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ScienceBiologyScientists Sequence Human Genome With Handheld USB Device
Scientists reported this week that they have sequenced and assembled the human genome using a pocket-sized sequencer for the first time. The researchers accomplished their feat using the MinION nanopore sequencer, reading almost a hundred billion base pairs of data and analyzing huge chunks of DNA. The product is targeted towards scientists, mainly, but costs … Continued
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ScienceBiologyEveryone Is Saying This Orca Is ‘Talking,’ but IDK, Sounds More Like Farting to Me
There’s a killer whale in France that apparently has a special talent: It sounds like it can mimic human words. That certainly would be impressive and an exciting advancement of human-orca relations, but to my ears, the “words” sound a whole lot like fart noises. Scientists in Europe and Chile announced that they’d trained a … Continued
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SciencePhysics & Chemistry
Multiverse Thought Experiment Suggests Life Could Still Exist Under Different Laws of Physics
Perhaps we’re not alone but instead reside in a multiverse stocked with all sorts of fantastical realms. These other universes are somewhat—but not exactly—like our own. Maybe gravity acts differently, or particles come in different shapes and sizes. Could life still exist in any of these bubbles? A team of researchers at the University of … Continued
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ScienceSpace & SpaceflightMoon to Be Slightly More Moon-y for Some People Tomorrow
At my last job, we used to talk about how the only way to avoid disappointment was by setting clear expectations. In the case of the “Super Blue Blood Moon,” the rest of the internet has set the expectations: that you’ll see it. But for many, that’s not the reality. I know that everyone is … Continued
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Tech News
Scientists Are Reviewing Amazon Products the Way They Actually Use Them
Scientists are just like us: They buy things on Amazon. The difference is what they actually use their purchases for. That’s the basis behind science’s hashtag-du-jour, #ReviewForScience, in which researchers write reviews for everyday products—the way they really use them. It all began with Scottish Ph.D student Robyn Womack noticing writer John Birch’s Amazon review … Continued
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ScienceBiology
Frog Species Breaks Record for Most Sex Chromosomes in a Vertebrate
You may have learned in school that humans have 23 pairs of chromosomes: 22 “autosomes” and their partners, which contain pretty much the same genes and in the same order, plus one pair of sex chromosomes that lead to the differentiation in sexual traits. But enough about us. The Amazonian Leptodactylus pentadactylus (smoky jungle frog) … Continued
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SciencePhysics & Chemistry
What’s the Speed of Dark Matter?
Based on physicists’ measurements, most of the mass in the universe is actually taken up by dark matter. Whatever this stuff is, we can see its effects on the behavior of distant galaxies, though no experiment has detected it here on Earth. Doing so probably requires knowing how fast it moves. That’s a puzzle that … Continued
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ScienceBiologyThe ‘Shower Rat’ Is Very Obviously Not Showering [Update: Also, It’s Not a Rat]
It’s very easy to look at an animal mimicking a human-like behavior and think “Wow! That animal is doing a human thing! It looks so cute and happy” (because humans are so cute and happy, right?) That is almost never the case. If an animal looks weird, it probably is weird—and not in a good … Continued
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ScienceBiology
Holy Crap These Leech Cocoons Are Incredible
Nature’s beauty can originate from the most unlikely places. Take leech cocoons, the sacks in which leeches lay their eggs. They have an incredible solid-foam surface, as the image below shows: A team of researchers at Rutgers University, Camden (and one scientist from Turkey) took a look at these structures to figure out how they … Continued
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ScienceBiology
Parisian Zoo Recaptures 50 Escaped Hostages
The Vincennes Zoo in Paris was evacuated Friday morning after a group of 50 hostages revolted against their captors. The Guardian reports: About 50 baboons were reported to have got out and congregated around the Grand Rocher, the fake rock centrepiece of the zoo, on Friday morning. Most had been rounded up and sent back … Continued
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Tech News
Sex Researcher Thinks Many ‘Cuck’-Obsessed Conservatives Harbor Private Cuckoldry Fantasies
After a spat about a news story endorsing cuckoldry, a sex researcher suggested on Twitter yesterday that many male conservatives are using “faux scorn” to hide their personal fantasies of having other men sleep with their partners. The saga began on Thursday when CNN published a story titled “Cuckolding can be positive for some couples, … Continued
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Tech NewsDesignThis Trippy Music Video Is Made of 3D Fractals
What you’re watching isn’t organic, but a computer-generated visualization of complex mathematics. It’s a three-dimensional fractal. The clip is a new music video for the song “Eternal Recurrence” by electronic music group Birds of Paradise, created by Dutch fractal artist Julius Horsthuis. Producing the visuals to accompany the soundscape required rendering mathematical formulas in the … Continued
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SciencePhysics & Chemistry
Scientists Think Dark Matter Could Be Causing Long-Standing Neutron Measurement Problem
You probably know that atoms contain neutrons. But there’s a strange, long-standing discrepancy plaguing one of the neutron’s most basic measurements—something that a pair of scientists think might have to do with dark matter, the mysterious substance that supposedly accounts more than five times the amount of mass in the universe as regular matter does. … Continued
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ScienceSpace & Spaceflight
We Might Need to Redefine ‘Planet’ Again
You may think you know what a planet is, but celestial bodies often refuse to fully comply with our artificial human labels. We all thought tiny Pluto was a planet, until the 2006 vote in which the International Astronomical Union (IAU) redefinition stripped it of its title. But when is something officially too big to … Continued
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Tech News
Even the Tuna Conservationists Want a Piece of This Blockchain Action
It seems like everyone is getting into blockchain these days. After all, companies claim to like “transparency,” “security,” and anything to do with the rollercoaster ride that is bitcoin. But consider this: tuna. There are now several blockchain-based projects that aim to stop illegal tuna fishing, according to a post on The Conversation by Candice … Continued
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Tech News
Fool’s Gold Suggests Ancient Life in ‘Oxygen Oases’ Far Before There Was Atmospheric Oxygen
You wouldn’t survive a stint on the hellish early Earth that existed between 2.5 billion and 4 billion years ago. There was almost no breathable free oxygen, for one thing. But scientists may have located an ancient oxygen oasis that existed prior to whatever event first oxygenated our atmosphere. A team of researchers analyzed pyrite, … Continued
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ScienceSpace & Spaceflight
This Picture of Jupiter’s Swirly Blue Pole Is Magnificent
I’m not usually one of those “check out this beautiful planet photo” people (jk, I am). But seriously, the images coming from the citizen scientists looking at Juno data are all incredible. I’m not sure how this latest one can even be real. I mean, yeah, of course it’s real. You’re looking at the planet’s … Continued
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ScienceSpace & Spaceflight
NASA Runs Successful First Tests of Compact Nuclear Reactor for Mars Base
If humans have any hope of sticking around on Mars for longer than a few days, they’ll need some form of power to sustain themselves. A successful test in Nevada has demonstrated that that power could be nuclear. NASA and the U.S. Department of Energy successfully performed their initial tests on a miniature nuclear power … Continued
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Tech News
Test of Einstein’s Theory Confirms the Sun Is Losing Mass
The best planet, Mercury, is in the midst of telling us something important about our sun: It’s losing mass. Mercury, the closest planet to the sun, has a history of helping us study gravity. Albert Einstein demonstrated that Newton’s laws of motion break down when dealing with very large masses. He created his theory of … Continued
Ryan F. Mandelbaum
Ryan F. Mandelbaum's posts