A new photo showing a mystery creature swimming in Loch Ness has sparked new interest in Nessie, the long-necked plesiosaur-like cryptid rumoured to inhabit the loch’s dark and enigmatic depths. There’s just one big problem, and you can probably guess what it is. The image has been digitally manipulated. According to an investigation conducted by
Science
The search for extraterrestrial life is increasingly homing in on the Solar System’s ocean worlds, and there’s new evidence that Jupiter’s moon Europa should be the first port of call. According to new modelling, Europa’s subsurface oceans should be able to support life. The NASA team behind this research has also calculated that processes such
The United Nations said Tuesday it was working to verify reports of a new Arctic record temperature of 38 degrees Celsius (100.4 degrees Fahrenheit) in a Siberian town over the weekend. The suspected record temperature was measured in the Russian town of Verkoyansk on Saturday during a prolonged heatwave, which has also seen a hike
The list of the fastest 500 supercomputers in the world just got updated again, and there’s a new number one: the Fugaku supercomputer built by the RIKEN Institute and the Fujitsu tech company in Japan. IBM’s Summit supercomputer has been comprehensively pushed into second place, because Fugaku can crunch through 415.5 quadrillion computations per second (also
WASHINGTON — The new director of NASA’s Earth science division says identifying ways to implement an “ambitious” decadal survey amid various challenges will be a top priority for her. In a speech June 23 at an online meeting of NASA’s Earth Science Technology Forum, one of her first public talks since starting at NASA in
The current pandemic isn’t just affecting humans, it’s also impacting wildlife. As the world locks down to avoid further spread of the devastating coronavirus, there are suddenly far fewer cars on the road, planes in the sky and ships in the water. And nature has surely noticed. Recently, pumas have been spotted ambling down the
It sounds like something from a sci-fi movie, but the newly revealed Shadow-Effect Energy Generator (SEG) is a real prototype device. The fascinating concept could help us to transform the way renewable energy is generated indoors. The SEG uses the contrast between darkness and light to produce electricity. It’s made up of a series of
Picture a spiral galaxy. You’re probably imagining something like Messier 34 – long, spiralling arms sweeping away from a brightly glowing centre, speckled with glittering star clusters and punctuated with dark streaks of dust. But from our vantage point, galaxies can be oriented any which way, including edge-on – like NGC 5907, also known as
Even after more than 20 years in the ocean, everyday plastics can show very few signs of breaking up or degrading, according to a new study examining the effects of deep-sea submersion on this problematic material. Researchers looked at two plastic samples recovered from 4,150 metres (13,615 feet) below the surface of the eastern Pacific
Stripped of any fancy circuitry and complex layers of higher order thinking, the nervous system is little more than a calculator for making smart choices. Food is good, but what if it’s toxic? Empty calories won’t give you energy, but what if they’re satisfying? To better study how a rudimentary brain deals with decisions between
WASHINGTON — Virgin Galactic announced June 22 it has signed an agreement with NASA to support development of a program to train and potentially procure rides for private individuals seeking to fly to the International Space Station. The company, best known for developing the SpaceShipTwo suborbital spaceplane, said it signed a Space Act Agreement with
With the help of 3D modelling and machine learning, scientists think they’ve solved the mystery of the tiny earthquakes that regularly rumbled under Cahuilla, California from early 2016 to late 2019 – a period of almost four years. Some sort of natural fluid, such as water or liquid carbon dioxide, is likely to be the
The famous cat-in-a-box thought experiment by Austrian physicist Erwin Schrödinger is an illustration of one of the defining characteristics of quantum mechanics – the unpredictable behaviour of particles at the quantum level. It makes working with quantum systems incredibly difficult; but what if we could make quantum predictions? A team of physicists believes it’s possible.
