There’s a virus called PRRS that’s every pig farmer’s nightmare – it attacks young pigs and is estimated to cost farmers around US$2.3 billion a year. But now scientists may have found a gene editing method that can block the spread of this terrible disease. A team of researchers have bred genetically engineer pigs resistant
A western lowlands gorilla named Koko, famous for having learned a simplified form of American Sign Language (ASL), died in her sleep at her Californian reserve earlier this week at the ripe old age of 46. The gorilla’s talent for communicating has intrigued primate researchers, but it was her human-like affection, intelligence, and love of
We don’t actually have a lot to be afraid of when it comes to asteroids. Sure, they might come pretty close from time to time, but they tend to buzz harmlessly by – after all, Earth is a pretty tiny target in the vastness of space. That doesn’t mean we shouldn’t be prepared, though –
During the 1930s, astronomers came to realize that the Universe is in a state of expansion. By the 1990s, they realized that the rate at which it is expansion is accelerating, giving rise to the theory of “Dark Energy”. Because of this, it is estimated that in the next 100 billion years, all stars within
If you ever find yourself staring directly into the jagged, gaping jaws of a hungry Tyrannosaurus rex, take a moment to observe its placid, composed tongue. Remarkably still, no? Despite what pop culture would have us believe about the wildly elongated, lashing tongues of these marvellous, extinct creatures, new research suggests the towering T. rex
The curvature of empty space caused by an entire galaxy has now been pinned down with unprecedented precision, demonstrating Einstein’s theory of general relativity still rules on a super-sized scale. Not that anybody is seriously surprised. But on the off chance the results had failed to meet expectations, they might have provided insight into some
By making a strange kind of particle that is its own antiparticle out of a time crystal, physicists aim to develop a quantum computer that’s not only more reliable, but far more lightweight than anything currently in the pipeline. Time crystals and quasiparticles called Majorana fermions have made headlines in recent years thanks to the
This is what it looks like when a bear breaks into your home to steal M&M’s while you’re out. And we totally empathise with those candy cravings. Footage of the break-in was captured last week by security cameras set up in the home of Lane Sykes and Carole Scofield in South Lake Tahoe, California. The
The presence of illicit drugs and their metabolites in river water is a new and growing type of environmental hazard – and, according to new research, is putting at further risk an already critically endangered species of eel. The European eel spends its life living in waterways across Europe, migrating to the ocean to breed
A stunning new photo of the Milky Way came about because of a flea-market purchase, a late night on a Chilean mountain range, and a dash of inspiration. The photo, taken by astronomer Juan Carlos Muñoz-Mateos, shows our home galaxy projected backward and upside-down through a crystal ball. Muñoz-Mateos focused his camera’s lens on the
Recent actions by the Trump administration – a wave of unprecedentedly large family separations at the border, aggressive trade-war-fueling tariffs and rebukes of allies – have made some feel as though the Barack Obama presidency was an unrecognizable era shrouded in an ancient past. Perhaps, then, it is fitting that the fossil of a disc-shaped
It’s a strange and lucky irony that the worst solar storm in recorded history happened at a time when human civilisation wasn’t yet uniquely vulnerable to the Sun’s inescapable geomagnetic fury. The Carrington Event – aka the solar storm of 1859 – saw a huge solar coronal mass ejection unleashed at Earth’s protective magnetosphere, producing
Scientists have come up with a new way to figure out how much winter rainfall is going to occur in California – simply check out what was happening near New Zealand over the previous seasons. They’re calling it the New Zealand Index, and it’s more accurate than the previous method of predicting rainfall, which was
Almost all the large vertebrates on Earth suddenly went extinct 66 million years ago – including dinosaurs, mosasaurs, plesiosaurs, and pterosaurs. A city-size asteroid or comet is thought to be responsible for that mass extinction. The impact, called the Chicxulub event, triggered global cooling and volcanic eruptions that transformed Earth. In the 1980s, Richard Muller,
A group of physicists are questioning our understanding of how quarks – a type of elementary particle – arrange themselves under extreme conditions. And their quest is revealing that elements beyond the edge of the periodic table might be fair weirder than we thought. Deep in the depths of the periodic table there are monsters
The mystery of where manta rays keep their babies has started to unravel, with the lucky discovery of a rarely seen manta ray nursery. It’s off the coast of Texas, in the NOAA’s Flower Garden Banks National Marine Sanctuary in the Gulf of Mexico, where marine scientists have observed unprecedented numbers of juvenile manta rays.
