Science

An ankle bone from 52 million years ago shows that the world’s oldest primates were able to leap between tree branches like acrobats. These first primates spent most of their time in the trees rather than on the ground, but just how nimble they were as they moved around in the treetops has been a topic of dispute. For years, ... Read More »

Alien enthusiasts claim to have spotted three huge ‘alien portals’ below the International Space Station. A bizarre video has been posted on YouTube, showing three mysterious circular shapes flying below the space station. Alien fans Third Phase of the Moon posted a YouTube video based on NASA footage, saying, ‘I’m not sure these are just anomalous clouds – there’s no ... Read More »

Largest solar flare in 12 years – and eighth largest since modern records began in 1996 – observed in high detail from Swedish Solar Telescope in La Palma. The huge burst of radiation, which was not harmful to humans due to the Earth’s protective atmosphere and distance from the sun, occurred unexpectedly on Wednesday 6 September 2017. The flare was ... Read More »

US-based South African inventor Elon Musk has posted the first photo depicting the SpaceX suit in full-bode mode, and it looks classy. Prepare for “an enjoyable ride!” Posted to Instagram, the figure shown is wearing a sleek white suit with black gloves and boots. The person is standing next to a Crew Dragon, a SpaceX capsule designed to carry humans ... Read More »

New study led by The University of Texas at Austin has found that when it comes to preserving these body parts, fossilized hair is rare—five times rarer than feathers—despite being an important tool for understanding ancient species. This finding has researchers trying to determine if the lack of hair in the fossil record has to do with physical traits that ... Read More »

Egyptian archaeologists have unearthed a pharaonic tomb belonging to a royal goldsmith who lived more than 3,500 years ago. On Saturday, Egypt’s Minister of Antiquities Khaled Al-Anani said the tomb dated back to Egypt’s 18th dynasty New Kingdom era – around 15th century B.C. The BBC reports that he said: “We found many objects of the funerary equipment inside and ... Read More »

Colourful lights danced across the sky in a striking aurora display over Lapland in northern Finland early on Friday. The editor of the travel magazine All About Lapland, Alexander Kuznetsov, said he had driven for 300 miles to find clear skies to film the scenes. WHAT ARE NORTHERN LIGHTS? The bright dancing lights of the aurora are actually collisions between ... Read More »

The caves located underneath Antarctic ice could be inhabited by yet-unknown species of plants and animals, scientists say. Researchers collected soil samples from subglacial caves in Mount Erebus as well as from three volcanoes in the Victoria Land region of Antarctica, They found moss, algae, arthropods and nematodes at the sites, but also found unknown DNA at the Mount Erebus ... Read More »

A brand new radio telescope in Canada just started searching space for digitized signals that can help the instruments measure the expansion of the universe. The Hydrogen Intensity Mapping Experiment is known as CHIME and the last piece was symbolically added today by Canada’s Science Minister Kirsty Duncan at the location near Penticton, British Columbia. CHIME employs a series of ... Read More »

SpaceX today successfully launched the US Air Force’s secretive mini-space-shuttle X-37B from the biz’s launch pad at the Kennedy Space Center on Cape Canaveral, Florida. This marked the Elon Musk-founded company’s first launch for the Air Force. The uncrewed plane is headed off on a super secret mission that’s scheduled to last 270 days, though the Air Force cryptically warned ... Read More »

The Mars rover has found boron, providing further evidence that the conditions from which life might potentially have grown may have existed on ancient Mars, and independent from conditions on Earth. “Because borates may play an important role in making RNA—one of the building blocks of life—finding boron on Mars further opens the possibility that life could have once arisen ... Read More »