Japan Just Landed a Spacecraft on an Asteroid, and the Photos Are Nuts

The life of an asteroid is lonely. The rocks spend eons drifting through the cold vacuum of space. | Continue reading


@sciencealert.com | 4 years ago

US Officials Are Actively Censoring Press Statements on Climate Change

The ramifications were and are terrifying. A study published in March found the threat of rising seas in California has been vastly underestimated. | Continue reading


@sciencealert.com | 4 years ago

If You Thought Quantum Mechanics Was Weird, You Need to Check Out Entangled Time

In the summer of 1935, the physicists Albert Einstein and Erwin Schrödinger engaged in a rich, multifaceted and sometimes fretful correspondence about the implications of the new theory of quantum mechanics. | Continue reading


@sciencealert.com | 4 years ago

Octopus Arms Are Capable of Making Decisions Without Input from Their Brains

With the ability to use tools, solve complex puzzles, and even play tricks on humans just for funsies, octopuses are fiercely smart. But their intelligence is quite weirdly built, since the eight-armed cephalopods have evolved differently from prett | Continue reading


@sciencealert.com | 4 years ago

Scientists Create Universal Computer Memory That Could Change How We Store Data

The data from all those Instagram pictures you're posting needs to be stored somewhere, and the increasing amount of digital information we're all producing means we also need an increasing amount of energy just to store it all. | Continue reading


@sciencealert.com | 4 years ago

Worst Fears About China's Organ Transplants and Prisoners Were Just Confirmed

Concerns have swirled around the origins of China's human organ supply for decades, and grisly new findings confirm these longstanding fears remain as justified as ever. | Continue reading


@sciencealert.com | 4 years ago

Young People Are Growing Weird Bumps on Their Skulls, Evidence Shows

The more we learn, the more it seems like our skeletal system is adapting to the unique stresses of modern life. For example, researchers in Australia have found evidence that young people appear to be increasingly growing bony protrusions at the bas | Continue reading


@sciencealert.com | 4 years ago

Greenland Was 40deg Hotter Than Normal This Week, and Things Are Getting Intense

Ice is melting in unprecedented ways as summer approaches in the Arctic. In recent days, observations have revealed a record-challenging melt event over the Greenland ice sheet, while the extent of ice over the Arctic Ocean has never been this low in | Continue reading


@sciencealert.com | 4 years ago

New Experiment Shows the Uncertainty Principle Isn't as Uncertain as We Thought

The word uncertainty is used a lot in quantum mechanics. One school of thought is that this means there's something out there in the world that we are uncertain about. But most physicists believe nature itself is uncertain. | Continue reading


@sciencealert.com | 4 years ago

Why It's Such a Deal That Jupiter's Moon Europa Is Covered in Salt

Thanks to the far-reaching optics of the Hubble telescope, and some smart visible-light spectral analysis, scientists have detected what looks a lot like sodium chloride - or good old table salt - on Jupiter's moon Europa. | Continue reading


@sciencealert.com | 4 years ago

We Have Detected Signs of Our Milky Way Colliding with Another Galaxy

Antlia 2, the "ghost of a galaxy" orbiting the Milky Way, is a dark horse in more ways than one. Not only is it so faint it was only just discovered last year, it may now be responsible for curious ripples in the hydrogen gas that makes up the Milky | Continue reading


@sciencealert.com | 4 years ago

Scientists Found a Way to Extract Rare-Earth Elements from a Plentiful Resource

A simple CLI to create your resume and personal website based on your LinkedIn profile or a JSON file - zeshuaro/LinkedRW | Continue reading


@sciencealert.com | 4 years ago

The Sun Could Unleash a 'Superflare' in the Next 100 Years

It was the year 2000 and scientists had never seen anything like it: astronomers reported evidence of "superflares" on distant stars – solar outbursts many thousands of times more energetic than typical solar flares. | Continue reading


@sciencealert.com | 4 years ago

Nearly 400 medical devices, procedures and practices found ineffective in study

We like to view modern medicine as based on rigorous science, and while it certainly beats the various dangerous alternatives out there, sometimes physicians still end up adopting practices based on little evidence. | Continue reading


@sciencealert.com | 4 years ago

Plants Are Going Extinct at Least 500 Times Faster Than If Humans Weren't Around

If you had asked a botanist just a few years ago how many plant species have perished in modern times, their estimate would probably number fewer than 150. The most exhaustive study thus far has now quadrupled that amount. | Continue reading


@sciencealert.com | 4 years ago

Single Punctuation Mark Has Been Skewing Our Entire System of Scientific Ranking

The most fundamental system we have to quantify the importance of scientific research is broken at its core, a new study reveals – and all it took was a single punctuation mark. | Continue reading


