A ‘rogue’ planet has been spotted floating through the Milky Way

If confirmed, the planet would be the smallest of its kind, and could tell astronomers more about the planetary systems in our galaxy. Astronomers have spotted a new “rogue” planet floating through our galaxy, seemingly unattached to a star. With a mass somewhere in-between that of the Earth and Mars, the planet is thought to be the smallest of its kind to have been discovered.

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Scientists Are Freaking Out Over The First-Ever Footage of This Bizarre Squid

Ram's horn shells are small, delicate spiral structures beachcombers can commonly find throughout the world.

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The Black Hole Information Paradox Comes to an End

In a landmark series of calculations, physicists have proved that black holes can shed information — an apparent violation of Einstein’s theory of relativity.

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What 50 gravitational-wave events reveal about the Universe

Astronomers observed 39 cosmic events that released gravitational waves over a 6-month period in 2019 — a rate of more than one per week. The bounty, described in a series of papers published on 28 October, demonstrates how observatories that detect these ripples — usually created by the merging of two black holes — have dramatically increased their sensitivity since the first identification was made in 2015.

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Melting Time Crystals Could Help Us Model Complex Networks Like The Human Brain

Passing electricity through a piece of quartz crystal generates a pulse you can literally set your watch by. Set a time crystal melting, on the other hand, and it just might pulse with the deepest secrets of the Universe.

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Mouth Bacteria Have Been Linked to Severe Forms of Inflammatory Bowel Disease

The human body is a league of nations for an unfathomable variety of microbes, kept in check by complex relationships with our immune system and carefully crafted truces with each other.

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World-first research allows people with paralysis to control computers with their thoughts

Australian researchers have developed a technology which allows people with upper-limb paralysis to text, email and perform online tasks using their thoughts and eye movements.

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60 percent of voters support transitioning away from oil, poll says

A new poll shows 60 percent of registered voters support transitioning away from fossil fuels like oil, a policy supported by presidential candidate Joe Biden.

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Microbiome study explains how sugar hijacks an essential part of health

Researchers find that high sugar consumption can disrupt the gut microbiome, leaving animals vulnerable to inflammation and inflammatory bowel disease.

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Doubts over a ‘possible sign of life’ on Venus show how science works

Detecting phosphine in Venus’ atmosphere made headlines, but reanalyses and new searches call into question the original discovery of the molecule.

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Brain Imaging

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Scientists discover 500 metre-tall skyscraper coral reef at Australia's Great Barrier Reef

Australian scientists have discovered a detached reef more than 500 metres high – taller than the Empire State Building – at the northern end of the Great Barrier Reef. The “blade-like” vertical reef about 130km off Cape York, Australia’s north-eastern tip, was found during a 3D seabed mapping exercise conducted from a ship owned by the Californian non-profit Schmidt Ocean Institute.

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NASA Discovers a Rare Metal Asteroid That’s Worth $10,000,000,000,000,000,000

Forget water on the moon, NASA has now struck gold. NASA’s Hubble Space Telescope has discovered a rare, heavy and immensely valuable asteroid called “16 Psyche” in the Solar System’s main asteroid belt between Mars and Jupiter.

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Mysterious ‘elves’ and ‘sprites’ seen in Jupiter’s atmosphere

Strange “sprites” or “elves” have been seen on Jupiter from Nasa’s Juno mission. The supernaturally-named phenomena refer to transient luminous events – bright, unpredictable, and bizzaire flashes of light. It is the first time such events have ever been seen on another world, Nasa says. The lights on the solar system’s largest planets were predicted by scientists, who thought that they would be observed in Jupiter’s liquid-like atmosphere.

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Where’s the sea ice? 3 reasons the Arctic freeze is unseasonably late and why it matters

With the setting of the sun and the onset of polar darkness, the Arctic Ocean would normally be crusted with sea ice along the Siberian coast by now. But this year, the water is still open. I’ve watched the region’s transformations since the 1980s as an Arctic climate scientist and, since 2008, as director of the National Snow and Ice Data Center. I can tell you, this is not normal. There’s so much more heat in the ocean now than there used to be that the pattern of autumn ice growth has been completely disrupted.

