Earth was hit by a massive gamma-ray burst in the 8th century
The most powerful explosion in the Universe - a gamma-ray burst- might have hit Earth during the middle ages. Luckily...
Poor grammar makes for good passwords
As computing power grows and becomes ever more accessible, passwords become easier to crack day by day. If you want...
Quadruple helix DNA proven to exist in human cells
Exactly 50 years ago, Cambridge researchers Watson and Crick published a monumental paper that for the first time described the intertwined...
ESA discovers huge 1,000 miles long Martian river
(c) Image by ESA/DLR/FU Berlin Using combined imagery delivered by the High-Resolution Stereo Camera (HRSC) and recent color channel data, the...
Microwave metamaterial camera images in real time. It’s only a fraction of the size current devices are
Scientists at Duke University have devised a metamaterial that uses microwaves to image objects or scenes in real time, all...
Real life ‘holodeck’ in 10 years? Very possible, Tim Huckaby says
Holodeck caption from the USS enterprise At his recent keynote 2013 Consumer Electronics Show (CES), Las Vegas, Tim Huckaby dazzled...
Crabs and other shellfish feel pain. Opens ethical discussion
A new study from researchers at Queen's University Belfast, UK, found that indeed shellfish, like crabs or lobsters that are...
Intelligent molecules that fold and change shape demonstrated for the first time
The new results demonstrate at the single-molecule level how solvent-induced collapse of an environmentally responsive copolymer modulates surface adhesion forces...
People remember facebook updates better than faces or quotes from books
There are some 30 million facebook updates pushed on the massive social network every hour, so it might seem like...
Exotic plant species drive native plants into extinction contrary to reports
Native plants on a California reserve (in bloom on mounds in background) are found in marginal, patchy habitats following invasion...
Robots: reviving the American economy, killing the workforce
The whole point of technology is that of aiding mankind, and it has done so since the advent of fire...
Watch footage from the last NASA spacecraft to crash on the moon [VIDEO]
Ebb and Flow chased each other around the moon for nearly a year, peering into the interior. With dwindling fuel...
DARPA wants to store drones at the bottom of the world’s oceans
Along the years DARPA has proposed, tested and implemented a slew of preposterous sounding projects like the Minority Report-like interface...
NASA funds ISS inflatable module. Cheap and reliable blow-up space stations might hit low-orbit in the future
A concept design for a inflatable space station module. (c) Bigelow Aerospace Recently, NASA announced in a press release that...
New techniques allows heat to be treated like light
A materials science researcher at MIT has devised a novel technique using nanoparticles that allows heat flow to be treated...
Upcoming 2013 ISON comet might be the brightest ever – set to shine as a full moon
Photograph of Comet West, one of the greatest comets of all-time, taken by an amateur astronomer. (c) John Laborde Discovered...
Largest known structure in the Universe discovered by scientists
Astronomers from Britain's University of Central Lancashire have recently published a landmark paper that describes the largest known structure in the...
First four legged land animals moved about like seals
Researchers who had performed the first high detail 3-D reconstruction of early tetrapod (four-legged animals) backbones claim the first land...
Announcing ZME Science Q&A beta: ask, vote and answer science questions
For the last few months, we've been hard at work developing a new custom community feature for the ZME Science...
Earth bacteria can withstand extremely harsh Mars-like conditions
The ultimate goal of all current Mars missions and observations is that of finding evidence of life or, on the...
Fun mathematics of domino chain reactions: could a tiny domino end up to topple a skyscraper-sized one? Yes
Besides being a great family time activity and an awesome display of art for some who have way too much...
Hearing restored in mice after hair cells were regenerated through drug
Hearing loss is a grave healthcare problem around the world, with 50 million cases in the US alone. The most...
Tablet computers as thin and flexible as a sheet of paper hint to the office of the future
The year is 2013, but offices and business headquarters are still riddled with stacks and tonnes of paper. The future...
Natural brightness: fireflies inspire LEDs with 55% more efficiency
A firefly specimen from the genus Photuris, which is commonly found in Latin America and the United States and served...
“Eye of Sauron” star hosts rogue planet
Back in 2008, Hubble released a stunning image of a very bright star called Fomalhaut which spanned a huge disk of...
NASA Chandra movie shows Vela pulsar in full rotating madness [VIDEO]
The Vela pulsar. (c) NASA. After almost ten years, the team of astronomers at NASA's Chandra X-ray Observatory have released a...
