Scientists have solved the riddle behind one of the most recognisable, and annoying, household sounds: the dripping tap. And crucially, they have also identified a simple solution to stop it, which most of us already have in our kitchens. | Continue reading
Near-Earth objects (NEOs) are small solar system bodies whose orbits sometimes bring them close to the Earth, potentially threatening a collision. NEOs are tracers of the composition, dynamics and environmental conditions throughout the solar system and of the history of our plan … | Continue reading
Art curators will be able to recover images on daguerreotypes, the earliest form of photography that used silver plates, after a team of scientists led by Western University learned how to use light to see through degradation that has occurred over time. | Continue reading
European aviation giant Airbus warned Thursday it could be forced to pull out of the UK if Britain leaves the European Union without a deal. | Continue reading
Information is typically stored in physical systems, such as memory devices. But in a new study, physicists have investigated an alternative way to store and hide information, which is by storing it only in the quantum correlations among two or more systems, rather than in the sy … | Continue reading
Researchers at the University of Colorado Boulder have helped to find the last reservoir of ordinary matter hiding in the universe. | Continue reading
It is hoped that cells created in a test tube can answer some of the major questions in biology. What is the minimum that a cell needs in order to live? And how did life on Earth begin? Researchers from the Max Planck Institute for Dynamics of Complex Technical Systems in Magdebu … | Continue reading
A major challenge in current climate prediction models is how to accurately represent clouds and their atmospheric heating and moistening. This challenge is behind the wide spread in climate prediction. Yet accurate predictions of global warming in response to increased greenhous … | Continue reading
Many researchers hypothesize that the southern tip of the 1300-km-long San Andreas fault zone (SAFZ) could be the nucleation site of the next major earthquake on the fault, yet geoscientists cannot evaluate this hazard until the location and geometry of the fault zone is document … | Continue reading
Explosive volcanic eruptions that shot jets of hot ash, rock and gas skyward are the likely source of a mysterious Martian rock formation, a new study finds. The new finding could add to scientists' understanding of Mars's interior and its past potential for habitability, accordi … | Continue reading
There has long been a debate among biologists over whether the evolution of new traits requires new genes to evolve or whether they can arise simply from the recruitment of existing genetic pathways, says developmental biologist Craig Albertson at the University of Massachusetts … | Continue reading
According to the United Nations, 2.1 billion people lack access to safely managed drinking water services, the majority of whom live in developing nations. | Continue reading
The nervous system is loaded with encoded information: thoughts, emotions, motor control. This system in our bodies is an enigma, and the more we can do to understand it, the more we can do to improve human life. Brain-machine interfaces provide one way to connect with this puzzl … | Continue reading
Usually when physicists perform quantum entanglement between particles—whether it be qubits, atoms, photons, electrons, etc.—the particles are distinguishable in some way. Only recently have physicists demonstrated the feasibility of generating entanglement between particles that … | Continue reading
Waste oil from orange, tea tree and eucalyptus essential oil production mixed with diesel provides a sweet-smelling biofuel blend with comparable performance to diesel-only fuel. | Continue reading
Imagine personalized Artificial Intelligence (AI), where your smartphone becomes more like an intelligent assistant – recognizing your voice even in a noisy room, understanding the context of different social situations or presenting only the information that's truly relevant to … | Continue reading
The world's largest particle smasher is kicking off a major upgrade to churn out 10 times more data and help unlock the secrets of physics. | Continue reading
For the first time, astronomers have directly imaged the formation and expansion of a fast-moving jet of material ejected when the powerful gravity of a supermassive black hole ripped apart a star that wandered too close to the cosmic monster. | Continue reading
Ancient alchemists tried to turn lead and other common metals into gold and platinum. Modern chemists in Paul Chirik's lab at Princeton are transforming reactions that have depended on environmentally unfriendly precious metals, finding cheaper and greener alternatives to replace … | Continue reading
Decisions made in the next decade will determine whether Antarctica suffers dramatic changes that contribute to a metre of global sea level rise. | Continue reading
Researchers at QuTech in Delft have succeeded in generating quantum entanglement between two quantum chips faster than the entanglement is lost. Via a novel smart entanglement protocol and careful protection of the entanglement, the scientists led by Prof. Ronald Hanson are the f … | Continue reading
University of Groningen astronomers have discovered relics of merger events in the Milky Way halo. Five small groups of stars appear to represent mergers with smaller galaxies, while a big 'blob' comprising hundreds of stars appears to be the remnant of a large merger event. Thes … | Continue reading
Using hydraulic fracturing to extract oil and natural gas from shale is a common technique used worldwide. Because the technique requires large amounts of water, however, it raises the question of whether it could lead to water shortages or competition with other water uses, espe … | Continue reading
