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The new NASA-funded study showed that if the icy surface of Pluto’s giant moon Charon is cracked, analyzing the fractures could show if the interior was warm and perhaps warm enough to have maintained a subterranean ocean of liquid water. Pluto is the most distant planetoid (no longer a planet, sorry) in the solar system. […]
The former popular landscape was an expanse of warped shapes, out of which some were as tall as a Manhattan skyscraper, and it was discovered by an ice-penetration radar loaded aboard NASA survey flights. According to the scientists who made the discovery, this could deepen the level of understanding concerning the way in which the […]
There’s been a lot of discussion regarding the warm or cold blooded nature of dinosaurs. The traditional belief was that they were cold blooded, like today’s lizards, but an increasing amount of evidence indicated that they could regulate their body temperature, like today’s mammals. Now, a new metabolic study showed that the answer is somewhere […]
Today, Elon Must, the founder and owner of Tesla Motors announced that they were releasing all the patents they own, for free, for everyone to use. The release of over 200 patents was announced in style, through a blog entry called “All our patents are belong to you“. ” Yesterday, there was a wall of Tesla […]
A class of drugs currently used to treat leukemia has been found to have some severe side effects – positive ones, that is. The drug was found to drastically boosting immune responses against many different cancers, reports a new study. The drug class is referred to as p110´ inhibitors. Recently, it has been used with […]
Whenever you’re eating a fish or some other marine creature, think just for a moment that it may actually be worth more as a CO2 storing machine than a food. First of all, let’s just make this clear: we’re unsustainably eating fish. If we continue current trends, we’ll soon be facing a massive fish crisis, […]
When you think about ‘gamers’, pretty unpleasant stereotypes usually pop to mind. You’ll likely think about young kids without many friends, spending countless hours of the day and night in front of their computer, or perhaps 30 year old men still living in their parents basement or something. However, a new study has shown that […]
Infants exposed to more “real” conditions tend to be healthier than those overly protected. A new study has shown that newborns exposed to rodent and pet dander, roach allergens and a wide variety of household bacteria in the first year of life appear less likely to suffer from allergies, wheezing and asthma. If the child […]
A new research has shown that rats exhibit behaviors consistent with regret, a feeling once thought to be unique to humans. To measure the cognitive measure of regret, scientists developed a task that asked rats how long they were willing to wait for certain foods. Basically, they made them decide if they want to wait […]
What’s the most common mineral on Earth? Is it quartz, limestone? Maybe olivine? Well, if you take into consideration the entire planet, the most common mineral would be something known as silicate-perovskite – but now, that mineral finally has a name. On June 2, bridgmanite was approved as the formal name for silicate-perovskite – possibly of the Earth’s […]
The 65 year-old iconic Turing Test was passed for the very first time by a supercomputer program named Eugene Goostman. Eugene managed to convince 33% of the human judges that it too was human. The Turing Test The Turing test is a test of a machine’s ability to exhibit intelligent behaviour equivalent to, or indistinguishable from, […]
Electric vehicles started to rise in popularity, but we’re clearly not ready to make such a huge change at once, especially concerning the steady supply of energy that would have to come along with introducing them into massive production and consumption. Scientist Neville Mars has come with a great EV charging station which takes the form […]
A spacecraft from Earth is about to do something no other spacecraft has done before: take off, orbit a comet, and send a lander to it. The European Space Agency (ESA), NASA’s European counterpart has developed the Rosetta probe to hurl towards Comet 67P/Churyumov-Gerasimenko. The mission is simple in principle, but the work behind it is […]
We’ve probably all experimented it: you don’t have anything useful or even fun to do, but you don’t want to go to bed just yet – so you just browse your computer or tablet for a few minutes… or hours. Now, researchers from the University of Utrech have come up with a scientific explanation for […]
When we think of CO2 emissions, we generally tend to think of air pollution and global warming; we tend to ignore the fact that a huge part of all the CO2 emissions is absorbed by the oceans, and the oceans are becoming more and more acidic. The process is just getting started, and it’s gonna […]
Every baby has a mother and a father, right? As in one of each. Well, that may change soon, according to a new UK report. In February, the FDA announced it was considering 3-parent embryos; while this would be an excellent way to stop some deadly diseases, it also raises many ethical questions, and the reaction (as […]
