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The past few years have been marked by numerous seismic events, some of dramatic magnitude; aside from the huge 9.1 temblor in Japan, the world was also shocked by the pair of massive earthquakes that rocked the Indian Ocean on 11 April 2012. However, as geophysicists warn, this may only be the beginning – the […]
A Buddhist statue brought to Germany by a Nazi expedition to Tibet has been proven to be of extraterrestrial origin. Sounds like an Indiana Jones movie, right? Well, it isn’t. Known as the ‘Iron man’ the 24 cm high sculpture was carved out from a Chinga meteorite (rich in iron) found near the Mongolian-Russian border […]
Japanese researchers announced they’ve seen evidence of the reclusive element 113, a super-heavy, super-unstable element near the bottom of the periodic table (you know, the ones you usually don’t even look at?). It is still not verified by the International Union of Pure and Applied Chemistry which regulates and verifies the chemical elements’ name, but […]
Ahoy, ye landlubbers! Google is bringing Street View underwater, for the ones who want to go on an adventure in the Great Barrier Reef, swim with turtles and fish, without leaving your desk. You can start the application here, on Heron island a coral cay located near the Tropic of Capricorn in the southern Great […]
Fantastic news for physics lovers: pretty much all particle physics articles will now be open-source, thanks to a deal between a consortium and 12 journals. In the most remarkable attempt to make hard, peer-reviewed science available to readers, the Sponsoring Consortium for Open Access Publishing in Particle Physics (SCOAP3) is close to securing all particle-physics […]
In the Tasmanian Devil Ark, is the largest conservation breeding program for the Tasmanian devil, and a much needed one, considering how their numbers are continuing to plummet dramatically. A desperate fight Tasmanian devils are having the fight of their lives against Devil Facial Tumour Disease (DFTD), a transmissible cancer – the worst kind of […]
Researchers managed to construct a three dimensional (3D) portrait of two nymphs that inhabited our planet 305 million years ago by scanning their fossils with X-Rays. Old insects At the moment, they are by far the most detailed pictures of juvenile insects that inhabited that period; nymphs are the immature form of some invertebrates, particularly […]
Yes, we’re living it. For the 330th consecutive month, it’s been hotter than the 20th century average. The National Climatic Data Center released some concerning data, to say the least. The globally-averaged land surface temperature for August 2012 was the second warmest August on record, at 0.9° Celsius above average, while ocean averaged ocean surface […]
Just a few days ago, I was telling you how Hubble photographed the faintest, oldest galaxy ever observed, and now, the valiant telescope has gone even further: it assembled a new, improved portrait of mankind’s deepest-ever view of the universe. Called eXtreme Deep Field, or XDF, the photo was assembled by combining 10 years (!) […]
These intricate patterns are not only stunningly beautiful, they also serve a well defined purpose. Yoji Ookata is an underwater photographer who has spent over 50 years exploring oceanic depths and as you can guess, he’s seen quite a lot in his life. But even so, the intricate patterns which resemble the notorious ‘UFO […]
This year, we witnessed the United States’ carbon emissions drop to a record level, one that hasn’t been seen in the last 20 years. Lots of people started shouting and spreading misinformation, claiming that renewable energy and all those green measures were responsible for this remarkable feat. It would be great if this were true […]
Considering how long has passed since Curiosity landed on the Red Planet, it was about time the rover started mingling with martian rocks. Its first stop was ‘Jake’. Martian geology and Curiosity‘s equipment Curiosity rover stepped down from its crystal palace and made contact with one of the Martian beauties – in other words, for […]
Every scientist dreams of getting his hands on a Nobel prize – it’s the highlight of one’s career, unless you’re Obama. But winning a Nobel Prize spoof… is that really something you want to get? Apparently… why not? The Ig Nobel prize, the whimsical award for research which is useful, but also really cooky is […]
We often like to think us humans have achieved a remarkable standard of efficiency and development – but a look at the animal life around us is often enough to humble us. Replicating bacteria and physics The common gut bacteria, Escherichia coli (E. coli, in short) typically takes about 20 minutes to duplicate itself in […]
The moment many of us have been waiting for is almost here: Curiosity prepares to make its first contact with a Martian – a Martian rock, that is. The rover has been on the Red Planet for six weeks now, still preparing its devices, namely its Alpha Particle X-Ray Spectrometer (APXS) which will be used […]
As I was explaining in a previous article, Arctic ice is thinning and is expected to totally collapse in just a few years. But instead of investing and finding ways to deal with this problem, global powers such as China, the US and Russia are trying to get their hands on resources made available by […]
Arctic ice, a key indicator for global climate status, has reached another record low, lower than in computer estimates, hinting at a major disaster. A new record Researchers from the U.S. National Snow and Ice Data Center announced reached its lowest point on September 16, when it will cover approximately 1.32 million square miles (3.42 […]
