To explain away dark matter, gravity would have to be really weird, cosmologists say

Analysis of early cosmic evolution points to dark matter’s importance and casts doubt on modified theories of gravity

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Students' clever solution to cut tyre pollution

We hear a lot about single-use plastics like bottles and packaging but tyre wear is a big problem.

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There will be a remote-control car race on the Moon in 2021. Seriously.

An extremely odd project is planning to hold a remote-controlled car race next October ... On the surface of the Moon. What's more, the two racecars will be partially designed by high school kids, and McLaren P1 designer Frank Stephenson is involved.

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U.S. Army banks on developing mindreading tech for future field soldiers

With technology advancing at light-speed these days, the U.S. Army is getting in on the sci-fi action by funding a far-out project to promote neuroscience research with their sights set on creating a mindreading system for soldiers to communicate with each other on the battlefield.

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Will Holograms Help Us Grieve?

Ready or not, digital afterlives are here to stay.

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Japan spacecraft carrying asteroid soil samples nears home

A Japanese spacecraft is nearing Earth after a yearlong journey home from a distant asteroid with soil samples and data that could provide clues to the origins of the solar system

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The solar discs that could power Earth

Space-based power stations are turning from an idle dream into a serious engineering prospect, as scientists hope they can take renewable energy into orbit.

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Dinosaur-era bird with scythe-like beak sheds light on avian diversity

A delicate but exquisitely preserved skull of a crow-sized bird with a scythe-like beak that inhabited Madagascar 68 million years ago is showing scientists that they have a lot of learn about avian diversity during the age of dinosaurs.

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Children more willing to punish if the wrongdoer is ‘taught a lesson’

A new study finds that many children are willing to make personal sacrifices to punish wrongdoers — especially if it will teach the transgressor a lesson.

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Scientists develop an 'electronic skin' that can mimic the natural functions of human skin

A material that mimics human skin in? stretchability, strength, and sensitivity could be used to collect biological data in real-time. Electronic skin, or e-skin, may play an important role in upcoming next-generation personalized medicine, prosthetics, AI, and soft robotics.

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Narcissists are more likely to make bad decisions due to their overconfidence and refusal to take advice from experts

New research published in Personality and Individual Differences suggests that grandiose narcissists are more likely to make bad decisions

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An unusual snack for cows, a powerful fix for climate

Scientists have discovered that feeding seaweed to cows significantly reduces the amount of methane they produce and burp into the atmosphere, while also helping them produce more milk and grow bigger on less feed. When grown in the ocean, seaweed helps to filter the water, making the idea of farming seaweed to feed to cows a win-win for the environment and farmers.

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Japan spacecraft carrying asteroid soil samples nears home

A Japanese spacecraft is nearing Earth after a yearlong journey home from a distant asteroid with soil samples and data that could provide clues to the origins of the solar system, a space agency official said Friday. The Hayabusa2 spacecraft left the asteroid Ryugu, about 300 million kilometers (180 million miles) from Earth, a year ago and is expected to reach Earth and drop a capsule containing the precious samples in southern Australia on Dec. 6.

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Whale skeleton discovered in Thailand thought to be 5,000 years old

Archaeologists believe the bones are as old as 5,000 years and remarkably well preserved.

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Californian cave artists may have used hallucinogens, find reveals

Native American rock art appears to depict the psychoactive flower, rather than the experience of getting high

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Your Brain Is Not for Thinking

In stressful times, this surprising lesson from neuroscience may help to lessen your anxieties.

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Why Seagrass Could Be the Ocean's Secret Weapon Against Climate Change

A vast, mostly invisible ecosystem crucial to our life on Earth is in trouble, but efforts to save the 'prairies of the sea' are finally coming into focus

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Spatial Computing Could Be the Next Big Thing

Beyond virtual and augmented reality

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Fruit fly offers new insights into attention and sleep

The ability to study sleep and attention in fruit flies could lead to a greater understanding of these potentially related phenomena in humans.