@sciencealert.com | 4 years ago

Key Flaw in Solar Panel Efficiency Identified

Solar panels are fantastic pieces of technology, but we need to work out how to make them even more efficient – and scientists just solved a 40-year-old mystery around one of the key obstacles to increased efficiency. | Continue reading


@sciencealert.com | 4 years ago

Physicists Have Finally Figured Out a Way to Save Schrödinger's Cat

The famous cat-in-a-box thought experiment by Austrian physicist Erwin Schrödinger is an illustration of one of the defining characteristics of quantum mechanics - the unpredictable behaviour of particles at the quantum level. | Continue reading


@sciencealert.com | 4 years ago

Demon core killed 2 physicist in 2 separate incidents but brought process change

It was August 13, 1945, and the 'demon core' was poised, waiting to be unleashed onto a stunned Japan still reeling in fresh chaos from the deadliest attacks anyone had ever seen. | Continue reading


@sciencealert.com | 4 years ago

Creepy AI Predicts What You Look Like Based on Your Voice

A new artificial intelligence created by researchers at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology pulls off a staggering feat: by analyzing only a short audio clip of a person's voice, it reconstructs what they might look like in real life. | Continue reading


@sciencealert.com | 4 years ago

Sun's Mysterious 11-Year Cycle Appears to Be Driven by Alignment of the Planets

Every 11 years, the Sun cycles through from riotous flare and sunspot activity to a quieter period, before ramping up again. It's almost as regular as clockwork, and for years astronomers have been wondering what causes it. Now, they've proposed a ne | Continue reading


@sciencealert.com | 4 years ago

Natural Gas Is Now Being Referred to as 'Freedom Gas'

A Tuesday press release from the Department of Energy authorizing new natural gas exports referred to the gas as "freedom gas," a signal of how the Department views domestic natural gas production as a tool to spread prosperity and liberty. | Continue reading


@sciencealert.com | 4 years ago

Scientists Detect an Ancient Rock Structure Beneath Antartica, Shifting the Ice

Deep below the frozen wastelands of Antarctica, scientists have discovered ancient tectonic plate structures that are having a huge impact on melting patterns around the continent's largest ice shelf. | Continue reading


@sciencealert.com | 4 years ago

Japan Discovered Rare-Earth Mineral Deposit That Can Supply World for Centuries

Earlier this year, researchers found a deposit of rare-earth minerals off the coast of Japan that could supply the world for centuries, according to a study. | Continue reading


@sciencealert.com | 4 years ago

Elon Musk's Starlink Train Looks but Astronomers Have Serious Concerns

Last week SpaceX launched 60 Starlink telecommunication satellites – the first major launch of its ambitious fleet of up to 12,000 satellites, with the goal to eventually create ultra-fast internet services around the world. | Continue reading


@sciencealert.com | 4 years ago

Scientists Have Observed Eerie Sand Movements on Mars That Never Happen on Earth

Mars and Earth may have a lot of things in common, but the processes that sculpt their sand dunes are not among them. Exactly how Martian sand moves around crevasses and impact craters has been something of a mystery - but we might finally have a bet | Continue reading


@sciencealert.com | 4 years ago

Artificial Photosynthesis Breakthrough Uses Gold to Turn CO2 into Liquid Fuel

Scientists have developed a new way of achieving artificial photosynthesis, producing high-energy hydrocarbons by leveraging electron-rich gold nanoparticles as a catalyst. | Continue reading


@sciencealert.com | 4 years ago

There's No Such Thing as Different 'Learning Styles'

When I was at school, a fair amount of time was put into determining our "learning styles." Teachers told us that some people learn better visually with pictures, whereas others retained information by reading or making notes. | Continue reading


@sciencealert.com | 4 years ago

Pluto Was Supposed to Be Fully Frozen But It Looks Like It Has Liquid Oceans

The Solar System might be a soggier place than we previously thought - even in the glacially cold reaches of the Kuiper Belt. There, dwarf planet Pluto could be harbouring liquid oceans under a shell of nitrogen ice. | Continue reading


@sciencealert.com | 4 years ago

The definition of Kilogram based on Planck's constant takes into effect today

Finally, 130 years after it was established, the kilogram as we know it is about to be retired. But it's not the end: tomorrow, 20 May 2019, a new definition will be put in place - one that's far more accurate than anything we've had until now. | Continue reading


@sciencealert.com | 4 years ago

Worst Nuclear Accident in History Turned into Something Nobody Expected

Reactor number four of the Chernobyl Nuclear Power Plant suffered an explosion during a technical test on April 26, 1986. As a result of the accident, in the then Soviet Union, more than 400 times more radiation was emitted than that released by the | Continue reading


@sciencealert.com | 4 years ago

Study Finds the Healthiest Weight Could Be 'Overweight'

