Science

Jellyfish don’t seem to have a lot going on. They’re gelatinous blobs that have neither brains, nor hearts, nor blood, often at the mercy of where ocean currents take them. But that doesn’t mean they are simple. Far from it. They’re extremely efficient, making them one of the most successful animal groups on the planet.

Stop with the salt: adding a dash of water to coffee beans before grinding them could be the secret to a better-tasting cup of caffeinated goodness, new research suggests. The trick boils down to reducing the amount of static electricity generated by grinding whole coffee beans, which otherwise causes them to clump together and clog

Information doesn’t make its way around our brains in the same way as it does in the brains of other animals, according to a new study, and it could teach us something important about the way our species has evolved. A team led by researchers from the Swiss Federal Institute of Technology in Lausanne (EPFL)

NASA on Monday announced it had used a state-of-the-art laser communication system on a spaceship 19 million miles (31 million kilometers) away from Earth – to send a high-definition cat video. The 15-second meow-vie featuring an orange tabby named Taters is the first to be streamed from deep space, and demonstrates it’s possible to transmit

China’s third test mission of a reusable, robotic spacecraft continues to invite speculation by casting into orbit half a dozen small objects, tentatively referred to as ‘wingmen’ by intrigued amateur skywatchers. Dubbed Shenlong – Chinese for “divine dragon” – the experimental orbital plane was launched from the Jiuquan Satellite Launch Center on Thursday 14 December

While it has been a favorite disaster movie theme, nuking an incoming asteroid in the real world has been touted as a very bad idea. While a nuclear bomb could possibly obliterate a smaller asteroid, nuking a larger asteroid would only break it into pieces. Those pieces would still threaten our planet, and perhaps even

Most of the light streaming through our Universe is invisible to human eyes. The spectrum ranges from long radio waves to short gamma rays, with the visible part occupying just a tiny slice in the middle. But, thanks to telescope technology, we’re able to peer into other slices of the spectrum, and see all the

Every now and again, a reminder comes along that our planet really is unusual in so many fabulous ways. Those reminders don’t even have to come from far away – they can be as close as our next-door neighbor. Similar to Earth, Mars experiences moments where its moons cast shadows on its surface. But “eclipses”

A new ‘space race’ is heating up between the US and China in space exploration, and Lagrange points are emerging as a battleground. Named after the astronomer Joseph-Louis Lagrange, they are locations in interplanetary space where the gravitational pull of two celestial bodies (like the Earth and the Sun) balances the centripetal force needed for

Japan’s SLIM space probe entered the Moon‘s orbit on Monday in a major step towards the country’s first successful lunar landing, expected next month. The Smart Lander for Investigating Moon (SLIM) is nicknamed the “Moon Sniper” because it is designed to land within 100 metres (328 feet) of a specific target on the lunar surface.

Arctic observers were granted a rare spectacle when rare rainbow-colored clouds streaked the skies ahead of the holiday season. A cold wave sweeping through the Arctic brought the rare polar stratospheric clouds within view for at least three days between December 18 and December 20, per the website spaceweather.com. Polar stratospheric cloud above Oslo, Norway.(Glenn

Java Stingarees are the first marine fish to be declared extinct as a result of human activity. This troubling news was released with the International Union for Conservation of Nature’s (IUCN) latest update of its Red List of Threatened Species last week, along with reports of escalating climate impacts on freshwater fishes presented at COP28.

WASHINGTON — Space launch provider and satellite manufacturer Rocket Lab has secured a deal worth over half a billion dollars to build 18 satellites for a U.S. government agency.  As disclosed in an SEC regulatory filing Dec. 21, Rocket Lab National Security will “design, manufacture, deliver and operate 18 space vehicles” as part of a

Insects numbers have declined so much that plants are now taking reproduction matters into their own hands (or petals). They’re evolving to self-pollinate more often, rather than rely on ever-rarer insects to carry their pollen far and wide. That’s the conclusion of researchers from the French National Centre for Scientific Research (CNRS) and the University