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New study links air pollution to 15 percent of COVID-19 deaths

Researchers say deaths linked to COVID-19 and air pollution represent ‘potentially avoidable, excess mortality’.

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Water ice on the Moon may be easier to reach than we thought, new studies claim

New observations of the Moon reveal that lunar water may be more accessible than originally thought. The new data is particularly exciting for NASA, which hopes to leverage the Moon’s resources — notably water ice embedded in the soil — to help future astronauts live and work on the lunar surface.

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Conversation about suicide prevention leads to safe gun storage, study finds

Research by Forefront Suicide Prevention at the University of Washington, from visits to 18 gun shows and other community events around Washington state last year, found that engaging people in a...

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COVID's cognitive costs? Some patients' brains may age 10 years

People recovering from COVID-19 may suffer significant brain function impacts, with the worst cases of the infection linked to mental decline equivalent to the brain ageing by 10 years, researchers warned on Tuesday.

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Not wearing a mask is linked to personality disorder, study finds

Scientists in Brazil have linked resistance to Covid-19 safety measures, such as wearing a mask, with antisocial personality traits. Their study was the first of its kind in Latin America and surveyed over 1,500 people aged 18-73. Using a questionnaire, the scientists sought to identify the participants’ affective resonance - their impulse to act on feelings stirred by another person - and asked a series of personality questions about how well certain statements represented their behaviour on a scale.

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Study: Air Pollution Contributes To 500,000 Newborn Deaths A Year

The culprit is air pollution — a problem around the globe, from homes where people cook using coal and wood to the smoky streets of San Francisco when wildfires were raging.

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'Sleeping giant' Arctic methane deposits starting to release, scientists find

Exclusive: expedition discovers new source of greenhouse gas off East Siberian coast has been triggered

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SpaceX's Starlink satellite internet service is priced at $99 per month, according to e-mail

SpaceX is expanding the beta test of its Starlink satellite internet service according to emails seen by CNBC, with service priced at $99 a month.

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The Starlink internet beta has begun: Here's what to expect

For a lucky few users, Starlink is starting to bring them fast internet from the skies.

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Vaccine hopes rise as Oxford jab prompts immune response among old as well as young adults

One of the world's leading COVID-19 experimental vaccines produces an immune response in both young and old adults, raising hopes of a path out of the gloom and economic destruction wrought by the novel coronavirus.

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Water exists on the moon, scientists confirm

Proof of significant amounts of H2O has implications for future lunar missions

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Nasa spacecraft that picked up pieces of asteroid is leaking them into space as it returns home

A Nasa spacecraft that picked up pieces of an asteroid is leaking them into asteroid on its way home, the space agency has said. The probe picked up such as substantial sample that a rock is wedged against the container door, which means they are falling out back into space.

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New artificial intelligence spots previously undiscovered craters on Mars

The AI can cut the time taken to detect a crater from 40 minutes to five seconds

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Scientists Discover New Organs in the Throat

If confirmed, these glands could be the first of their kind discovered in about 300 years. Modern anatomy books show only three types of salivary glands, a set near the ears, another below the jaw and a third under the tongue

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Survey finds Americans now spend 2-3 months per year on their phones

The survey found that the average American now spends 3 months per year on their phone, or about 4-6 hours per day, or 6-8 hours for teens.

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Humanity is stuck in short-term thinking. Here’s how we escape.

Every so often, I ask my daughter about the future. When she was three, she had only a basic concept of time, with little awareness of clocks or calendars. She could understand The Very Hungry Caterpillar, a classic children’s book about a creature gorging on food over a week, but when she would tell the…

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A Human Toddler and a Mammoth Crossed Paths in Ancient New Mexico

Fossilized footprints reveal the interactions of people and animals over 10,000 years ago in White Sands National Park.

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Research team discovers breakthrough with potential to prevent, reverse Alzheimer's

Wayne Chen's lab at UCalgary identifies a way to interrupt and prevent progression of devastating condition

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NASA to announce new discovery about the moon

NASA is expected to announce a new discovery about the moon on Monday. The space agency plans to share findings from its Stratospheric Observatory for Infrared Astronomy (SOFIA) mission during a press conference at 12 p.m. EDT.

