Universe

Every few hundred thousand years, Earth’s magnetic field flips, and considering the huge impact that would have on everything from satellite systems to electrical grids, scientists are very keen to work out when the next one might be. Hopefully it won’t be for a while yet, according to the latest study – by analysing recent […]

Plastic has been plagued with some bad press in the weeks leading up to Earth Day, which takes place Sunday, April 22, from a sperm whale that washed ashore in Spain with 64 pounds of plastic in its body to a 600,000 square mile area in the Pacific Ocean rife with trash. Both headlines drew […]

Last year, President Trump vowed that the US would remain a global leader in space exploration. As part of the effort to reclaim “America’s proud destiny in space,” Trump promised to return humans to the moon. Yet despite these grandiose plans, NASA has cancelled the only lunar robotic rover under development. On April 23, lunar […]

Scientists have found a way to trick the brain into thinking that it’s sensing something that it isn’t. Using flashes of light to control neurons, researchers believe they can “copy and paste” real brain activity, paving the way for a future in which we can edit memories, delete pain or insert a non-existent image. The […]

(DUBAI, United Arab Emirates) — A mummified body discovered near the site of a former royal mausoleum in Iran may be the remains of Reza Shah Pahlavi, the founder of the Pahlavi dynasty and the father of the country’s last shah. The recent find of the gauze-wrapped body — and the speculation it triggered — […]

Let’s stop pretending, shall we? Because really, we’re not fooling anyone. Uranus is funny. It was funny when you were twelve, and it’s funny now. It was certainly funny when I was a boy and went to a space-themed summer camp where all the bunks were named after planets and Uranus happened to be where […]

(BERLIN) — The European Space Agency is releasing the most detailed star chart yet for the Milky Way and neighboring galaxies. The data released Wednesday include high-precision measurements of almost 1.7 billion stars collected by the space agency’s Gaia probe, which was launched in 2013. It follows the release two years ago of a smaller […]

There may be nearly twice as many gorillas in the world than previously thought, a new study reveals. Published in the journal Science Advances, the decade-long survey determined that there may be 361,900 gorillas in western equatorial Africa, higher than the earlier estimates of 150,000 to 250,000, the Guardian reports. However, gorillas remain critically endangered […]

People looking toward the stars on Monday night will have a chance to see a nearly full moon alongside Jupiter, one of the brightest planets in the solar system. There was a full moon on Sunday night. While it’s now technically a waning gibbous, the moon will still look full to the Earthly eye on […]