The central section of the San Andreas Fault in California is moving in an unexpected way, scientists say, creating a series of ‘slow earthquakes’ that increase the likelihood of a major quake striking in the future. It was previously thought that slow and steady movements in this area were safely releasing pent-up energy along the faultline,
The drivers behind climate change denial look to be even more complex than we thought, with new research finding evidence of a “racial spillover” – in which racist attitudes have become linked with skepticism over climate change. A new study examining attitudes to climate change during the Obama presidency found white Americans became significantly less
Last week, the coastal city of Qingdao in eastern China experienced a massive rainstorm, complete with sea creatures allegedly falling from the sky amidst the buffeting winds and heavy rainfall. Residents took to social media with photos of this ‘seafood rain’ bounty, which included prawns and starfish splatted against car windscreens, and even a dramatic
Astronomers have spotted what they think is a super-rare cosmic phenomenon: a type of medium-weight black hole proven so elusive that researchers thought it might not exist at all. There are a few different black hole size categories out there in the Universe. There are the stellar-mass black holes. Those are the ones whose collisions
At the height of North American summer, many plants are at their most dangerous. We don’t normally think of plants as particularly scary organisms. But this rather entertaining Reddit thread from 2016 will make you reconsider that assumption. “Botanists of Reddit, what are the scariest plants in the world?” user Zipzapadam asked. And Reddit delivered.
When Mexico beat Germany 1–0 at the FIFA World Cup on Sunday, the upset was so stunning Earth literally shook at the shock result. It wasn’t natural seismic activity making the ground shake, though, but an artificial quake created entirely by celebrating Mexican fans, whose jumping elation at their team’s unexpected triumph was thunderous enough
Archaeologists excavating the site of a future highway have found a very unusual ancient burial: the skeletons of two men, with smashed skulls, and both legs chopped off at the knees. They were buried with their amputated legs next to their arms. The bodies are among the latest in a long list of discoveries during
AI knows when you’re going to die. But unlike in sci-fi movies, that information could end up saving lives. A new paper published in Nature suggests that feeding electronic health record data to a deep learning model could substantially improve the accuracy of projected outcomes. In trials using data from two US hospitals, researchers were
The DNA results are in for a mysterious wolf-like animal shot and killed in Montana in May. To nobody’s great surprise, it didn’t turn out to be some sort of mythical monster. But, contrary to the expectations of experts at Montana Fish, Wildlife & Parks (FWP), it’s not a wolf-dog hybrid, either. The animal has
The more we know about a volcano, the better we can predict when its next eruption will be. Now, scientists have come up with a new method of analysis, and the secret lies with an eerie phenomenon we can best describe as ‘volcano music’. The Cotopaxi volcano in central Ecuador has been pushing out sounds resembling
Chris Hadfield, most widely known for his zero-gravity guitar-playing, has seen an impressive amount of space travel. Between his first spaceflight in 1995, his second in 2001, and a third in 2013, Hadfield has flown inside NASA space shuttles, a Russian Soyuz spacecraft, and the International Space Station. Hadfield, who’s now retired, shares his expertise
A mysteriously fluctuating bulge observed in the atmosphere of Venus now has a more concrete explanation. According to a newly published study, the planet’s enormous mountain ranges are to blame for a massive gravity wave. Venus is often called Earth’s sister planet because of the similarities between the two. If it’s a twin, though, it’s
If Hollywood wanted to make a movie about a horrifying plant invasion, giant hogweeds would make a great candidate for the lead role – they are absolutely massive, incredibly toxic, and readily spread wherever their seeds take root. Listed as a noxious weed in at least eight states, last week the giant hogweed (Heracleum mantegazzianum)
It takes a particular kind of person to succeed in politics, but the psychological traits that make for leadership material could be more extreme than anybody ever realised. A first-of-its-kind analysis ranking state-level estimates of psychopathy across the continental United States and the District of Columbia has found Washington DC harbours the highest concentration of
A lobster caught off the coast of Grand Manan Island, Canada has had a lucky escape from the seafood markets, thanks to a genetic quirk that has given it a unique colouration. Rather than the typical dark blue, orange, or green, the crustacean – appropriately named Lucky – is delicately tinted pastel blue and pink.