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Aliens on 1,000 nearby stars could see us, new study suggests

Life is here. Can they see it?

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‘Mini-lungs’ reveal early stages of SARS-CoV-2 infection

‘Mini-lungs’ grown from tissue donated to Cambridge hospitals has provided a team of scientists from South Korea and the UK with important insights

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Monkeys May Have Self-Domesticated Just Like Humans Did, Study Suggests

Monkeys, much like humans, could be engaged in the process of self-domesticating themselves, altering the course of their own evolution and physiology through the way they behave with one another, new research suggests.

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Wanted: Online gamers to help build a more stable Covid-19 vaccine

People beat artificial intelligence hands-down at puzzling out new ways to fold molecules for a potential SARS-Cov-2 immunization. Thousands more players are needed.

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A Horrible Place for an Oil Spill

In the last few days of 2018, as the Arctic archipelago of Svalbard, Norway, lay cloaked in the long darkness of polar night, a shrimp trawler called the Northguider ran aground off the coast of one of the islands.

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Glitter is an environmental abomination. It's time to stop using it

Glitter is notorious for getting everywhere – touch one sparkly Christmas card and you’ll be finding flecks of the stuff in your food, hair and carpet for months. It’s so obnoxious some people even slather a mixture of it and Vaseline on political yard signs to punish thieves. But the real issue with glitter isn’t that it’s annoying – it’s that it truly does get everywhere: not just in your home, but also into the furthest-flung corners of the Earth.

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'I still cannot get over it': 75 years after Japan atomic bombs, a nuclear weapons ban treaty is finally realised

Sixty-nine nations, however, have not signed it, including all of the nuclear powers such as the US, UK, Russia, China, France, India, Pakistan and North Korea, as well as NATO member states (apart from the Netherlands who voted against), Japan and Australia.

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Study: Men are more likely than women to perceive face masks as infringing on their freedom

Men and women are equally likely to wear face masks during the COVID-19 pandemic, according to new research.

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Study: Men are more likely than women to perceive face masks as infringing on their freedom

Men and women are equally likely to wear face masks during the COVID-19 pandemic, according to new research.

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Fukushima water release could change human DNA, Greenpeace warns

Contaminated water that could soon be released into the sea from the Fukushima Daiichi nuclear power plant contains radioactive carbon with the potential to damage human DNA, environmental rights organization Greenpeace has warned.

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Now that nuclear weapons are illegal, the Pacific demands truth on decades of testing

With a 50th nation ratifying it, the treaty outlawing nuclear weapons for all countries will come into force in 90 days

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"World's fastest electrodes" triple the density of lithium batteries

French company Nawa technologies says it's already in production on a new electrode design that can radically boost the performance of existing and future battery chemistries, delivering up to 3x the energy density, 10x the power, vastly faster charging and battery lifespans up to five times as long.

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Inspired By Nature, Zymergen Brews High-Performance Bio-Electronics

This simple-looking film will probably end up in your next smartphone, laptop, watch, or television. It's made by fermentation—the same process used to make bread and beer. The biomanufacturing era has begun.

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Open Sesame! Researchers discovered the second ‘key’ used by the SARS-CoV-2 virus to enter into human cells | University of Helsinki

To efficiently infect human cells, SARS-CoV-2 is able to use a receptor called Neuropilin-1, which is very abundant in many human tissues

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Homo erectus, not humans, may have invented the barbed bone point

Carved artifacts excavated from Tanzania’s Olduvai Gorge suggest now-extinct hominids made barbed bone points long before humans did, researchers say.

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Impatient? A Spacecraft Could Get to Titan in Only 2 Years Using a Direct Fusion Drive

Fusion power is the technology that is thirty years away, and always will be – according to skeptics at least.  Despite its difficult transition into a reliable power source, the nuclear reactions that power the sun have a wide variety of uses in other fields.  The most obvious is in weapons, where hydrogen bombs are … Continue reading "Impatient? A Spacecraft Could Get to Titan in Only 2 Years Using a Direct Fusion Drive"

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