Science

Japan has announced plans to resume whaling in the Antarctic next year for what it says are research purposes. It suspended its whale hunt last year for a season after the top UN court ruled it should stop. The Japanese Fisheries Agency notified the International Whaling Commission (IWC) that it will resume whaling in the summer, after a break of …

There is a 90% chance that hidden chambers will be found within King Tutankhamun’s tomb, experts said after a new exploration of the 3,300-year-old mausoleum. Speaking at a press conference in Luxor, Egyptian antiquities minister Mamdouh el-Damaty said the results will be sent to Japan for analysis before the search is resumed. Scientists say the discovery of a new chamber …

Researchers have discovered that the hypergiant star VY Canis Majoris is shedding 30 Earthloads of dust a year in a massive weight loss programme before it goes supernova. A team of astronomers using ESO’s Very Large Telescope (VLT) has captured the most detailed images ever of the hypergiant star VY Canis Majoris. These observations show how the unexpectedly large size …

An Ottawa professor has helped shed light on one of the oldest creatures to walk the earth. The steak-knife-toothed creature, recently renamed the Dimetrodon Borealis, is believed to have gone extinct 40 million years before the dinosaurs. The fossil, originally discovered in Prince Edward Island and long mistaken for that of a dinosaur, has been shown to have steak-knife-like teeth. …

Potato-shaped Phobos, the bigger of Mars’ two mini-moons, will break apart between 20 million and 40 million years from now, providing the Red Planet with its own spectacular Saturn-like ring. According to Popular Science and the Washington Post, previous research has revealed that the Red Planet’s gravitational forces are slowly causing its moon Phobos to crumble. What the latest study …

Extreme weather caused nearly $2 trillion in economic losses. Natural disasters have killed more than 600,000 people and left behind trillions of dollars in damages in the last two decades, the United Nations said Monday. The five countries hit by the highest number of disasters, according to the report, were the United States with 472, China with 441, India with …

Scientists in California say they have genetically engineered mosquitoes that cannot be infected with the malaria parasite — and they’ve done it in a way that virtually guarantees the trait will spread quickly in a population. Using a groundbreaking gene editing technique, University of California scientists have created a strain of mosquitoes capable of rapidly introducing malaria-blocking genes into a …

A red panda that went missing three days ago after escaping from a zoo in northern California has been found. Masala – a young female panda – was found late Saturday night about half a mile from the Sequoia Park Zoo, officials at the zoo said. A resident spotted Masala near her home, called staff at the zoo and guided …

A couple of low-key polar bears attended the annual Polar Bear Marathon in Churchill, Man. on Saturday, unbeknownst to all 24 of the runners who likely passed them. Photographer Keith MacDougall said when he noticed polar bears lazing on the snow just metres away from the runners, he thought it would make an interesting photograph.

Scientists at the University of Alberta have helped make a scientific breakthrough regarding the early origins of Earth’s atmosphere. Together with earth scientists from the University of Waterloo, Arizona State University, University of California Riverside, and Georgia Institute of Technology, U of A scientists have found evidence that Earth’s transition to a permanently oxygenated atmosphere was riddled with bumps along …

On an island in the Arctic Sea, paleontologists found the remains of an ancient tropical forest estimated to be 385 million years old. The fossil forests, with tree stumps preserved in place, were found in Svalbard, a Norwegian archipelago situated in the Arctic Ocean. They were identified and described by Dr Chris Berry of the School of Earth and Ocean …