Astronomers operating the Hubble telescope have captured the most comprehensive (and most colorful) picture ever assembled of the evolving Universe. This was part of a study called the Ultraviolet Coverage of the Hubble Ultra Deep Field (UVUDF) project. Prior to this study, there was a significant lack of data for astronomers. They knew a lot about the […]
A new study conducted by Dr Michael Kearney from the University of Melbourne explains that koalas actually hug trees to regulate their body temperature. This cute behaviour isn’t just a stage act, it’s quite important for koalas. In this study published in the Royal Society journal Biology Letters showed that when it gets really hot, the animals […]
Physicist Kip Thorne and astronomer Anna Zytkow proposed a new theoretical class of stars back in 1975, but it was only very recently that such an example of hybrid star was identified in the universe. The Thorne-Zytkow Objects (TZOs) are a combination between red supergiant and neutron stars, superficially looking like normal red supergiants, for […]
An international team of astronomers reported the discovery of two new planets orbiting a very old and nearby star to the Sun named Kapteyn’s star; one of the planets, Kapteyn b, is potentially habitable – it has the right size, and is at the right distance from its start to host liquid water. What makes it even […]
We’ve written quite a lot lately about the potential benefits of marijuana (and there are quite a lot), but we shouldn’t idealize it and ignore the downsides: a recent study has shown that marijuana use is associated with impaired sleep quality. It’s not the first time marijuana has been associated with lack of sleep quality. In […]
A rocky world weighing 17 more than the Earth was discovered, and because it’s not only way much bigger than the previously discovered ‘super-Earths’, but also all solids, the scientists called it ‘mega-Earth’. Until this recent discovery, scientists believed that a world of such dimensions would be physically impossible to form, because of the thickness […]
When I was a kid, I asked, like many others, how do bees know how to make their way back to the hive – and I was told they use the Sun for guidance. But I was lied! A new study has now finally solved my childhoold dilemma: while they do use the Sun as […]
The tropical rainforests of Central and South America aren’t threatened only by deforestation – they are also overrun by lianas, parasitic woody vines that clamber up trees and smother the forest canopy as they reach for sunlight. But the vines may actually help the trees in a way – scientists suspect they may in fact act as […]
Optimists make the most of life? A new study has shown that cynics are much more likely to develop dementia in later stages of life. Cynicism is an attitude of scornful or jaded negativity, especially a general distrust of the integrity or professed motives of others. Researchers from the University of Eastern Finland in Kuopio have conducted a […]
Researchers have erased and then reactivated memories in rats, profoundly impacting the animals’ reaction to past events. This is the first study ever to demonstrate the ability to selectively erase and then reactivate a memory by stimulating nerves in the brain at frequencies that strengthen synapses, the connection between neurons. The Eternal Sunshine of the Spotless […]
The risk of possibly the most dangerous type of cancer out there, melanoma, is greatly increased by exposure to sun in early adulthood. According to a new study conducted on Caucasian women, five or more blistering sun burns may increase the risk of melanoma by 80 percent. “Our results suggest that sun exposures in both […]
A brilliant technology reaching its limits Carrying heavier spacecraft to Mars and then safely landing it at supersonic speeds in the Martian atmosphere is no easy feat – and NASA could use any bit of help they can get. NASA’s Wallops Flight Facility is playing an integral role in solving those problems with the Low Density Supersonic […]
Superhydrophobic surfaces are surfaces that not only don’t get wet, but they actually repel water. This is the so-called lotus effect, named after the superhydrophobic leaves of the lotus plant (as usually, nature’s been doing long before we have). We’ve written time and time again about the amazing achievements in the field of superhydrophobics – and […]
Lyme disease is a stealthy disease, which can be very dangerous, especially if misdiagnosed. It was only recognized officially 40 years ago, but now, a new amber research has shown that the bacteria causing it may have been around for over 15 million years – long before any human was walking on Earth. The study […]
A new study reports that almost 30 percent of the world’s population (2.1 billion people) is now obese or overweight. The highest proportion of overweight and obese people – 13% of the global total – live in the United States, a country which accounts for only 5% of the world’s population. Obesity rates have increased virtually […]
OK, we’ve heard of tornadoes plenty in the last years. As if that wasn’t enough, we’ve even seen water tornadoes and fire tornadoes, but mosquito tornadoes? It’s like the tornado version of Captain Planet… with mosquitoes. OK, spoiler alert: this is not actually a tornado – it’s a huge, vertical swarm of insects, so maybe even […]
When people think of teleportation, inevitably a Star Trek reference like “beam me up, Scotty’ comes to mind. You’ve got to admit though, it’s a really cool idea – how many times did you think about instantly traveling to some place distant? I used to wish for teleportation every single day of my life when […]