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SpaceX's Starlink satellites are about to ruin stargazing for everyone

SpaceX's satellites will populate the night sky, affecting how we observe the stars. And this is just the beginning of private satellite mega-constellations.

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Data from 45 countries show containing COVID vs saving the economy is a false dichotomy

There is no doubt the COVID-19 crisis has incurred widespread economic costs. There is understandable concern that stronger measures against the virus, from social distancing to full lockdowns, worsen its impact on economies.

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MOXIE: NASA's Experimental Device Designed to Generate Oxygen on Mars

Mars Oxygen In-Situ Resource Utilization Experiment device is designed to create about 6 to 10 grams of oxygen per hour.

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Amazed astronaut In SpaceX Capsule Shoots Video Of Our Planet

NASA astronaut Victor Glover blasted into Earth's orbit aboard a SpaceX Crew Dragon craft last week. Soon after, Glover and three other astronauts safely docked to the International Space Station. Glover, the first Black astronaut expected to have an extended, six-month stay on the space station, recently tweeted his inaugural video from the craft that ferried him into orbit, some 250 miles above Earth.

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Farming on Mars will be a lot harder than ‘The Martian’ made it seem

Lab experiments developing and testing fake Martian dirt are proving just how difficult it would be to farm on the Red Planet.

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Scientists Discover Billions of Gallons of Hidden Freshwater off Hawaii Coast

The island communities like Hawaii, which are surrounded by Ocean water, have to rely on collecting freshwater stored in the ground for drinking, irrigation, and commercial industries. The American state located in the Pacific Ocean is at serious risk due to climate-driven droughts and less rainfall. But scientists found a new way to solve the problem.

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Spaceflight does some weird things to astronauts’ bodies

The biggest-ever study of astronaut health gives us clues on what to look for in future long-haul space missions.

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An ‘impossible’ discovery of ‘twisted light’ could rewrite laws of physics

The findings could shed light on dark matter and dark energy

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Research creates hydrogen-producing living droplets, paving way for alternative future energy sources

Scientists have built tiny droplet-based microbial factories that produce hydrogen, instead of oxygen, when exposed to daylight in air.

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Scientists race to find ancient bananas that can save one of the world's favourite fruits

In the rainforests of Papua New Guinea, 15-metre-tall ancestors of modern-day, cultivated bananas contain the precious genetics that could save the popular fruit from climate change, pests and disease.

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SpaceX targeting next week for Starship’s first high-altitude test flight

SpaceX looks ready to proceed to the next crucial phase of its Starship spacecraft development program: A 15km (50,000 feet) test flight.

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Can drinking cocoa make you smarter?

Increased consumption of flavanols - a group of molecules which occur naturally in fruit and vegetables - can increase your mental agility, according to new research at the University of Birmingham.

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Charles Darwin: Notebooks worth millions lost for 20 years

Cambridge University Library has announced that two notebooks written by Charles Darwin, worth many millions of pounds, have been missing for 20 years.

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Scientists find hidden ‘super planet’ in breakthrough observation

Astronomers have discovered a cold brown dwarf – otherwise known as a “super planet” – for the first time using a radio telescope. Brown dwarfs are vast, sized between 15 and 75 times the mass of Jupiter, and have gaseous atmospheres similar to some of the planets in our solar system. They are also often known as “failed stars” because of the way that they shine.

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One of Australia's most famous beaches is disappearing, and storms aren't to blame. So what's the problem?

Over the past six months, tourists and locals have been shocked to see Byron's famous Main Beach literally disappearing. Satellite imagery and local knowledge has revealed what's going on.

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Curiosity rover finds evidence of ancient megafloods on Mars

Previous images of large channels on Mars and giant wave-like features on its surface called “megaripples” indicate that the planet suffered from catastrophic floods in the past. Now, a team of scientists has used data gathered by the Curiosity rover to prove that megafloods swept across the Gale crater around 4 billion years ago. “We identified megafloods for the first time using detailed sedimentological data observed by the rover Curiosity,” said Alberto G. Fairén, co-author of the paper published by Nature. “Deposits left behind by megafloods had not been previously identified with orbiter data.”

