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Physics is still not sure what to make of antimatter; theoretically speaking, after the Big Bang, matter and antimatter were created in equal amounts. But if this is the case, then where is all the antimatter ? Matter vs antimatter An antiparticle has exactly the same mass as a particle, but a opposite electrical charge, […]
As you probably (and should) know already, symbiosis is a close interaction (often long term) between different species, both of which have something to win from this deal. But symbiosis between animals and bacteria… that’s definitely something new. Marine sandy bottoms This kind of environment seems dead, desert-like and empty, but if you were to […]
With today’s technology, prosthetics are not at all uncommon, and what’s even more important, they have become more and more performant, allowing certain actions which would have been impossible a century ago. But even more than a century ago, in the 19th century, people were incredibly creative and resourceful. This prosthetic victorian arm, made out […]
I sure hope everybody knows what an eclipse is and there’s no need to pass through that again; if not, here’s the wikipedia article about eclipse. What I’m more interested in telling you about is why the Moon tends to get this delicious reddish hue during some eclipses – as observed in this fascinating picture. […]
It was 1893 when Orlando Ferguson, a real estate developer based in South Dakota combined religious beliefs with some scientific theories and a big chunk of creativity to create this square map of the stationary earth. The map was accompanied by a 92 page lecture delivered by Ferguson, who referred to himself as a professor, […]
The development of a brain-like computer would have numerous and varied benefits, and this achievement is one step closer, according to research published by researchers from the University of Exeter. Unique handling of information The brain is an unique processor from many points of view, displaying many extraordinary abilities, including simultaneous information processing and storage […]
Were dinosaurs slow and lazy, as you see most reptiles today, or active and quick like you see them in the movies? It pretty much depends on their body temperature – if they are cold blooded or not. The kingdom of T-Rex It seemed to be a no-brainer that dinosaurs are cold blooded, relying on […]
For the past few months, the situation in Libya has varied from dire to horrifying; the rebels are fighting to maintain ground and even push whenever they get some help, but the situation they are in is not a good one. Scrambling to arm themselves against organized and trained military and mercenaries, the rebels have […]
In a recent post I showed you some absolutely stunning Soviet space program posters, and guess what – we’re back with more space posters, only this time, it’s the other communist titan on the planet: China. What is striking about these posters are the children; while the Soviets emphasized on the power of the people […]
You can’t believe everything people say, but you sometimes can’t even believe what you hear, especially if you’ve had 3 or more cups of coffee. Australian researchers from La Trobe University have just published a study suggesting that people on a major coffee buzz are prone to hear and seethings that aren’t there. The thins […]
How do you feel about your facebook friends ? I like them; some are my good friends in real life, some are just people I know, and I have only a vague idea who some of my facebook friends are. But this woman loves them all; she loves them so much that she permanently inked […]
Acording to a report released by the UN on Sunday, a transition to a low carbon, green and ressource efficient economy requires an annual investment of $40 billion anually, which amounts for only 0.034 per cent of global GDP. If the measures included in the report are adopted, the investment would “halve deforestation rates by […]
It always baffles me to see how science news propagate; it seems whenever a study or a report is published, there are two waves of acknowledgement: the first one, science sites and magazines write about it, and the second one, the supermassive one, where the media picks it up. This is exactly the case here. […]
A much anticipated and highly expected drug could come from Pfizer Inc, the biggest drug company in the world; the drug appears to double survival over standard approved drugs, but only against lung tumours with a certain mutation. The drug, called crizotinib, would be the first targeted treatment for the roughly 50,000 people who get […]
Biological systems have recently attracted the attention of mathematicians and computer scientists, who have been turning everything from quantum processes to RNA into logic gates. But before you get paranoid about DNA controlling Skynet, you have to know that these systems have only been successful on a small scale, calculating square roots on four-bit numbers, […]
You can add another thing to the list of robots do and 99.99% of humans can’t; this time, it’s all about juggling. Students from the Department of Control Engineering at Prague’s Czech Technical University have managed to create a robot that can juggle up to 5 balls, something that even most jugglers have a hard […]
