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Space offers incredibly fascinating experimental conditions for various scientific studies, otherwise very hard or practically impossible to replicate on Earth. Microgravity is something of great interest to scientists, and even simple experiments with fire are extremely insightful. Combustion in space occurs at much lower temperatures and with a lower amount of required oxygen, and to […]
Hailed as a breakthrough in reconstructive surgery, an 83-year old woman had her lower jaw replaced by an exact 3D printed replica made out of titanium. The implant was made by heating and fusing together titanium ore, one layer at a time with a laser. The procedure took place last summer in the Netherlands, but […]
Whenever a massive object, with an equally massive gravitational pull, like black holes or galaxy clusters, falls between an observer, say a telescope, and a distant target in the background to be observed, than a gravitational lens is formed. Light emitted from the distant object gets twisted by the massive object, and ends up distorted […]
It took 30 years, an enormous amount of effort and patience, and drilling through 3,768 meters of thick ice for scientists to finally reach the surface of the Vostok, a unique subglacial lake. Just as large as the great Ontario lake, the Vostok is thought to be 20 million years old, and due to the […]
The Russian space agency recently announced that they’ll be soon launching a campaign to recruit cosmonauts for upcoming missions to the Moon, slated for the next ten years. Interestingly enough, the announcement comes just one day before the much expected February full moon, called Snow Moon – yes there’s actually snow on the moon this time of […]
A group of students from Yale University, along with molecular biochemistry professor Scott Strobel, were on a routine trip to the Amazon’s Yasuni National Park, one of the most biodiverse regions in the world, when they stumbled across a peculiar type of mushroom capable of eating polyurethane plastics. If successfully applied to landfills clogged with millions of metric tons […]
For the past three years, scientists have been analyzing data fed back by the 2008 NASA Phoenix mission to Mars, which touch landed on the planet’s northern poles. Even though there was ice, soil analysis showed that the planet has been suffering from a massive, 600 million years long drought, providing inhospitable life supporting conditions on its […]
Last week, NASA released a incredibly stunning high resolution photo of the Earth captured by one of the instruments aboard the agency’s National Polar-orbiting Operational Environmental Satellite System Preparatory Project (or NPP). The photo was soon flooded on news stands, media outlets, social networks and blogs, and spread through out the world in all its glory. The […]
Modern technology has revolutionized the way we communicate forever. From the telegraph, to the wire telephone, to the internet, to extremely capable smartphones, technology, fueled by scientific advancements, has helped people communicate easily with one another and be aware of what’s going on in world instantly. Too much of anything, however, can be harmful, and […]
The hunt for finding another Earth is making progress every day, as scientists are constantly adding new viable candidates to the list. It’s estimated that in our galaxy alone, the Milky Way, there are between 200 and 400 billion stars – out of all of these, from a statistical point of view, the chances of […]
From a certain age onward, humans seem to process information at a slower pace – learning new things becomes more difficult, remembering where you put the car keys seems to give headaches, and it gets ever worse as we age even more. Neuroscientists at the University of Bristol studying dysfunctional neural communication in Alzheimer patients demonstrated that the […]
I used to see moths as simple, clumsy beings, whose sole purpose in life is that of annoying people by hitting light-bulbs head first repeatedly in a closed loop. The hawk moth (Manduca sexta), however, is in a whole different league entirely, and it’s because of this hummingbird-like insect that I’ve come to reconsider my views upon the […]
Casey Holliday, a University of Missouri researcher, was looking through some of the hundreds of unlabeled items kept in a storage facility when he come about a remarkable find – a skull fragment from an ancient croccodile, dating back from the late Cretaceous, around 95 million years ago. What’s really interesting about the find is […]
A team of researchers, lead by itch expert Gil Yosipovitch, have studied which parts of the body produce the most pleasure when scratched, and found that scratch relief varies along different areas of the body. If you believe this study is totally irrelevant or useless, Yosipovitch believes otherwise and explains how the science of itching […]
Around 140 millions years ago, mammals didn’t even outsize a modern day mouse, as dinosaurs dominated Earth’s crowded surface. As the latter became extinct, a myriad of free ecosystems and niches opened up, including those once dominated by giant plant eating dinosaurs, and mammals where quick to fill these up. After compiling and analyzing a […]
Most of the aurora borealis videos we’ve featured on ZME Science, besides the fact they’re absolutely gorgeous, are time lapsed. Because of this, I’ve always thought the beautiful, wobbly dance of the Northern Lights is actually a tad slower, maybe not even perceivable. Photographer Alistair Chapman went all the way to Tromso, Norway for last […]
Darwin’s theory of natural selection illustrates perfectly what evolution is all about, the survival of the fittest if you will. It’s because of natural selection that a crocodile has an armor-like skin to protect it against enemies, a chameleon can change its color and camouflage itself for protection and hunting or humans evolved a more […]