The first galaxies formed very fast after the Big Bang – in cosmic time, that is. It’s estimated that the earliest ones appeared some 500 million years after the Big Bang, a period about which researchers know very little. How they observed it Even though they are typically very bright, such galaxies are quite hard […]
Known for its sobriety and cumbersome bureaucracy, the European Commission rarely gives good news, especially lately; to bring even more surprise to the table, the announcement was centered around Romania, a country not so well known for its high tech facilities: a new state of the art nuclear physics research facility will be built near […]
Culturing mammalian cells is currently the only way to make some complex proteins used in certain drugs; but growing such cultures is an extremely difficult and delicate job, because they can harbor human pathogens and must therefore be kept under strict temperature conditions. It’s a difficult job, but it’s definitely worth it; take a look […]
Scientists have finally managed to track sperm patterns in 3D, for the first time in history. Bless their gifted brains, this remarkable achievement revealed some interesting and unexpected things: some sperm swim in corkscrew patterns, while others are hyperactive and hectic. Aydogan Ozcan, the sperm study leader, placed sperm on a silicon sensor chip and […]
A team of archaeologists led by Professor Michael Hoff, from the University of Nebraska-Lincoln has unearthed a Roman mosaic measuring 148 square meters. Judging by its quality and appearance, researchers believe it to be the largest Roman mosaic of its type ever found. “Its size signals, in no small part, that the outward signs of […]
Russia announced the declassification of a huge diamond deposit, twice as hard as average ones, and about 10 times bigger than the global supply available today. The sensational announcement was made by Novosibirsk scientists of the Institute of Geology and Mineralogy at the Siberian Branch of the Russian Academy of Sciences and it could detonate […]
Hans Rosling is one of the most remarkable people on the face of the Earth – even the most educated, well traveled and insightful have their perspectives shifted by Rosling. A professor of global health at Sweden’s Karolinska Institute, a member of Time’s most influential 100 people, as well as an accomplished sword swallower, he […]
Growing populations of hungry sea otters can become one of our powerful allies in the fight against global warming; why? Because they like to eat sea urchins. Global warming is reaching new records, ice caps continue to melt at an alarming rate, and measures taken by authorities are as rare as they are questionable. But […]
Last May, European scientists managed to teleport photons using quantum phenomena over a distance of 143 kilometers, across two Canary islands; however, it is only now that their paper was accepted in a peer reviewed magazine. Beam me up, Scotty While the technology used in Star Trek is still only science-fiction, the quantum teleportation of […]
The Japanese scientific deep sea vessel Chikyu managed to set a new world record by drilling down to over 2.200 meters below the seafloor, obtaining samples from Shimokita Peninsula of Japan in the northwest Pacific Ocean. Drilling for science Whenever you hear about drilling, it’s almost always about oil. Given the humongous amount of oil […]
NASA’s Curiosity rover has already driven 112 meters on the surface of Mars, leaving behind these tracks, photographed by another NASA satellite orbiting the Red Planet. The spacecraft landed one month ago, on August 5, in a mission to search for the basic ingredients of life, and figure out if Mars has, or had at […]
A team of experts in mechanics, materials, medicine and tissue engineering have managed to create a self replicating gel which can stretch about 21 times its length. The water-based tough gel is also self-healing and biocompatible, which means it could be perfect for people with cartilage injuries. When 1+1 isn’t 2 The new hydrogel (names […]
The world we’re living in seems to be heading towards a mass extinction, in which humanity plays a crucial role. Sadly, Asia, the largest continent in the world is one of the ‘leaders’ in terms of wildlife extinction. According to the Wildlife Conservation Society, the Asian governments must take action to protect Asian species, which […]
It’s one asteroid down and one to go, for NASA’s Dawn spacecraft. After spending a year studying the Vesta asteroid and retrieving valuable information to Earth, Dawn is now ready to head for its next destination: Ceres. A different world Scientists expect Ceres to be very different from Vesta. Ceres is considered to be the […]
A while ago, several geologists started wondering if the impact humanity is having on Earth isn’t so big, that despite its relatively short duration, we should consider living in a distinct geological era marked by this impact – the Anthropocene. Of course, aside from supporters, there were those who only gave a condescending smile or […]
University of Leicester announced the discovery of what they believe to be the medieval Grey Friars Church – the almost mythical burial place of Richard III. Richard III only ruled England for two years, but his reign was memorable from a number of points of view. He was the last king of the House of […]