We are living epoch changing times – literally. According to an influential and evergrowing group of geologists, there are more and more signs that we are living in an epoch that is like no other in the history of the Earth, and therefore it is required that we acknowledge it as so – the Anthropocene. […]
You know the food pyramid, right ? It shows you just approximately how much of each food element you should eat in order to be healthy and make the most out of your life. Well, the Food and Drug Association (FDA) decided that it’s no longer hip enough, and decided to give it a new […]
What can possibly link together speed, strength, and the colour red ? Nope, it’s not a brand new Ferrari – it’s your muscles ! A new groundbreaking study published in the journal Emotion shows that if you see red, your reactions become faster, more powerful, and you won’t even realize it. Science and sports Of […]
Global warming is not an abstract element, it’s not harmless, and it doesn’t apply only to polar caps; it affects the entire world, including you and me. Taking a look at food prices Even though mundane things tend to become cheaper and cheaper, food has become more and more expensive in the past few years, […]
Remember the days when cigarettes didn’t have to feature labels of all the bad things that can happen if you smoke ? Well, I don’t; but then again, maybe in a few decades people won’t remember the days when cigarettes used to have such ‘light warnings’. Practically, in just a generation or so, things have […]
Worms are definitely a tough bunch; you may see them as soft and vulnerable, but they can resist in conditions that would make even Les Stroud go ‘wow’. For example, a new study concludes that worms can live in up to 0.8 miles (1.3 kilometers) down. The worms from hell They have been rightfully named […]
It’s a black period for Brazil’s environment, and things will get even worse in days to follow; the government just applied a reform of the forestry code which will make it extremely easy to cut down massively on the rainforests in Brazil. Money money money After several delays and a desperate, but outnumbered resistance, the […]
Topping this week’s absurd news by far, this is one of the most preposterous things I’ve read in all my life. Seven seismologists are charged with manslaughter after they failed to predict the 2009 L’Aquila that made 300 victims. Earthquake prediction and other fairytales At the moment, and in the forseeable future, it is impossible […]
Our perception of size and distances is basically a product of how the brain interprets different visual signals, like for example the size of an object on the retina or its movement across the visual field. Now, if you were shrinking to the size of a doll in your sleep, when you woke up, the […]
Much like humans, monkeys too exhibit signs of regret, and they wonder themselves what might have been, according to a recent study published by researchers from Yale. The study, published in the Neuron journal, suggests that aside from regrets, monkeys often wonder about how different actions would lead to different outcomes; as researchers state, aside […]
Researchers at the University of North Carolina-Chapel Hill have found that more and more young adults are suffering from a condition that has traditionally been the problem of older adults – high blood pressure. The researchers believe that general problems, such as an unbalanced diet, coffee, and obesity are the main causes for this surge […]
NASA announced that it will launch an unmaned ship to a nearby asteroid, in an attempt to figure out more about both the asteroid itself, and how life started on our planet. The mission, named Origins-Spectral Interpretation-Resource Identification-Security-Regolith Explorer – or, as always, with an easier more manageable name, Osiris-Rex was chosen to take place […]
The Large Hadron Collider (LHC) continues on its quest to find out exactly what happened in the first seconds after the Big Bang, unveiling what is the densest material known so far to man. Exotic densest substance Known as the quark-gluon plasma, this amazing exotic substance can exist only at incredibly high temperatures or pressures, […]
Graphene is probably the ‘substance of the century’, and it will probably be for us what plastics were in the 1900s. Now, a flower-like defect in the material that can occur during the fabrication process could have a significant effect on graphene’s already impressive mechanical, magnetic, and electrical properties. Amazing graphene Graphene is practically a […]
Anomalocaridids were extremely weird animals, by today’s standards; but by the standards of the Cambrian, they were the hot guys. They had a long spiny head, powerful limbs which were probably used to snag prey and a series of blade-like filaments in segments across the animal’s back, which could have functioned as gills. During the […]
There are still many things we still don’t understand about the electron; only recently, a team from the Imperial College London concluded that the electron is actually incredibly round, thus making the most accurate estimate of its shape. The experiments, which spanned more than a decade, suggest that the electron differs from being round by […]