Detailed in a recently published study, a team of ophthalmologists have successfully managed to improve the vision of both of their trial patients, which were declared legally blind due to macular degeneration, by inserting human embryonic stem cells into one eye of each person. Significant improvements were recognized shortly after the procedure, and continued to […]
Canadian duo, Mathew Ho and Asad Muhammad, both only 17 years old, have managed to put the infamous Lego man, attached with the Canadian flag, into space. They managed to achieve this with extremely limited resources, using items bought off craiglist, and unlimited ingenuity. The plastic figurine was attached to a styrofoam box, which also contained […]
Researchers studying marine bacteria in the Bahamas’ underwater caves, have made some remarkable discoveries which allowed to understand how these organisms adapt and thrive in rather precarious conditions. Their study might help scientists understand how marine life formed for the first time millions of years in the past, as well as hint how marine life […]
In the popular TV series, Star Trek, one of the most fascinating devices featured, out of the whole myriad of blasters and tractor beams, is the tricorder, a portable medical scanner and communication device which could detect biological phenomena such as increased blood flow around tumorous growths just by sweeping a person. The closest thing […]
The bond between man and dog has always been extremely evident, an unconditioned friendship, at least from the dog’s part, which has lead the latter to be rightfully often referred to as man’s best friend. But how, why, and when did dogs become such a significant part of our lives. By domesticating farm animals like cattle, pigs […]
The much dreamed off invisibility cloak is just a few tiny steps away, after remarkable research in the field, many backed by military interests, have sparked some amazing advances. In the last few years alone, scientists have managed to successfully cloak various objects either using meta-materials that bent light around an object to conceal it or […]
A while ago NASA launched its next generation weather satellite, the Suomi NPP satellite, into low-orbit, on a mission to collect critical data set to improve short-term weather forecasts and increase understanding of long-term climate change. Besides, valuable scientific measurements, the NPP satellite also provides some incredible glimpses of our planet in great detail. We showed you […]
University of Bristol scientists have developed a magnetic soap, which basically is a common soap only it’s filled with iron atoms that causes the targeted waste material to become magnetized. The detergent has a real potential of revolutionizing how mega clean-ups will be handled in the future. An oil spill could be cleaned a lot […]
Researchers at SLAC National Accelerator Laboratory have used the world’s most powerful X-ray laser fired upon a neon gas capsule and thus emit an avalanche of short wavelength X-rays,creating the first atom laser. The same laser was used to heat a lump of matter at over 2 million degrees Fahrenheit – hotter than the sun’s […]
By harnessing the science of both quantum and nano physics, scientists at the Niels Bohr Institute have come up with an innovative new way of cooling semiconductor membranes by using laser light. Through this new technique, the researchers were able to cool the tiny, thin membrane from room temperature to -269 degrees Celsius. Paradoxically, the […]
The Fourier transformation is arguably the most important algorithm in information technology, with immense applications as well in optics, signal and image processing, pattern recognition etc. Thanks to this remarkable mathematical operation, we’re able to see videos or listen to music on an iPod, as it turns the digital information into readable frequencies. Recently, MIT […]
US-based scientists have successfully managed to engineer a microbe that reacts with seaweed to produce ethanol, and thus making it a new source of biofuel, an alternative to coal and oil. If the research can be applied at an economically feasible scale, it could finally set biofuels usage on an exponentially growth path, as seaweed […]
Black Holes are the least understood entities, so far, in the Universe. However, if there’s one thing scientists know for sure about them, it’s that they’re the most extreme environment in cosmos. Black Holes have such a powerful, relentless gravity pull that it swallows absolutely everything in its vicinity, even light gets absorbed with zero […]
In a remarkable feat of engineering, scientists have come a huge step closer to achieving what’s maybe the greatest green energy dream ever. University of Southern California researchers have developed the world’s currently most effective CO2 absorbent material, which could render extraordinary results for the development of large scale batteries or whole CO2 absorbing parks, […]
In our very own Milky Way galaxy alone, astronomers estimate there are between 200 billion and 400 billion stars. Of these, there are many that exoplanets within their solar systems. Still, what are the odds planets, more or less similar to our one, capable of supporting life, microscopic or otherwise, exist? This is the exact […]
Moore’s law states that the level of technology and computing power should double every two years, and so far the postulate hasn’t been wrong in more than 50 years. A group of IBM scientists have now managed to develop a data storage technique which allows for information to be stored with as little as 12 […]
