Just less than 13,000 years ago, the climate cooled for a short while in many parts of the world, especially in the northern hemisphere. We know this because of what has been found in ice cores drilled in Greenland, as well as from oceans around the | Continue reading
Looking for a reason to become a Juggalo? | Continue reading
Scientists have been able to teach birds simple songs they've never heard before by selectively activating specific neurons in their brains - effectively implanting false memories. | Continue reading
Scientists have found a new way to harvest psilocybin, the psychedelic compound typically found in mushrooms. They've engineered bacteria to produce psilocybin in their cells and poop it out, in gram-scale concentrations that are higher than any othe | Continue reading
At the edge of our Solar System, some unknown object is manipulating the paths of chunks of ice as they circle the Sun. | Continue reading
The first-ever direct image of a black hole's event horizon was a truly impressive feat of scientific ingenuity. But it was extremely difficult to achieve, and the resulting image was relatively low-resolution. | Continue reading
Quantum computers exist today, although they're limited, cut-down versions of what we hope fully blown quantum computers are going to be able to do in the future. | Continue reading
Over the past two weeks, something unprecedented has happened on ScienceAlert's Facebook page. And we need to talk about it. | Continue reading
In a kind of odd man-versus-nature moment, a Russian navy boat was attacked and sunk by a walrus during an expedition in the Arctic, the Barents Observer reported Monday. | Continue reading
In the ongoing efforts to control and treat Alzheimer's, one of the more promising avenues of research is using electromagnetic waves to reverse memory loss – and a small study using this approach has reported some encouraging results. | Continue reading
An iconic physics experiment used to demonstrate the strange properties of the quantum world is now even stranger than we thought, and not only could it force us to rethink some fundamental aspects of quantum mechanics - it could be the key to finall | Continue reading
According to new research, the dead may not always rest in peace... quite literally. For more than a year after death, corpses move around "significantly", and this finding could be important for forensic investigations. | Continue reading
You might think you already know black – even super-black Vantablack, previously the blackest material known to science – but researchers just came up with a material that takes black to a new level of blackness. | Continue reading
SpaceX just posted dramatic footage of its commercial space taxi Crew Dragon undergoing rigorous tests of its emergency abort system. | Continue reading
Astronomers may have spotted the second object ever to visit our Solar System from another star system. The object may even fly near Mars later this year, though it's still far away. | Continue reading
It was found along the side of a road in a remote Australian gold rush town. In the old days, Wedderburn was a hotspot for prospectors – it occasionally still is – but nobody there had ever seen a nugget quite like this one. | Continue reading
In the last few years, evidence has been emerging that several psychedelics seem to alleviate the symptoms of depression. Now scientists have tested a new compound - and early trials indicate that it, too, has potential. | Continue reading
A NASA satellite captured harrowing images of carbon monoxide in the atmosphere due to the wildfires that continue to rage in the Amazon rainforest. | Continue reading
Back in 2017, neuroscientists used a classic branch of maths in a totally new way to peer into the structure of our brains. | Continue reading
In 1904, the Brazilian city of Rio de Janeiro shook with violence as citizens rioted. Property was destroyed, dozens were wounded, and 30 people lost their lives as the population rose up against a perceived common enemy: a mandatory vaccine for smal | Continue reading
In the digital age, connectivity and bandwidth are important, even if you're in Low Earth Orbit (LEO). And when you're performing research and experiments that could help pave the way for future missions to the Moon, to Mars, and other deep-space des | Continue reading
A NASA satellite captured harrowing images of carbon monoxide in the atmosphere due to the wildfires that continue to rage in the Amazon rainforest. | Continue reading
Scientists have discovered evidence of a massive distributed reservoir of methane formed by chemical reactions deep inside the ocean floor. | Continue reading
For quantum computing to become fully realised, we're going to have to make a few huge scientific leaps along the way – including finding a superconductor that can act in the same way as silicon does in today's computing. A team of researchers thin | Continue reading
