killed tens of thousands of people, destroying Alexandria in Egypt and several other cities. However, new research now suggests some previous assumptions about the quake and its

There’s been a fabulous new achievement in particle physics. For the first time, scientists have managed to image the orbits of electrons within a quasiparticle known as an exciton – a result that has allowed them to finally measure the excitonic wave function describing the spatial distribution of electron momentum within the quasiparticle. This achievement

There you are, sitting front row of Miss Ryan’s English class in your underwear, when in walks Chris Hemsworth holding a saxophone in one hand and a turtle in the other, asking you to play in his band. “Why not?” you say, taking the turtle before snapping awake in a cold sweat, the darkness pressing

If you’re a fan of titanium, you should head to the nearest supernova. You’ll get more than enough of it. And its presence can help astronomers understand how supernovae work. We understand the basic picture of how the most massive stars die. Once an iron core fuses in their centers, they stop producing energy from

Modeling the future consequences of climate change requires a huge number of calculations based on a vast amount of factors, including how well microbes in soil might hold onto carbon – something that’s much more complicated than originally thought. In new research, scientists combined field measurements with computer modeling to show significant seasonal shifts in

Australia, one of the world-leaders in household rooftop solar panel uptake, has once again broken its own record for the number of solar panels installed in a year. In 2020, installations were up nearly 30 percent from the year before, according to an analysis from Australia’s national science agency, CSIRO. The data, compiled by energy

TAMPA, Fla. — Telesat could start a spectrum auction to help fund its $5 billion Lightspeed low Earth orbit constellation “in a couple of months” if Canada’s government approves its proposal, according to CEO Dan Goldberg. Canada is considering proposals on how to release satellite C-band spectrum in the country for terrestrial 5G wireless networks,

Decades before we knew birds could ‘see’ Earth’s magnetic field, Albert Einstein was discussing the possibility of undiscovered super senses in his fan mail. A long-lost letter from the famous scientist to an inquiring engineer in 1949 has turned out to be extraordinarily prescient in both the field of biology and physics. The original enquiry

Over the past five years, a sensor keeping count of neutron emissions deep within the rubble of the Chernobyl nuclear power plant has kept track of a gradual spike in activity. The rising count might be nothing. It might even drop back down again, given time. Scientists aren’t exactly keen on taking any chances, as