Every time we send an e-mail, a tweet, or stream a video, we rely on laser light to transfer digital information over a complex network of optical fibers. Dozens of high-performance lasers are needed to fill up the bandwidth and to squeeze in an increasing amount of digital data. … | Continue reading
Some of Africa's oldest and biggest baobab trees—a few dating all the way back to the ancient Greeks—have abruptly died, wholly or in part, in the past decade, researchers said Monday. | Continue reading
Astronomers have discovered new magnetic fields in space, which could shed light on how stars are formed and uncover the mysteries behind one of the most famous celestial images. | Continue reading
Yale scientists have created a new type of silicon laser that uses sounds waves to amplify light. A study about the discovery appears June 8 in the online edition of the journal Science. | Continue reading
Why has the Leaning Tower of Pisa survived the strong earthquakes that have hit the region since the middle ages? This is a long-standing question a research group of 16 engineers has investigated, including a leading expert in earthquake engineering and soil-structure interactio … | Continue reading
Alexa for couch potatoes is coming: Amazon's new streaming TV device will let users shout out when they want to turn on the TV, flip channels or search for sitcoms—all without pushing any buttons. | Continue reading
Scientists have discovered honeybees can understand the concept of zero, putting them in an elite club of clever animals that can grasp the abstract mathematical notion of nothing. | Continue reading
Ever since NASA's Voyager 1 spacecraft flew past Jupiter in March, 1979, scientists have wondered about the origin of Jupiter's lightning. That encounter confirmed the existence of Jovian lightning, which had been theorized for centuries. But when the venerable explorer hurtled b … | Continue reading
A flying car project backed by Google co-founder Larry Page was closer to take-off on Wednesday, with a model for test flights by aspiring buyers. | Continue reading
What happens when the solar wind suddenly starts to blow significantly harder? According to two recent studies, the boundaries of our entire solar system balloon outward—and an analysis of particles rebounding off of its edges will reveal its new shape. | Continue reading
Picture a herd of sheep or cattle emerging from a shed or barn to graze a field. They head straight out of their digs to the pleasure of the pasture pretty much as one entity, but as the land opens up and the "grass gets greener" they disperse randomly in a motion that has neithe … | Continue reading
Quantum physics has led to new types of sensors, secure data transmission methods and researchers are working toward computers. However, the main obstacle is finding the right way to couple and precisely control a sufficient number of quantum systems (for example, individual atom … | Continue reading
Earth scientists consistently look for a reliable way to forecast earthquakes. New research from University of Alaska Fairbanks Geophysical Institute professor Carl Tape may help in that endeavor, due to a unique set of circumstances. | Continue reading
Physicists have developed a "quantum stopwatch"—a method that stores time (in the form of states of quantum clocks) in a quantum memory. In doing so, the method avoids the accumulation of errors that usually occurs when measuring the duration of a sequence of events. In this way, … | Continue reading
Globular clusters could be up to 4 billion years younger than previously thought, new research led by the University of Warwick has found. | Continue reading
Although blockchain is traditionally seen as secure, it is vulnerable to attack from quantum computers. | Continue reading
Germany's spy agency can monitor major internet hubs if Berlin deems it necessary for strategic security interests, a federal court has ruled. | Continue reading
Rakesh Mogul, a Cal Poly Pomona professor of biological chemistry, was the lead author of an article in the journal Astrobiology that offers the first biochemical evidence explaining the reason the contamination persists. | Continue reading
NASA has achieved a first for the class of tiny spacecraft known as CubeSats, which are opening new access to space. | Continue reading
A world's first QUT-led study has used artificial intelligence to analyse regional personality characteristics estimated solely from language patterns in 1.5 billion Twitter posts and uncover hotspots and cold spots of entrepreneurial personality and activity across the US. | Continue reading
A new technique developed by MIT physicists could someday provide a way to custom-design multilayered nanoparticles with desired properties, potentially for use in displays, cloaking systems, or biomedical devices. It may also help physicists tackle a variety of thorny research p … | Continue reading
A 'self-eating' rocket engine which could place small satellites in orbit more easily and more affordably is under development at universities in Scotland and Ukraine. | Continue reading
Something strange is happening with a now-banned chemical that eats away at Earth's protective ozone layer: Scientists say there's more of it—not less—going into the atmosphere and they don't know where it is coming from. | Continue reading
A team of researchers from the U.K., Germany and Russia has found evidence of magnetism at the edges of graphene. In their paper published in the journal Nature, the researchers describe how they made their discovery and why they believe it is important. | Continue reading
We've all heard about the search for life on other planets, but what about looking on other moons? | Continue reading