The ever scientifically productive Hubble just came out with another gem that will help scientists unravel the mysteries of the Universe, after the telescope snapped a photo of a couple of galaxy far, far away, wrapped together in a cosmic dance which most likely led in in the forming of a galaxy cluster – the […]
In the age where consumer electronic are purposely built with short lived life cycles, there might seem to be no interest for manufactures to invest in technology that enhances reliability. Sophisticated military controls or aerospace on-board circuitry are a different story though from your counter toaster – the kind of applications that yearn for working electronics that can […]
Archaeologists have uncovered an ancient urn dated from the Mayan classical period, which after a thorough chemical analysis was found to contain traces of nicotine. Though it has been documented in Mayan texts and folklore that tobacco use was a common part of the local community, this is the first hard evidence supporting the fact that Mayans […]
Researchers at Berkley University have developed an extraordinary robotic toy car called the “Tailbot”, equipped with a stabilizing tail, which is able to correct and adjust its position during mid-air leaps to land safely. The biologists and engineers involved in the study were inspired by lizards that swing their tails upward to prevent them from pitching head-over-heels […]
A subspecies of the the giant Galapagos tortoise, Chelonoidis elephantopus, long thought to be extinct for more than 150 years, is now believed to might still exist, scientists say. Yale University researchers conducted a highly thorough genetic analysis of various Galapagos giant tortoises in the region, which allowed them to speculate that at least a few dozen specimens […]
One of my favorite past times is filling sudoku puzzles. There’s something about this seemingly simple, yet challenging, dance of digits up and down, left and right that manages to keep me highly entertain though a perfectly balanced mixture of thrill and frustration. If you think you’re good enough to solve any kind of sudoku, […]
Cloaking used to be one of my favorite SciFi themes. James Bond supercars that would show up or disappear instantly at the flick of an alarm key, the hallow man, objects rendered completely invisible to the human eye and lost in the surroundings. I say used to be because spatial cloaking has transcended for some […]
In Greek mythology, the chimera is a fire breathing beast composed of several animal parts (lion body, snake-head tail, a goat head hanging from its back and so on), which has spurred the imagination of man for thousands of years. Though it is fairly clear that such an abomination never existed, apart from the infinite recesses of […]
An array formed by the greatest space telescopes in the world first discover, then photograph this ancient galaxy from the Universe’s dawn – the brightest such galaxy ever discovered by astronomers at such a distance. How far away you ask? Around 12,9 billion light years away, considering the Universe is estimated at 13.7 billion years […]
The Stonehenge site, 5,000 years old (new discoveries place it far back in history), still remains of the world’s greatest archeological mysteries. One of its biggest question marks revolves around its conception. It’s fairly understood why it was build, as a site of sun worshiping, but how it was actually built remains unknown, considering these […]
We’re at the dawn of a new exciting era – the private space age. More and more companies and influential businessmen have hopped on the bandwagon in the past decade, with the thought of building something truly incredible, while operating a profitable business at the same time. Richard Branson launched Virgin Galactic, Elon Musk (Paypal […]
Researchers have successfully managed to create a “solar paint” made out of quantum dots, which exhibits similar properties to multifilm solar cell architectures. The later are sophisticated, expensive and require a lot of time to deploy; the paint can be easily applied to basically any surface, like a house’s roof, and prepare it to easily generate […]
What doesn’t kill you, makes you stronger goes the saying, however researchers at NY’s University of Buffalo wanted to scientifically analyze how exactly when faced with adversities, a person comes out mentally tougher, able to cope much better next time. Previous analysis and studies have revealed a clear correlation between the number of adversities fate […]
Scientists from CalTech University have set a new world record for data transfer, after they successfully reached a combined rate of 186 GB/s, in both direction. Their work was presented at the recent SuperComputing 2011 (SC11) conference in Seattle. To put things into perspective 186 GBps would roughly mean 100,000 transferred Blue Ray disks in a single […]
The U.S. Environmental Protection Agency, in collaboration with the independent Environmental Integrity Project, have identified 20 new sites in the US contaminated with toxic coal ash, raising the number to a current total of 157 sites nationwide, whose water supplies and soil ares contaminated. Coal ash is the waste which results from coal combustion, filled […]
According to a new study by researchers at University of Melbourne, prolonged stem cell cultures are subjected to a relatively significant risk of mutation, similar to those seen in human cancers. Their results is of capital importance as it shows that lab grown cell treatment might become useless, if left to “stir” for too long. The scientists […]
After what can only be described has a frustrating, sleepless month for the Russian scientists involved in the Phobos grunt mission, which failed just after it escaped Earth’s atmosphere and became stranded into low-orbit, officials have announced that they have finally lost all hope and have abandoned any future efforts of re-salvaging the probe. Russia’s Phobos- […]