Nothing rages against the dying of the light harder than a star. Their death throes are wild and violent as the star is wracked with colossal quakes, throwing vast amounts of stellar material out into the surrounding space. Studying the gas and dust thrown off in such events can help us understand how these stars
If we’re really serious about solving the climate crisis, we need to start tackling our economy’s overwhelming ‘power’ of consumption, researchers warn in a new report. While having money is often portrayed as something to aspire to, the wealthiest nations and individuals are also wreaking the most environmental destruction. If we keep heading in this
For the first time, US doctors can prescribe a video game. The Food and Drug Administration (FDA) has just approved EndeavorRX as an effective treatment for kids with attention deficit hyperactivity disorder, or ADHD. Children aged 8-12 years old can now be prescribed gaming sessions on EndeavorRX, in which players pilot a small aircraft through
WASHINGTON — Boeing announced late June 19 several changes in management of its work on the International Space Station and CST-100 Starliner commercial crew vehicle. In a memo to employees of Boeing Space and Launch, Jim Chilton, senior vice president in charge of the division, announced that Mark Mulqueen will retire from the company July
Perhaps the most iconic dinosaur is Tyrannosaurus rex, a massive predator that lived in what is now North America. We have now discovered that carnivorous dinosaurs of a similar size existed in ancient Australia as well. Following the footprints We learned about these carnivores by studying fossils that were discovered up to 90 years ago.
Deep beneath the mountains of Gran Sasso in Italy, the world’s most sensitive dark matter experiment has made a surprise detection. No, it’s not dark matter. Instead, the experiment has detected significantly more particle interaction events than predicted by the standard model of particle physics. Instead of the 232 ± 15 low-energy events expected in
It’s a mystery that’s eluded scientists for over 100 years – why do two identically coloured shapes look different when they’re placed on a gradient background? Just take a look at the image above: the two circles are the same colour. Our perception of shades (and colours) changes according to their visual context, a process
Only 566 people have ever travelled to space. Sixty-five of them, or about 11.5 percent, were women. NASA recently proclaimed it will put the “first woman and next man” on the Moon by 2024. Despite nearly 60 years of human spaceflight, women are still in the territory of “firsts”. Valentina Tereshkova, the first woman in
New survey results from 40 countries shows that climate change matters to most people. In the vast majority of countries, fewer than 3 percent said climate change was not serious at all. We carried out this research as part of the University of Oxford’s Reuters Institute annual Digital News Reports. More than 80,000 people were
Artificial intelligence networks have learnt a new trick: being able to create photo-realistic faces from just a few pixelated dots, adding in features such as eyelashes and wrinkles that can’t even be found in the original. Before you freak out, it’s good to note this is not some kind of creepy reverse pixelation that can
WASHINGTON — NASA officials say they’re confident that the Mars 2020 Perseverance rover mission will launch this summer amid the special measures the agency had to take to keep the mission on track during the coronavirus pandemic. The mission is currently scheduled for launch July 20 on a United Launch Alliance Atlas 5 from Cape
The most severe extinction in Earth’s history looks to have been preceded and enabled by a colossal coal fire lit by volcanism over 250 million years ago, according to new research. The Permian-Triassic extinction, also known as the ‘Great Dying’, constitutes the deadliest of all our planet’s mass extinction events. When it took place, approximately
In July of 2018, NASA announced an incredible achievement. They had created the coldest spot in space – right there on the International Space Station, in orbit around Earth. They took atoms of a soft metal called rubidium, and cooled them to temperatures around 100 nanoKelvin – one ten-millionth of a Kelvin above absolute zero.
Trees marked by Aboriginal cultural practices are a distinctive part of the Australian landscape. A recent discovery on Wiradjuri country in New South Wales shows some of these “culturally modified trees” may be much younger than anybody thought. What are culturally modified trees? Aboriginal people have long used bark, wood, and trees for practical and
There’s simply no denying the fact that humans have drastically altered, developed, and ransacked much of the natural world for our own ends. But how much of the planet’s surface remains free of our often malign influence? If we were to map Earth looking only for signs of humanity’s footprint on landscapes, how much of
This summer, the clean energy company SINN Power is showcasing “the world’s first floating ocean hybrid platform” – a high-tech buoy that produces electricity from not one, not two, but three sources of renewable energy. Using waves, wind, and the sun, the SINN Power floating structure, which can supposedly withstand waves up to six metres
SAN FRANCISCO – Raytheon won a National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration contract to study High-Resolution Infrared Sounder (HIRIS), a weather instrument designed to offer detailed views of cloud tops and the dry line, where moist and dry air meet. Under the May 12 NOAA contract valued at nearly $295,000, Raytheon will spend seven months fleshing