Ordinary glass has extraordinary properties – molecules self align in ultrastable tetris-like structures
Fast-acting molecules organize themselves more randomly (left) under certain temperature conditions than slower-acting, more systematically organized molecules. The more systematically...
NuSTAR’s high power X-ray images two unusually bright black holes in spiral galaxy [STUNNING PHOTOS]
The new view of spiral galaxy IC 342, also known as Caldwell 5. (c) NASA Launched just last year, NASA's Nuclear...
NASA considers capturing and pulling an asteroid into lunar orbit
An artist impression of a robotic probe capturing an asteroid. It might look like a space rock bucket, however, the...
Zapping lasers: German military 50 kW laser can shoot down mortar projectiles from 2km away
We're all familiar with laser weapons from SciFi movies and novels, but how far away is laser warfare from reality?...
International Space Station astronaut plays original song in space
While important scientific experiments, studies and research are conducted on a daily basis on-board the International Space Station, the astronauts...
How much does a kilogram weigh? The struggle of keeping standardized mass constant
One of the international prototype kilograms. Since 1889, the world has used the International Prototype Kilogram (IPK) – a cylindrical...
Coldest antimatter yet might help scientists probe its secrets
A novel technique for cooling antimatter down to the point where it might become almost stationary might provide scientists with...
Mars covered in oceans of water: how the red planet might have looked billions of years ago [FANTASTIC PHOTOS]
There seems to be consisting evidence supplied both by past and recent rover missions - like the ever sturdy Opportunity, the...
Doomsday part 5: Planetary and galactic alignment
On December 21 the solar system's planets will align and/or the sun will also align in turn with the center...
Detecting biomarkers in urine could allow for earlier cancer diagnosis
By detecting specific biomarkers (proteins) produced by cancer cells, physicians can diagnose a tumor, however these are so diluted in...
Brilliant moving Christmas trees made with ferrofluids and electromagnetism [VIDEO]
The holidays are nigh, and if you haven't put out your Christmas tree just yet, maybe you'd like to consider something truly special....
Why is Rudolph’s nose red? Scientists explain
(c) Flickr Labelled as an outcast by the rest of Santa's sleigh pulling reindeer, Rudolph the red-nose reindeer, though mocked...
The Milky Way’s mass is 1,6 trillion suns, far more than previously estimated
In a novel and highly praised research, a team of astronomers have managed to estimate the mass of our host...
Scientists image an atom’s shadow for the first time
With implications for everything from quantum computing to microbiology, scientists have for the first time imaged the shadow of an...
Top 10 amazing [PHOTOS] capturing microscopic biology from 2012
Like every year, Nikon and Olympus each organizes a contest where microscopic photos from the world of biology are judged...
Dire wolf fossil found near Las Vegas provides first evidence of ice age wolves in Nevada
Reconstruction of Canis dirus (dire wolf) with two possible aspects according to its probable geographic origin: South-American or North American....
Turbulence in space confirmed and measured for the first time
A massive coronal mass ejection. (c) Wikimedia Commons A rather frustrating issue for astronomers and astrophysicists is space turbulence. Like...
Is there such a thing as unjammable radar? Quantum imaging radar seems so
Detecting a potential threat before it occurs is the first step to preventing any aggression. In today's wars, the scales...
A swarm of ping-pong ball-sized robots could be the next multi-purpose tinkers
A team of scientists at University of Colorado Boulder is currently working on self-assembling robots the size of a ping-pong ball that...
CERN scientists direct and release zombie movie
A still shot from the movie "Decay". As you can see, the Higgs boson radiation is so effective in animating...
Higgs boson might be a twin particle, contradictory measurements suggest
The discovery of the Higgs boson is the most monumental find in physics of the year and possibility since the...
Japan is lead candidate for hosting the next high energy particle smasher – the International Linear Collider
The Geneva based Large Hadron Collider has gobbled a lot of cash and resource in order to become operational, but...
Any hectare in the rainforest has about 6,000 arthropod species lurking about
(c) Corel Photography In the most comprehensive and thorough survey of its kind, an international team of scientists sampled, sorted...
Amazon trees will withstand even the most pessimistic of global warming scenarios
Researchers from the University of Michigan and University College London have found that trees in the Amazon forest will be able to withstand even...