I really don’t want to go into politics – we’ve never done that at ZME Science, and we never will. But the future president of the United States will have an extremely important role to play in the future of science in America. The two main candidates, Barack Obama and Mitt Romney explained where they […]
While NASA gives all sort of fun names to missions, projects, telescopes – asteroids is not their slickest field. Names like (101955) 1999 RQ36 don’t exactly roll off the tip of your tongue. This is why the people at NASA decided to hold a contest for students, which will decide how an asteroid will be […]
Southern LA residents are already mourning the loss of 400 trees which were cut in order to make way for the Endeavour flyby. Endeavour, the fifth and last space worthy space shuttle built by the US, will be given the retreat it deserves – in a museum, where it will be seen and admired by […]
NASA released footage of an absolutely remarkable phenomena: the ejection of a massive solar filament, a type of coronal ejection, captured in all its splendor. According to the space agency, the filament has been hovering in the Sun’s atmosphere since August, and it was ejected on the 31st of August. The solar eruption was shaped […]
Neil Armstrong: 1930-2012. This is not something I wanted to write down – and I feel extremely sad and awkward doing it. The man who took the first step on the Moon died due to a heart condition. The American hero, 82 years old, who never dwelled on his success, and never tried to milk […]
More and more Americans are spending their Sundays in mega churches, in congregations measuring by the thousands. However, believers aren’t hindered by the size of these buildings – in fact, size is part of their appeal. A new study conducted on 12 representative churches throughout the US showed that the bigger the size of the […]
Researchers often study and analyze what goes wrong with the brains of people with dementia; but this is not the case here – researchers from Northwestern Medicinecasked themselves exactly the opposite: what happens with the brains of the so-called ‘Super Agers’, elder people who still have terrific memories. Emili Rogalski identified an elite group of […]
If you did intermediate math in school, then you’ll most likely remember how to split numbers into prime factors; basically, any number can be written out by multiplying prime factors. Now, a group of researchers from UC Santa Barbara has designed and fabricated a quantum processor capable of factoring a composite number. Don’t get overexcited […]
Huge leaps in research within the field of genetics have enabled fetal DNA sequencing from maternal blood. This has made it possible to determine whether the unborn baby is suffering from any autoimmune conditions or chromosomal abnormalities such as Down’s syndrome, Turner’s syndrome or Neural tube defects such as Spina Bifida. Up until the recent […]
Just think about it: a minimally invasive brain stimulator that significantly reduces seizure duration for epilepsy patients. Such a device exists, but sadly, only works in rats so far. The device was tested on nine rats with a ‘petit mal’ form of epilepsy, and it reduced the length of seizures by approximately 60 percent. Most […]
During the Neolithic period, man made the big jump from hunter-gatherer to farmer and agriculturalist, eventually moving on to larger and larger settlements, with a variety of animals and plants. The transition also brought significant changes in terms of economy, architecture, and apparently, woodworking. Dr. Ran Barkai of Tel Aviv University‘s Department of Archaeology and […]
NASA’s Curiosity rover is really getting down to business, sending spectacular pictures back to Earth – including a colour panoramic image of the Gale Crater landing site. During a press conference, NASA officials announced the pictures are not only spectacular themselves, but also crucial to understanding the Martian landscape. “The Navcam and Mastcam images have […]
Groundwater use is unsustainable in many of the world’s major agricultural zones; as a matter of fact, about a quarter of the world’s population lives in regions where groundwater is being used up faster than it can be replenished, concluded researchers. The planet thirsts Our entire civilization depends on our water supply, and aside from […]
Researchers have found evidence that the crater in case was formed when the ground was slammed by a massive meteorite, millions of years ago. Prince Albert crater Measuring about 25 kilometers across, Prince Albert crater was named after the peninsula in which it was discovered. Researchers never were really sure when it was formed, the […]
Would you eat shark fin soup? Please, tell me that the answer is ‘NO!’. Nearly a third of all shark species are endangered, due to wreckless killing – mostly for soup. Proceed at will, but the article contains some gruesome pictures. The champions’s tragedy Sharks are on top of the food chain – they have […]
Our family tree may be much more complex than we know – it may have sprouted some long lost branches which go back some 2 million years. A messy family tree A team led by Meave Leakey, daughter-in-law of distinguished scientist Louis Leakey found facial and jaw bones from three specimens that led them to […]
The video captures the thrilling final few minutes of the Curiosity rover’s white-knuckle ride as it descended towards the surface of Mars, where it will hopefully provide valuable information about the Red Planet’s history. You shouldn’t expect a fantastic hi-res video, because the rover’s Mars Descent Imager (MARDI) only has a low-resolution camera. During the […]