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BREAKING: New Species Discovered in Waters Off Puerto Rico

A new species has been discovered in the deep sea by NOAA and TheVast has captured the details to share! The new species is a comb jelly from the waters near Puerto Rico.

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Vegans 40% more likely to suffer a bone fracture

Vegans who forgo all foods derived from animals have a far higher risk of broken bones than people who eat meat and fish, a study has shown. The findings, by Oxford University researchers, have raised concerns that a recent increase in the popularity of veganism will cause health problems unless adherents plan their diets. The NHS advises vegans to think carefully about how they obtain enough calcium, iron and vitamin B12.

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Can a Computer Devise a Theory of Everything?

It might be possible, physicists say, but not anytime soon. And there’s no guarantee that we humans will understand the result.

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The End of the Pandemic Is Now in Sight

A year of scientific uncertainty is over. Two vaccines look like they will work, and more should follow.

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Scientists kill cancer cells in mice in ‘world first’ development

Scientists claim the technology can be developed for humans within the next two years

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Microplastics found 8,440m up in Mount Everest's 'Death Zone'

The samples were taken on the trekking routes close to the Khumbu Glacier, at Everest Base Camp, and high into the "Death Zone".

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We Finally Know What a Dinosaur’s Butthole Looks Like

For the entirety of my career as a journalist covering paleontology, I’ve been wanting to know: What does a dinosaur’s butthole look like? When I wrote My Beloved Brontosaurus, a book about dinosaur biology, the chapter on reproduction required a lot of time imagining the nature of a Jurassic behind; one had yet to be found preserved. Even dinosaur models and sculptures often demur on the point of the dino butt, leaving the terrible lizards with terrible constipation.

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More income inequality means fewer items in grocery stores

Even before COVID-19 and resulting shutdowns created gridlock for some global supply chains, the assortment at many neighborhood supermarkets was dwindling. The cause was not a lack of supply, though, but rather a lack of demand created by a widening income gap in the US, the researchers report.

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China Has Launched the World's First 6G Satellite. We Don't Even Know What 6G Is Yet.

This could be huge. It also could be nothing.

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Airflow studies reveal strategies to reduce indoor transmission of COVID-19

At the 73rd Annual Meeting of the American Physical Society's Division of Fluid Dynamics, researchers presented a range of studies investigating the aerodynamics of infectious disease. Their results suggest strategies for lowering risk based on a rigorous understanding of how infectious particles mix with air in confined spaces.

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Nanobots Will Be Flowing Through Your Body by 2030

According to some futurists, in the next 10 or so years, your blood could be streaming with tiny nanorobots to help keep you from getting sick or even transmit your thoughts to a wireless cloud. They will travel inside of you, on a molecular level, protecting your biological system and ensuring that you'll have a good and long life. The future is closer than you may think.

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The ins and outs of Starlink: Internet from the sky

A recent Reddit ask-me-anything revealed more about the increasingly popular Starlink near-Earth orbit internet provider service.

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Plate tectonics may have begun a billion years earlier than thought

Plate tectonics may have begun 4 billion years ago, almost a billion years earlier than we thought, according to a new analysis of ancient rocks. The claim has earned a mixed response from geologists. Many argue that Earth was too hot at the time for plate tectonics in its modern form.

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The seaweed swamping the Atlantic Ocean

A sargassum bloom the width of the Atlantic Ocean caused havoc on beaches, but locals in Mexico and the Caribbean are fast finding ways to turn the seaweed invasion to their advantage.

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Israeli scientists claim to reverse aging process

Israeli scientists say they have managed to successfully reverse the biological aging process – using only oxygen. Recent research led by Tel Aviv University’s Prof. Shai Efrati, together with a team from Shamir Medical Center, found that when healthy adults over the age of 64 were placed in a pressurized chamber and given pure oxygen for 90 minutes a day, five days a week for three months, not only was the aging process delayed - it was actually reversed.

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