Maddie Stone

Tech News

A 400 Year-Old Shark May Hold the Cure to Aging

If you’re counting on technology to radically extend your lifespan, you’ll want to pay close attention to what’s happening with the Greenland shark. According to a new scientific paper, this mysterious deep-sea dweller can live up to 400 years, making it the longest-lived vertebrate on Earth. Let that number sink in for a minute. Four … Continued

Tech News

The First Commercial Asteroid Mining Could Start In Just Three Years

If Deep Space Industries has its way, there’ll be a small robotic lander on a nearby asteroid in just three years. That’s the latest phase of the California-based asteroid mining company’s plan to bring about an outer space real estate boom by creating a resource supply chain off Earth. “Our thirty year goal is to … Continued

Tech News

Serious Academics Are Full of Shit

Last week, a Serious Academic™ exhausted hundreds of words denouncing the use of social media by his colleagues while insinuating that selfie culture poses an existential threat to academic life. The social media backlash from other serious academics was swift and on point, reminding us that many scientists are voluntary participants in the broader experiment … Continued

EartherClimate Change

A Volcanic Eruption Hid a Critical Climate Signal for Twenty Years

As our planet heats up, the pace of sea level rise is expected to quicken, making it harder for cities like Miami to stay above water. But since 1992, scientists have studied Earth’s mean sea level via satellites, and they’ve watched it rise at a steady 3 millimeters per year—no evidence for acceleration. Now, after … Continued

ScienceSpace & Spaceflight

A Solar Flare Almost Sparked a Nuclear War in 1967

On May 23rd, 1967, the United States Air Force scrambled to ready nuclear missile-laden aircraft for deployment. Radar systems designed to detect incoming Soviet missiles had just been disrupted, in what the military perceived to be an act of war. But before any nukes were launched in retaliation, it seems Air Force command was told … Continued

ScienceBiology

Siberian Miners Definitely Didn’t Just Find a Demon Baby

Diamond miners in the remote Siberian town of Udachny received quite a shock this week, when instead of pulling shiny rocks from the sand they unearthed a bizarre mummified creature that looks more than a little like the escaped spawn of that three-jawed dog monster in The Thing. Is anything ever normal in Siberia? According … Continued

Tech News

Six Million Americans Have This Toxic Chemical in Their Drinking Water

Add this to the growing list of reasons to be uneasy about your municipal water supply: a new Harvard study has found that six million Americans drink water containing unsafe levels of obscure industrial pollutants associated with cancer and other severe health consequences. The chemicals, called polyfluoroalkyl and perfluoroalkyl substances (PFASs), repel both oil and … Continued

Tech News

Great White Sharks Are Returning to the Northeast

On August 3rd, researchers discovered a dead mink whale floating belly up off the coast of Cape Cod. The next day, the same carcass was spotted again; ravaged almost beyond recognition. Its tongue, internal organs, and most of its skeletal muscles had been ripped off, leaving “little more than the spinal column and skull.” According … Continued

ScienceSpace & Spaceflight

A Giant Comet Was Just Obliterated by the Sun

Reminding us of our own fragile mortality, a large, bright comet just streaked across the sky and straight into our nearest neighboring star. You will absolutely believe what happened next because it has happened to you in a nightmare, admit it. On August 3rd and 4th, the European Space Agency and NASA’s Solar and Heliospheric … Continued

ScienceSpace & Spaceflight

The So-Called Alien Megastructure Just Got Even More Mysterious

Last fall, a little-known star called KIC 8462852 became our planetary obsession when astronomers said that its erratic flickering could be the result of an alien megastructure. Further observation of Tabby’s Star yielded no signs of aliens, but the sudden dips in luminosity continue to defy explanation. Now, things just got a bit weirder. In … Continued

ScienceSpace & Spaceflight

The Horrifying Way You Might Escape a Black Hole

Black holes: crushing vortexes of darkness that promise to shred each and every atom in your body to oblivion, right? Maybe not. New theoretical work by researchers at the Institute of Corpuscular Physics hints that it might be possible to escape the journey into a black hole with all of your cells intact. The bad … Continued

ScienceSpace & Spaceflight

There’s Growing Evidence That Venus Was Once Habitable

If you could hop in a time-traveling spacecraft, go back three billion years and land any place in our solar system, where would you want to end up? Earth, with its barren continents and unbreathable atmosphere? Or Mars, a chillier version its big brother? Wait, what about Venus? Venus has a rep for being a … Continued

Tech News

The Sneaky Reason US Coastlines Are Becoming More Polluted

When we think of coastal pollution, we tend to picture dirty water and garbage drifting down river into the sea. But deep underground, our filth reaches the beach by a more secretive route: groundwater channels. A first-of-its-kind mapping analysis has now revealed that a fifth of US coastlines are susceptible to pollution from below the … Continued

EartherClimate Change

There’s Something Strange Happening at the Bottom of the Greenland Ice Sheet

For the first time, researchers have peered thousands of meters beneath Greenland’s glistening surface to map the bottom of the ice sheet. They were surprised to learn that it’s thawing all over the place. “It doesn’t mean that all the red is going to slide away into the ocean, but it does mean these areas … Continued

ScienceHealth

Should Christmas in Miami Be Canceled Because of Zika?

Zika is officially here, with fifteen confirmed cases in the Miami neighborhood of Wynwood over the past week. On Monday, the CDC told pregnant women not to travel to this neighborhood, marking the first time the government agency has issued such a travel warning within the United States. It is likely Miami will see more … Continued

ScienceSpace & Spaceflight

A Private Company Just Received Permission to Travel Beyond Earth’s Orbit

In a world first, a US-based company has been granted permission to travel beyond Earth’s orbit into deep space. Moon Express, founded in 2010 by billionaire tech entrepreneur Naveen Jain, just received FAA clearance to send a robotic probe to the moon’s surface to scout it for valuable resources. If successful, Moon Express could pave … Continued

Tech News

How Olympians Can Survive Swimming in Sewage

Rio’s water is vile—full of raw sewage and dead bodies—and later this week, humanity’s top athletes will plunge into this hellish stew for a jolly ol’ international sporting competition. At this point, it’s too late for Brazil to properly clean up Rio’s befouled waterways for the 2016 Summer Olympic Games. Leaving spectators and athletes alike … Continued

ScienceSpace & Spaceflight

Io’s Atmosphere Just Collapsed

Reason number 9,000 not to colonize Jupiter’s moon Io: not only is it a frigid hellscape covered in eruptive ice volcanoes and lashed by the gas giant’s powerful radiation belts, but the atmosphere just collapsed. In fact, it collapses all the time, according to observations by astronomers at the Southwest Research Institute that are published … Continued

EartherClimate Change

A Single Bad Fire Season Sent Smoke Halfway Around the Planet

For several months last fall, Indonesia choked under a blanket of smog fueled by one of the worst fire seasons in its history. But smoldering peatlands didn’t limit their pollution to the island nation: they sent smoke halfway across the world. “I’d never seen anything quite like this before,” Robert Field of the Goddard Institute … Continued

Tech News

Hawaii Is Getting Bigger, Fast

Hang onto that property, Hawaiians: in a few hundred years, there’s a chance your slice of paradise will be slightly larger. Geologically speaking, Hawaii is still growing fast, thanks to frequent eruptions from volcanoes like Kilauea, which was caught spewing its molten guts into the ocean last week. Located on the southeastern side of the … Continued