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I a recent study published by the University of British Columbia, Canada, it seems women are more sexually attracted by men who display a more gloomy complexion or awareness of social norms by displaying shame, than men who look happy all the time. The study published online Tuesday in the American Psychological Association journal Emotion […]
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 […]
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 […]
A new and extensive study by Hunch.com shows that persons who keep their desktops cluttered are more likely to be liberal, have a higher education, are career orientated and good math, while a person who keeps his desktop tidy and clutter free is more likely to be young suburbanites, somewhat techy and allegedly put their […]
In its most simple form, a memristor can be defined as a two-terminal electronic device whose conductance can be precisely modulated by charge or flux through it. What sets it apart from other electrical components is the property that its resistance can be programmed and subsequently remains stored (memory). Basically, memristors resist the passage of […]
In an exclusive interview with The Guardian, the eminent British physicist Stephen Hawking shared his view upon fatality and the afterlife, sparking a wave of criticism from creationists and religious personalities as he bluntly stated that the concept of heaven is simply a “fairy story” for people who fear death. How does Hawking explain his […]
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 […]
If you think giving a robot a sword and teaching him how to use is a bad idea, you may be just about half wrong. A young robotics PhD student at Georgia Tech has programmed a robot how to sword fight, in terms of only defending itself against attacks in order to simulate the sudden […]
New analysis from NASA’s Galeileo spacecraft shows that there is an ocean of molten (or partially molten magma) beneath the surface of Io, one of Jupiter’s moons. The finding was published today, May 13, in Science magazine. Volcanic Io Io is the most active volcanic object in our solar system, and this confirmation of a […]
A remarkable MIT research has found that by coating carbon nano-tubes with bee venom they can create incredibly faithful sensor detectors for explosives, such as TNT, as well as at least two different types of pesticides. The find came after MIT chemists, lead by Michael Strano, coated one-atom-thick tubes of carbon with protein fragments found […]
Toyota is the leading electric car manufacturer in the world, and now the Japanese automobile manufacturer is prepping to dominate another emerging green auto market – the hydrogen fueled car market. The first step hydrogen fueled cars need to take to actually make it, and maybe sometime in the not so distant future to actually […]
Poor dandelions – they never even get a chance. If they shop up on your front lawn, you’re probably gonna go and buy some weed killer and wipe them out. If they show up at a picnic, they never even get creditted as flowers. Even animals don’t like them. But a Ford is taking them […]
Bacteria and small plants at the bottom of the ocean require significant quantities of iron to survive and grow, just like us humans do. But their situation is extremely different, and they can’t just opt for an iron rich diet. So where does their iron come from ? Pyrite, or fool’s gold (as it […]
New amazing yet gruelsome details have emerged, regarding how a fungus can control an unfortunate ant. Basically, the fungus infects the ant’s brain, and then tells it what to do, in a somewhat similar fashion to what a Goa’uld would do. Zombies in Thailand Venturing deep in the Thai forest, researchers have found a species […]
It’s still unclear if it was all about a stellar meal or if it was simply gas, or some other relatively unimportant phenomena that awoken the sleeping giant, but for the first time, astronomers have observed the awakening of a sleeping supermassive black hole. The sleeping giant It appeared to be a day just like […]
Prediction made by UCLA geographers Thomas Gillespie, John Agnew, and a whole class of undergrads regarding where Osama Bin Laden might be hiding turned out to be surprisingly accurate, surprising scientists and authorities alike. They created a probabilistic model which concluded that there is a 88.9% chance that he is hiding in a city less […]
The team operating the Antihydrogen Laser Physics Apparatus (ALPHA) at the CERN laboratory in Geneva, Switzerland reported storing antimatter for approximately 1000 seconds, which might not seem like much of a big deal, but it is about 10.000 times longer than the previous record ! A cloud of antihydrogen This study will hopefully reveal more […]
Humanity’s right handedness began at least 500.000 years ago, according to a new study conducted by University of Kansas researchers. The right handed trait is believed to actually be a “side effects” of the development of language. “We are right-handed because the left side of the brain controls the right side of the body, and […]