Multitasking has traditionally been perceived as a woman's domain. A woman, particularly one with children, will routinely be juggling a job and running a household – in itself a frantic mix of kids' lunch boxes, housework, and organising appointme | Continue reading
In July, the French daily newspaper Le Monde reported that the 0.6-mile (1 kilometre) solar road was a fiasco. | Continue reading
It looks like we've bagged another win for gravitational wave astronomy. A new gravitational wave detection is the best candidate yet for a type of cosmic collision never seen - the elusive merger between a black hole and a neutron star. | Continue reading
Next time you bite into a slice of watermelon or a cob of corn, consider this: these familiar fruits and veggies didn't always look and taste this way. | Continue reading
One of the biggest mysteries out there in the Universe is inching closer to answers. An astonishing eight new repeating radio signals known as fast radio bursts (FRBs) have been detected flaring from deep space. | Continue reading
Researchers have been able to coax human breast cancer cells to turn into fat cells in a new proof-of-concept study in mice. | Continue reading
The supermassive black hole at the heart of the Milky Way, Sagittarius A*, is relatively quiet. It's not an active nucleus, spewing light and heat into the space around it; most of the time, the black hole's activity is low key, with minimal fluctuat | Continue reading
A pair of Romanian scientists have built a flying saucer — and it actually flies a lot like the ones you've probably seen in the movies. | Continue reading
With Jupiter currently gracing the northern sky at night, it's a great time to be pointing a telescope at our Solar System's colossus. But one astrophotographer got the sight of a lifetime - what appears to be the flash of an impact, as something exp | Continue reading
Dark matter might well be the biggest mystery in the Universe. We know there's something out there making things move faster than they should. But we don't know what it is, and we sure as heck don't know where it came from. | Continue reading
Around a third of the population have trouble sleeping, including difficulties maintaining sleep throughout the night. | Continue reading
Just outside the northernmost city of Alaska, underneath an expanse of white tundra, researchers have found a rich community of microbes bathing in ancient seawater. | Continue reading
A bizarre and brilliantly effective optical illusion going viral on the internet tricks your brain into seeing a colour image… but if you look closer, you'll notice the photo you're staring at is only black and white. | Continue reading
Celebrities often use their platforms to spread awareness on important issues. But while many of us have become numb to their warnings, there's something about Harrison Ford that makes people sit up and listen. | Continue reading
Solar cells that transfer sunlight into electricity are a brilliant part of modern technology, but one particular aspect has proven to be a huge headache. They're not super efficient - most of the sunlight they absorb is lost in the form of heat. | Continue reading
Enough of biosensor "tattoos" that are just a wearable sticker. Scientists in Germany have developed an actual, intradermal tattoo that can change colour in response to changing levels of glucose, albumin, or pH. | Continue reading
The Arctic is warming twice as fast as the rest of the planet, and after the hottest June ever recorded on Earth, the region is literally on fire. | Continue reading
It's easy to take time's arrow for granted - but the gears of physics actually work just as smoothly in reverse. Maybe that time machine is possible after all? | Continue reading
If all goes to plan, in November this year the International Space Station (ISS) is about to get a bit spicier. | Continue reading
What has the magnetic properties of a solid magnet, but the mechanical properties of a liquid? If you answered 'nothing,' you're wrong - because engineers have just created just such a substance, by using a modified 3D printer. | Continue reading
People with a higher IQ are more likely to have fewer connections between the neurons in the outer layer of their brain, according to a recent study. | Continue reading
It's easy to take time's arrow for granted - but the gears of physics actually work just as smoothly in reverse. Maybe that time machine is possible after all? | Continue reading
Those who persist in denying the reality of human-caused climate change have resorted to scraping the very bottom of the barrel. Last week, climate deniers at several blogs and news outlets jumped on a new "paper" that supposedly "proves" the vast ma | Continue reading
In an incredible first, scientists have captured the world's first actual photo of quantum entanglement - a phenomenon so strange Einstein famously described it as 'spooky action at a distance'. | Continue reading