The vast majority of Americans are unprepared or under-prepared for a natural disaster. At least that’s what they said in a recent poll from Business Insider partner MSN. MSN surveyed Americans on their emergency preparedness. It then used machine learning and big data, such as the census, to model how a representative sample of the US
The world’s highest mountain has, in the last few decades, turned into the world’s highest-altitude rubbish dump, thanks to wealthy tourists who mindlessly leave a trail of disgusting refuse in their wake. Since explorer Sir Edmund Hillary reached the 8,848-metre (29,029-foot) peak of Everest – known as Chomolungma in Tibet and Sagarmatha in Nepal –
The auditorium at Weeki Wachee Springs sits 5 metres (16 feet) underground. Long wooden benches face a thick glass wall, which stays shrouded in blue curtains, resembling ruched swimsuits. But three or four times a day, the curtains rise to reveal clear water. A ledge juts out, and below, the bottom drops down to a
Mars will look brighter in the night sky over the next six weeks than it has appeared in 15 years. That’s because the red planet will be at its closest point to Earth since 2003 throughout June and July, as our planet passes between Mars and the Sun. On July 31, when Mars will be
In the future, seas will rise far higher than they are today. The question is whether it happens quickly or slowly. There’s enough ice stacked on top of Antarctica to raise seas around the globe by almost 200 feet. While it takes time for major changes to occur with that much ice, Antarctica is melting
In 2006, NASA’s Mars Reconnaissance Orbiter (MRO) established orbit around the Red Planet. Using an advanced suite of scientific instruments – which include cameras, spectrometers, and radar – this spacecraft has been analyzing landforms, geology, minerals and ice on Mars for years and assisting with other missions. While the mission was only meant to last
Three out of four pediatricians disapprove of spanking, research finds. The survey of pediatricians around the US finds that most think spanking seldom or never results in positive outcomes for kids. Catherine Taylor, an associate professor of Global Community Health and Behavioral Sciences at Tulane University School of Public Health and Tropical Medicine, surveyed sent
Ever since humanity split into dog and cat people, we’ve been arguing over which one of our beloved companions is a smarter species. This latest study mightn’t be the last word on the matter, but for those who think more neurons means more intelligence, it looks as if dogs stand out among carnivores for having
A new map shows thousands of shipwrecks scattered around Ireland since the 16th century – and it shows how many maritime disasters are still a total mystery. The “Wreck Viewer,” released by the Irish government’s National Monuments Service this April, shows the approximate locations of 3,554 shipwrecks across a 355,000 square mile area around Ireland and
One of the weirder aspects of quantum mechanics could be explained by an equally weird idea – that causation can run backwards in time as well as forwards. What Einstein called “spooky” action at a distance could theoretically be evidence of retrocausality, which is the particle equivalent of you getting a stomach ache today thanks
For the second time in barely more than a year, an Indonesian villager has been swallowed whole by a python. Wa Tiba, 54, left her home on Muna island to visit her cornfield Thursday night, according to the Jakarta Post. The field was about a half mile from her house, surrounded by cliffs, caves and
The Inca Empire (1400-1532 CE) is one of few ancient civilisations that speaks to us in multiple dimensions. Instead of words or pictograms, the Incas used khipus – knotted string devices – to communicate extraordinarily complex mathematical and narrative information. But, after more than a century of study, we remain unable to fully crack the
Humanity has long dreamed about sending humans to other planets, even before crewed spaceflight became a reality. And with the discovery of thousands exoplanets in recent decades, particularly those that orbit within neighboring star systems (like Proxima b), that dream seems closer than ever to becoming a reality. But of course, a lot of technical challenges
The universe that Stephen Hawking spent a lifetime studying now knows his voice. Following Hawking’s death in March, the renowned British physicist, who had battled a debilitating degenerative motor neuron disease for decades, was remembered at a memorial service Friday at Westminster Abbey. His ashes were buried between Charles Darwin and Isaac Newton and later covered with a gravestone — etched with an equation he used to
A sloth’s life seems pretty sweet, right? You get to hang out in trees all day, munching on food, sleeping all the time, and moving real slow to blend in with your surroundings. For a sloth, Sunday is every day. Laziness is just the sloth way. While this might sound luxurious, scientists have revealed that all
A lunar meteorite, discovered in the desert of northwest Africa, holds strong evidence that there is an abundant supply of water on the Moon – maybe even enough for a future colony. Examining the meteorite, scientists from Tohoku University have determined that the other-worldly rock is made up of moganite, a mineral that requires water
A growing number of mammals are switching to a nocturnal cycle and sleeping during the day, primarily to avoid contact with human beings, according to a new study. The research looked at 62 different species across the world, and noted that when humans were around, animals spent more time being active at night and less