Some species of bacteria can survive virtually anywhere: in acids, in nuclear waste, at extremely low or high temperatures, at extreme pressures, and so on; extreme microbes that survive on gases thrown out by Siberian hot springs may have played an extremely important role in the formation of our planet’s atmosphere and its composition, a […]
Over 50 species of pupfish are known from the US to Venezuela, and they are all pretty much the same – except for the ones in two places: the Yucatan peninsula in Mexico and a Caribbean island. Generally speaking, the species of pupfish do the same things. “They look the same and they act the […]
The box jellyfish (commonly known as the sea wasp) is not only the most venomous creature in the world, but it also holds a few other major surprises. They may seem like rather simple creatures at a first glance, but researchers are now convinced they are nothing like this; as a matter of fact, they […]
The quantum world is entirely different from what we see around us; it has its own laws, its own algebra, etc. It’s a really bizarre place, but that can yield wonderous developments as well. Since the quantum laws are so different, it’s hard to actually observe them, so instead, thought experiments are used. But for […]
The planet in case is 55 Cancri e, and it’s 60 per cent larger in diameter than Earth but eight times as massive, which makes it twice as dense as Earth, and almost as dense as lead. Earth like rocky planets Generally speaking, planets come in two flavours: rocky earth-like planets, or gas giants […]
We already know about numerous extremophiles, microbes that can live in incredibly extreme conditions, which would easily kill almost every other creature. There are bacteria which survive in extremely high or low temperatures, in substances with an extreme pH, surrounded by nothing but solid rock, in the depths of the ocean, and so on. But […]
The world scientific community is absolutely abuzz with the rumour that the Higgs boson, the elusive God particle, may have just been detected. The rumour started after an internal note was leaked from the Large Hadron Collider (LHC); it’s not yet exactly clear if the memo is authentic, but it seems real enough to have […]
A recently published study 8 years in the making reveals the uncanny ability humpback whales have of following seemingly perfect straight paths for weeks at a time. The navigational precision of humpback whales cannot be explained by known theories. Humpback whales feed during the summer near polar oceans and migrate to warm tropical oceans for […]
I was telling you a while ago about the revolutionary material called graphene. Graphene is a one atom thick layer of carbon packed in a honeycomb lattice. Now, a team led by Professor Andre Geim, recipient of the Nobel Prize for graphene, showed that electric current (which is basically a flow of electrons) can magnetise […]
The world we live in is getting closer and closer to Star Trek everyday. Scientists announced today they were able to teleport special bits of light from one place to another. While this doesn’t mean that we will be (ever) able to teleport people, it involves some pretty awesome mind bending physics. Teleportation relies on […]
This weird armored mollusk is called a chiton, and scientists are amazed by it. They discovered eye-like structures on its body decades ago, but they had no idea what they were made of, if they could see or just sense light, or even if they were eyes at all, because they were structurally very […]
A team of paleontologists from the Smithsonian Institute have uncovered the fossils of a brand new dinosaur species in Ghost Ranch, New Mexico which posses a particular importance by filling the family tree gap between early predatory species such as Herrerasaurus and later theropod dinosaurs. Researchers named the species Daemonosaurus chauliodus, based on the Greek […]
The effects alcohol has on our brain are still not perfectly understood, and the general opinion and even some studies are biased because… well, generally speaking, alcohol is bad for you, and we tend to forget that students drink, teachers drink, scientists and artists drink. But according to a study conducted by the Waggoner Center […]
Cyanide is nasty. I don’t care if you’re a venomous snake, an elephant or Charlie Sheen, cyanide is something you don’t want, which makes it an excellent defense mechanism. Lotus corniculatus, commonly known as the bird’s-foot trefoil, a plant common throughout Europe, Asia and Africa has evolved so that it’s leaves have a cyanide reservoir, […]
Yellowstone is without a doubt one of the most fascinating places on the face of the planet. But it doesn’t only attract families or people who want to relax, but it attracts scientists as well, and among them, geologists and geophysicists hold a top spot. University of Utah researchers made the first large-scale picture of […]
DNA nanotechnology is one of the most exciting branches of nanotechnologies, especially because it uses the ability of natural DNA strains to self assembly. Prof. Alexander Heckel and his doctoral student Thorsten Schmidt of Goethe University set out with exactly that thought in mind when they created two DNA rings with the size of only […]