If you ask me, one of the most interesting things regarding animal evolution is sex; the animal kingdom has expanded sex to such heights, that it is often unbelievable the kind of things some animals do. Such is the case with the androgenetic clams of the genus Corbicula. Just males – and doing fine Most […]
Not one, not 2, or 3, 5, 10 – but 17 new pyramids were found by a new Egyptian satellite survey. A dozen and a half pyramids The survey also detected 1,000 tombs and 3,000 ancient settlements, using infrared images to detect the underground buildings; the satellites were equipped with cameras that could pinpoint objects […]
Taken at distances as small as 1 kilometer, these pictures of Grimsvotn (the volcano that erupted recently in Iceland) reveal how beautiful and terrifying at the same time volcanic eruptions can be. Blending smoke and ash with lightning, the pictures are truly breathtaking. They were taken by Johann Ingi Jonsson, an amateur photographer […]
Paper is just paper, right ? Nothing fancy, nothing special, just plain old paper that we see and probably use every single day. Well, for Charles Kazilek at ASU, that statement couldn’t be further from the truth; incredible colours, from orange and purple to vibrant green, amazing textures, all of these were obtained from […]
For most bacteria, a fresh supply of air is pretty much the best thing that can happen; however, for some, that is quite unbearable. Basically, they can’t stand it. They’d do anything to get rid of it. These little guys can be the key to a process so efficient that in the end will not […]
An extremely old spider has showed its face for the first time in almost 50 million years; buried in a large chunk of amber, this Huntsman spider has descendants which live in the tropics and Southern Europe today. They can grow up to 30 centimeters, but they’re not aggressive and not poisonous for humans, despite […]
Japan shows us yet again that they are leading the world in terms of renewable energy, in taking a plan that would make solar panels mandatory for all buildings no later than 2030. The plan, expected to be unveiled at the upcoming G8 Summit in France, aims to show Japan’s resolve to encourage technological innovation […]
Even though Facebook is already filled with underage children, and acording to a facebook depression study, kids are often negatively affected by the social media site, their intention is to spread their wings even further, and catch a whole new segment of the market (as they put it). CNN Money reports that Facebook founder Mark […]
A recent NASA operation (who knew they do this stuff ?) busted a woman who was trying to sell what she claimed was a piece of the Moon for the meager price of 1.7 million dollars. This came as a result of months of targeting her, after rumour spread that she was selling such […]
Spacewalking isn’t all fun and games – things can go bad at any moment, and in the latest spacewalk, this is exactly what happened: Mike Fincke, one of NASA’s most experienced spacemen, reported that while they were lubricating a joint in the life-sustaining solar power system of the International Space Station, they lost one bolt […]
A testament to how even a garbage dump can become something beautiful.
Finding new planets is interesting an remarkable, but finding a whole new class of planets – that’s definitely something extraordinary. University of Notre Dame astronomer David Bennett described just that – a class of planets without stars or a solar system, just wandering around the galaxy all by themselves. The most likely theory is that […]
Confirming what teenage boys and mysoginistic men already knew, a 2002 study confirms the fact that semen might have in fact antidepressant qualities for women. This is not news at all, but still, definitely worth spreading the word. Semen carries with it more than just sperm; it’s a whole cocktail of substances, out of which […]
Time is money, time is of the essence, it’s time for time to be given its just attention; clocks are already incredibly precise, but with this new improvement, they will be just incredible ! Researchers from America and Russia announced that they have eliminated a source of error that came from temperature variation and they […]
Touch is revolutionizing everything these days – first, it was the touch screen, then it was the touchpad, and it seems tomorrow – it will be the touch keyboard. The thing with aesthetic keyboards is, everyone likes it some other way; some want a bigger distance between buttons, some have smaller fingers, some need certain […]
The stage seems finally set for the Endeavour launch that was delayed so long, and aside from the usual crew, the space shuttle will carry with it an unexpected passenger: a baby squid. All for the sake of science No, it’s not because astronauts have changed their menu, and it’s not just for the laughs […]
Every once in a while, the Sun gets a little hungry; in those times, it grabs on a little comet snack, and every once in a while, these ‘snacks’ are caught on tape. However, never has a comet been captured so spectacularly in its final moments as with the video released by NASA Tuesday. This […]
Since 1995, over 500 planets that don’t orbit our Sun have been discovered, with the numbers increasing more and more in the past years. But only recently did astrophysicists observe that in some of these cases, the star seems to be spinning in one direction, and the planet orbits it in the totally opposite direction […]
