Modern civilization relies on water's incompressibility—it's something we take for granted. Hydraulic systems harness the virtual non-compressibility of fluids like water or oil to multiply mechanical force. Bulldozers, cranes, and other heavy machinery exploit the physics of hyd … | Continue reading
Scientists at Washington State University and China Jiliang University have discovered that the quality of the host rice plant determines whether the brown planthopper, a major pest on rice in Asia, grows short wings or long wings. | Continue reading
Increased water vapor in Earth's atmosphere due to human activities is making shimmering high-altitude clouds more visible, a new study finds. The results suggest these strange but increasingly common clouds seen only on summer nights are an indicator of human-caused climate chan … | Continue reading
Cyberattacks may become impossible with the creation of the first practical quantum random number generator. | Continue reading
Astronomers led by a group at the Max Planck Institute for Astronomy in Heidelberg, Germany have captured a spectacular snapshot of planetary formation around the young dwarf star PDS 70. By using the SPHERE instrument on ESO's Very Large Telescope (VLT)—one of the most powerful … | Continue reading
At any given time, people regularly return to a maximum of 25 places. This is the finding of a scientific study that reveals entirely new aspects of human behavior. | Continue reading
A rocket developed by a maverick Japanese entrepreneur and convicted fraudster exploded shortly after liftoff Saturday, in a major blow to his bid to send Japan's first privately backed rocket into space. | Continue reading
Since the 1990s, astrophysicists have known that for the past few billion years, the Universe has been experiencing an accelerated rate of expansion. This gave rise to the theory that the Universe is permeated by a mysterious invisible energy known as "dark energy", which acts ag … | Continue reading
Magnets, whether in the form of a bar, horseshoe or electromagnet, always have two poles. If you break a magnet in half, you'll end up with two new magnets, each with its own magnetic north and south. | Continue reading
By abusing security weaknesses in the LTE mobile telephony standard, attackers are able to identify which web pages a user visits and to reroute him to a scam website. This is the result of a study carried out by security experts from Horst Görtz Institute at Ruhr-Universität Boc … | Continue reading
Is the web browser on your phone slower than usual? It could be mining bitcoin for criminals. | Continue reading
The galaxy is rich in grease-like molecules, according to an Australian-Turkish team. Astronomers at the University of New South Wales in Sydney (UNSW), and Ege University in Turkey used a laboratory to manufacture material with the same properties as interstellar dust and used t … | Continue reading
Using mass spectrometry data from NASA's Cassini spacecraft, scientists found that large, carbon-rich organic molecules are ejected from cracks in the icy surface of Saturn's moon Enceladus. Southwest Research Institute scientists think chemical reactions between the moon's rocky … | Continue reading
In the developing face, how do stem cells know whether to become cartilage, bones or teeth? To begin to answer this question, scientists from the USC Stem Cell laboratory of Gage Crump tested the role of a key family of genes, called "Forkhead-domain transcription factors," or Fo … | Continue reading
A fresh blueprint outlining how to rebuild the Internet to make it super slick at handling rising traffic from new technologies has been unveiled by scientists. | Continue reading
Researchers at Kyoto University have found that molybdenum silicides can improve the efficiency of turbine blades in ultrahigh-temperature combustion systems. | Continue reading
Researchers at the University of York have shown that a new quantum-based procedure for distributing secure information along communication lines could be successful in preventing serious security breaches. | Continue reading
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
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