No one has yet managed to travel through time – at least to our knowledge – but the question of whether or not such a feat would be theoretically possible continues to fascinate scientists. As movies such as The Terminator, Donnie Darko, Back to the Future and many others show, moving around in time creates

The way your pupils react to light exercise could reveal whether you’re getting one of the key benefits of movement – the cognitive boost linked to improved mood and enhanced executive function. Researchers in Japan monitored pupil size in 24 participants during 10 minutes of light exercise and then used neuroimaging to see how participants’

You’ve heard of hot Jupiters. You’ve heard of mini-Neptunes. You’ve heard of super-Earths. But have you heard of Eyeball Planets? Yep – planetary scientists think there might be a type of exoplanet out there that looks disturbingly like a giant eyeball. Just sitting there. Staring. But it’s actually not as weird as it sounds –

Ocean bays that pinch West Antarctica are home to two distinct populations of Turquet’s octopus (Pareledone turqueti). The shared secrets of their ancestors do not bode well for the future health of our planet. A new DNA analysis of the two geographically separated octopus populations indicates they were once part of one big family. This

Is your dog bothered by something but you can’t work out what? Do you wish they could tell you? There’s a huge range of dog “talking” buttons on the market that now claim to let your dog do this. A very basic kit will set you back about $15, while more sophisticated ones can cost

WASHINGTON — The White House used a Dec. 20 meeting of the National Space Council to discuss the importance of international cooperation but offered few new initiatives along those lines. The purpose of the meeting, the third by the council during the Biden administration and the first since September 2022, was to highlight what the

A shark sheds up to 40,000 teeth in its lifetime – and megalodon, the greatest predator of them all, was no different. As this fearsome beast roamed the world’s oceans between 4 and 20 million years ago, it dropped teeth that are still washing up on beaches, found sticking out of whale bones, or rising

When streams of ultra-fast protons collide, a Higgs boson might pop into existence for the briefest instant before decaying into lighter particles. In that moment, physicists can work backwards to estimate the mass of what could be the most important and yet most elusive particle in the Standard Model. Having crunched the numbers on a

Which is worse: Attending a party you don’t want to attend, or staying home and disappointing a friend? A lot depends on context, of course, but according to a new study, declining an invitation doesn’t typically bring the social backlash invitees may expect. “I was once invited to an event that I absolutely did not

It’s time to put the notion of a cold, lifeless Mars to bed. A new survey using satellite imagery and ground penetrating radar has revealed signs of volcanic activity that’s far more recent than anyone ever expected. Combined with other pieces of evidence, the discovery reveals that under its barren crust, Mars might have quite

As Christmas approaches, many children experience the “gimme-gimmes” and write a list of toys that they hope Santa will bring. This is to be expected. Toys give children a chance to learn and be curious, engage their imaginations in play and become socialised with others. Unfortunately, 80 percent of all toys end up in landfills,

Our brains are remarkably energy efficient. Using just 20 watts of power, the human brain is capable of processing the equivalent of an exaflop — or a billion-billion mathematical operations per second. Now, researchers in Australia are building what will be the world’s first supercomputer that can simulate networks at this scale. The supercomputer, known

WASHINGTON — Astrobotic’s first lunar lander is ready for a launch in early January that would set up a landing on the moon in late February. The Pittsburgh-based company announced Dec. 19 that its Peregrine lunar lander has completed all its pre-launch integration activities, which include fueling the lander and mating it with the payload

Daydreaming is looking less like a vice and more like a virtue the more that neuroscientists and psychologists dig into the phenomenon. Scientists at Harvard University have now found preliminary evidence that when mice ‘daydream’ or quietly reflect on something they saw earlier that day, their brains are rewired in a useful way for memory

Quantum physics is fundamentally weird, so much so that we need thought experiments of hidden cats in boxes and metaphors of spinning coins to even begin to comprehend its laws. Yet even in our classical world, where physics is more intuitive, shades of quantum behavior can be represented using relatively simple scenarios. Researchers experimenting with