Continue reading


@sciencealert.com | 4 years ago

US Legislator Just Accused a Vaccine Scientist of 'Sorcery'

A Texas state legislator unleashed a vilifying attack on a leading vaccine scientist Tuesday, accusing the doctor of "sorcery". | Continue reading


@sciencealert.com | 4 years ago

Bill Nye Shocks Audiences by Saying It Like It Is: The Planet's on F***Ing Fire

Bill Nye frolicked in a ball pit to explain how the planet's populations compete for resources. He took a chain saw to a loaf of bread, comparing it to Earth's crust, and he was nearly blown away in a wind tunnel while shouting "science!" | Continue reading


@sciencealert.com | 4 years ago

For the First Time, Engineers Measure Accuracy of 2 Qubits in Silicon

Scientists have measured the accuracy of two-qubit operations for the first time in silicon, bringing the world a big step closer to reliable quantum computing. | Continue reading


@sciencealert.com | 4 years ago

Link Between Losing Your Appendix and Parkinson's Study Shows

There seems to be a link between the degenerative neurological disorder Parkinson's disease and your appendix. Just what that relationship might be, nobody can agree upon, but here's what we know so far. | Continue reading


@sciencealert.com | 4 years ago

We Just Got a Step Closer to Solving the Bizarre Physics of Glass

For something so commonplace, glass is actually an incredible mystery; an enigma of physics that has defied understanding since humans first encountered it millennia ago. | Continue reading


@sciencealert.com | 5 years ago

Nasa's Working on a Nano-Starship That Travels at 1/5 the Speed of Light

In April, a team of scientists including Stephen Hawking announced a mind-boggling new project to explore interstellar space, using lasers to propel a nano-spacecraft the size of a postage stamp to our nearest star system, Alpha Centauri. | Continue reading


@sciencealert.com | 5 years ago

A Dark Matter Detector Just Recorded One of the Rarest Events Known to Science

Thanks to the XENON1T dark matter detector lodged under the Gran Sasso mountains of Italy, scientists have recorded one of the rarest events to ever be detected: a special type of radioactive decay in xenon-124. | Continue reading


@sciencealert.com | 5 years ago

Mind-Bending Video on the Scale of Black Holes

This week, we took the first ever direct image of a black hole's event horizon. | Continue reading


@sciencealert.com | 5 years ago

Review of More Than 300 Studies Shows Whether Caffeine Can Boost Your Workout

Coffee is one of the most popular drinks in the world. Nearly half the adult population in Australia drink it. | Continue reading


@sciencealert.com | 5 years ago

There's More Than One Periodic Table. Some Designs You've Never Seen

In 1869, a Siberian called Dmitri Mendeleev presented a brand new version of the periodic table of elements to his peers at the Russian Chemical Society. | Continue reading


@sciencealert.com | 5 years ago

SpaceX bootster falls off OCISLY while returning to Florida

The road to reusable space rockets was always going to be a bumpy one, such are the technical challenges involved. SpaceX has been making excellent progress, but just had its latest bump – having its central Falcon Heavy booster fall over in choppy | Continue reading


@sciencealert.com | 5 years ago

The Creator of Linux Says Facebook, Twitter, and Instagram Are “A Disease”

Linus Torvalds, the Linux creator who's himself known for angry tirades, said that if he could fix one thing about the internet, it would be modern social media — a flame-spitting recrimination by the inventor of the software that keeps much of the | Continue reading


@sciencealert.com | 5 years ago

Astronomers Worldwide Are About to Make a Groundbreaking Black Hole Announcement

The European Southern Observatory has just revealed there will be a huge announcement next week. Yes, we know how that sounds - but as far as we can tell, it appears the world is about to finally see the first ever photo of a black hole's event horiz | Continue reading


@sciencealert.com | 5 years ago

Physicists Have Clocked the Ghostly Speed of Quantum Tunnelling

In quantum physics, particles can 'tunnel' through seemingly impenetrable barriers, even when they apparently don't have the energy to do so. Now, researchers have gleaned behind the curtain to better understand how this trick is done. | Continue reading


@sciencealert.com | 5 years ago

Scientists Have Unearthed an Incredibly Rare Haul of Precious Fossils in China

A spectacular discovery in south China is shedding more light on the mysterious lifeforms that crawled our planet half a billion years ago. In a shale bed next to Danshui River, palaentologists have excavated around 30,000 fossils dating back to the | Continue reading


@sciencealert.com | 5 years ago

Swearing Is a Sign of More Intelligence – Not Less – Say Scientists

The use of obscene or taboo language - or swearing, as it’s more commonly known - is often seen as a sign that the speaker lacks vocabulary, cannot express themselves in a less offensive way, or even lacks intelligence. | Continue reading


@sciencealert.com | 5 years ago