I’m still left in awe after stumbling across this marvelous feat of engineering, which perfectly applies nature’s concepts to science and engineering technology. Seeing the SmartBird model in action immediately makes one imagine one of the world’s greatest minds Leonardo da Vinci on Florence’s hilltops studying and sketching the flight of birds for his aeronautical […]
On the 28th of March the Swift telescope observed a peculiar gamma-ray blast in a distant corner of the visible universe, some 3.8 billion light years away, bewildered astronomers around the world. The powerful blast is theoretically caused, scientists say, by a black hole located in the center of the distant galaxy whose gravity tore […]
In a recent act that just baffles my mind, Tennesee, not one of the US brightest states, has passed a bill that makes it easier for virtually any creationist teacher to include religion in science class. They did this by including mythology in science classes to promote critical thinking. Now I wonder, do you think […]
Big guns and big boats go well hand in hand most of the time, and the latest experimental weaponry unveiled by the US Navy, dubbed the Maritime Laser Demonstrator (MLD), will be sure to please any old sea dog. The diode-pumped solid-state high-energy laser weapon was developed by Northrop Grumman, and its capabilities were demonstrated […]
It’s not that uncommon for two stars to dance, but when three of them get together, and dance without singing, now that’s something uncommon. What do I mean ? Well, binary star systems are not really only in Star Wars, they’re quite common throughout the galaxy, but as it turns out, trinary systems might not […]
Volcanoes have fascinated human beings since the dawn of time; thankfully, now we know enough not to think of them as powerful earth/fire gods, but to understand them as the magnificent phenomena they are. However, there are still many things we still haven’t been able to figure out them, and even if we would have, […]
The number of elephant poaching in Africa has increased dramatically, as well as the Chinese demand for ivory, and according to most, this is not a coincidence at all. The growing demand for ivory in China, combined with the country’s growing influence on the dark continent work together and are leading to the tragic decline […]
The seismological events near Japan are far from reaching an equilibrium; a 7.4 or 7.5 earthquake on the Richter scale struck apan’s Miyagi Prefecture and its vicinity in northeastern Japan at 23:32 p.m. (1432 GMT) local Time Thursday, the Japan Meteorological Agency (JMA) said. The area is not so far away from the major 9.0, […]
Humanoid robots, affectionately called androids, have fascinated SciFi writers for generations now, leading to the creation of some of the most memorable characters in cinema, like Start Trek’s Data or Blade Runner, but as technology keeps progressing the line between reality and fiction seems to get ever thinner. It’s enough to check out the video […]
The LHC isn’t the only particle accelerator doing serious business these days; scientists at Brookhaven National Laboratory on Long Island working at the Relativistic Heavy Ion Collider (RHIC) have managed to achieve something that was previously thought to be impossible. In that way, the title is a bit misleading – you cannot really break a […]
In case you don’t know, Futurama is a popular science fiction – I highly recommend it, as a matter of fact, but that’s more of a personal preference. What’s interesting about it is that a mathematical theory was created especially for it, or for an episode to be more exact. The theory refers to a […]
According to a research conducted by anthropologists from Arizona State University, there seems to be a big increase in the general negative attitude people living in diverse societies have towards obese individuals. The study was made on 680 correspondents across 9 countries who were asked to agree or disagree with various statements expressed by scientists […]
Extraordinary enough, an ancient Greek tablet dating far as back as 1450-1350 BC was found last summer in an olive grove in what’s now the village of Iklaina, which makes it the oldest readable piece of writing found in Europe. The position and time frame of the artifact places it in the time of the […]
I was very surprised to see today’s Google doodle center piece occupied by an animated Bunsen burner experiment, familiar to anyone with a high school diploma (should be, at least), in the memory of Robert Bunsen, its creator, born 200 years ago. What’s very curious, however, is that the burner, named after Bunsen, was not […]
The Large Hadron Collider at CERN has started doing some serious business. This time, an extremely rare particle containing equal parts of matter and antimatter popped up during experiments at the world’s largest and hottest particle accelerator. The particle, named a B meson is made out of one quark (the building blocks of protons […]