OK, wasps are nothing to joke around with. They are the scumbags of the animal kingdom – they’re always up to no good. The thing is, they’re really good at being up to no good! After all, they used to grow in dinosaur feces, and they’ve been around for over 100 million years – more […]
Blue lava? Not quite It’s a volcano, but not the kind of volcano we’re used to seeing. This is called a Cerulean eruption, and the blue tint that surrounds the lava comes from flames produced when escaping sulphuric gases burn. The volcano contains large amounts of pure sulfur, which emits an icy violet color as it burns, […]
I like it when people talk about climate change. I even like it when they speak against climate change – as long as they bring arguments and act rationally. People shouldn’t be forbidden from talking about these kind of things, one way or another – everybody should be encouraged to look at the scientific facts, […]
What would you need to survive on the Moon? Air, water, some food, and if you ask the average American – wi-fi. We still have to wait for the air, water and food, but according to researchers from NASA and MIT, wi-fi on the Moon is quite feasible. They’ve even made a demonstration, downloading information from […]
It’s time for another featore on ZME Science! We always present you the latest and most interesting research, but we don’t spend nearly enough time talking about the people who do the research. Here, we’ll be showing you not only a review of the most fascinating studies of the week, but who the people behind […]
News about glacial melting in Antarctica has been uniformly grim; the loss is likely unstoppable. News about melting of the Greenland Ice Sheet has been no better; Scientists had earlier believed that the losses in Greenland would eventually slow or stop, owing to the solid bedrock of the continent. Now, that view may also melt […]
We’ve already written about the damage done to the Antarctic ice sheet, and how sadly, its collapse seems irreversible. A new study has analyzed some of the consequences of that collapse – it could devastate global food supply, drowning vast areas of crop lands across the Middle East and Asia. The report urges the Obama administration […]
A small island, unique wildlife 1100 km off the coast of Mexico, there lies a small chunk of rock called the Clarion Island. Formerly called Santa Rosa, the island has an area of under 20 square km; no one lives there, and aside for a few Mexical sailors which come and go every couple of […]
Researchers have discovered the earliest evidence of a bird pollinator visiting flowers, presumably to feed on the nectar – if true, this means that bird pollinator/plants interactions were already taking place 47 million years ago. When you think about pollinators, you mostly think about bees or butterflies – but birds are significant pollinators too. Birds, particularly […]
Most people would are surprised when they hear that 768 million people don’t have access to clean water. That’s twice and over the population of the US, and 50% more than that of the European Union! Something as simple and basic as access to water is denied (or greatly hardened) for them. Italian designer Arturo Vittori […]
The world has been toying with the idea of driverless cars for years now, but California is really taking it to the next level – they will probably make self-driving cars legel by 2015. If you’ve seen the movies with Google’s ‘chandelier’ topped autonomous cars driving down the street, you may have assumed the technology is […]
Butterflies and dragonflies with lighter colors are bettering their darker counterparts in the face of global warming. Science shows once again just how big of a fingerprint global warming has on all life on Earth – as temperatures get higher and higher, communities of butterflies and dragonflies consist of more lighter coloured species. Darker colored insects […]
Three physicists involved with fusion research have found an elegant way to convert light to matter. And, it can be accomplished with current technology. Demonstrating the process would round out a critical set of theories about energy and matter, so a race may soon be on to test it. The Einstein relationship, E= mc2, states […]
Researchers at Charles Sturt University in New South Wales found a connection between excessive sharing of information on facebook and feeling lonely and/or depressed. This is the latest in a slew of studies that suggest the social network can cause serious emotional damage to some people. The researchers found that 79 percent of users who describe themselves […]
Five hundred million tweets are tweeted each day – with so many details about the location, interests and behaviors of users, the tweets are a trove of useful information for scientists who might be, for example, looking to find patterns in human behaviors, checking out risk factors for health conditions and track the spread of infectious […]
Carbon dioxide levels throughout the northern hemisphere hit 400 parts per million (ppm) for the first time in human history in April – the ominous threshold has been reached, and it continues to go up. Time is running out I’m sad that I was right when I wrote: The Inevitable 2014 Headline: ‘Global CO2 Level Reaches […]
The genocide had major consequences for the entire planet.
