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The fossil record reveals the last 3.4 billion years of life on Earth. But before then, when life first emerged, we have next to nothing. The consensus view is that life began in the oceans... but there might be another, weirder, possibility. More »
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The way people discuss the future varies from language to language. Some have a well-defined future tense, while others distinguish much between present and future. But does this point of grammar actually affect how we see the world? More »
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In what can only be described as the most shocking revelation since I learned that tumors can grow teeth, it turns out your pancreas has taste receptors. New research published in the PNAS indicates that there are sweet taste receptors in that organ — and their reaction to fructose may be a cause of diabetes. More »
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This is Ayumu, he's an 11-year-old chimpanzee who lives and trains at Kyoto University's Primate Research Institute. In his time there, Ayumu has come to excel at an incredibly difficult — albeit very straightforward — memorization game. If you challenge him to this game, you will lose. More »
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In the summer of 1997, the US National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration picked up a sound from deep beneath the Pacific. The sound seemed to come from an animal far larger than any we've ever seen. This was the Bloop. More »
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With photosynthesis, plants are already busy converting sunlight into usable energy. The question then is how to use plants' natural solar-power abilities to generate energy for us. In this video, an MIT researcher explains how to do just that. More »
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Neuroscientists have developed a way to listen to words you've heard, by translating brain activity directly into sound. Their findings represent a major step towards understanding how our brains make sense of speech, and are paving the way for brain implants that could one day translate your inner thoughts into audible sentences. More »
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Sure, sugar's bad for you. But should we establish a drinking age for sugary sodas? According to UC San Francisco pediatric endocrinologist Robert Lustig, the answer is emphatically yes. He says that added sweeteners have health effects comparable to alcohol and tobacco, and should be regulated accordingly. In a comment piece for the journal Nature, Lustig and his colleagues argue that the state should selectively block access to sugar, using some pretty stiff rules. More »
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You can learn a lot about an animal by watching it eat, but sometimes scientists are more interested in the creature being eaten — especially when that creature is a human. More »
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Case Western Reserve University biochemist Erik Andrulis has just published a paper about a discovery that goes way beyond the RNA he usually researches. He claims he's discovered the secret to life itself - and it all has to do with energy-spirit things he calls gyres. His 105-page paper is called "Theory of the Origin, Evolution, and Nature of Life," and you can download the whole thing for free from the peer-reviewed journal Life. The problem is that even sympathetic readers found the paper incomprehensible and (worse for scientists) untestable. More »
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What if the male version of the birth control pill wasn't a pill at all? Scientists from the University of North Carolina say a non-oral form of male contraception is on the horizon. According to researchers, all it takes to be effective is a couple blasts of high frequency sound waves...delivered straight to the testicles. More »
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If you want to win over your political adversaries, first make sure you look like a giant baby. According to a slightly bizarre new psychological study, we're way more open to opposing ideas if they come from a baby-faced person. More »
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What if diagnosing salmonella or colorectal cancer was as easy as looking in the toilet? Scientists and designers are collaborating to create a new type of bacteria that beautifies your fecal matter while diagnosing your illness. More »
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What would happen if you tried to survive on just one type of food? The short answer: you would die. Of course, how you died (organ failure, muscle-wasting, rapidly spreading pustular wounds... some combination thereof) would depend entirely on which type of food you decided to ride out your last weeks/months/years of life consuming. More »
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A new study purports to use evolutionary psychology to explain why men fall asleep after sex, and what it actually means. The study is being widely reported as proving that men only fall asleep after sex to avoid giving affection or commitment to their female partners. Or maybe it proves that men who fall asleep after sex really are in love, after all. More »
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Much like bees, dung beetles have a habit of shaking their groove thangs while undertaking that important task of rolling around balls of poop. When they form the ball, they crawl on top of it, and "rotate around their vertical axis". More »
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Ready for the most counter-intuitive piece of medical research you'll hear about today? University of Oklahoma Neuroscientist Junie Warrington and colleagues have discovered that controlled oxygen starvation can reverse radiation induced brain damage in mice. Does this mean that you can cross the atomic wasteland of your bombed-out city safely just by holding your breath? More »
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This video uses your eye's built-in blind spot to trick your brain into making a man's head vanish. I've seen some pretty awesome optical illusion videos in my time, and I'm calling it now: this is the best one yet. More »
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There's an idea that suggests all the universe's electrons are actually one particle forever traveling backwards and forwards in time. It's a simple, elegant idea that solves some of physics's biggest mysteries. There's only one tiny problem. It's complete nonsense. More »
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A study published today in the journal Cancer Cell has put forward something terrifying — that one of our current way of fighting tumors might make them more deadly. The researchers examined anti-angiogenic therapies, or those treatments which cut off blood supplies to tumors, thus making them shrink in size. More »
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WARNING: turn your volume down before watching this video. And while you're at it, go read this post, paying close attention to the parts that address the pitfalls of liquid nitrogen bomb assembly. More »
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At the 1983 Urodynamics Society conference in Las Vegas, pioneering urologist Sir Giles Skey Brindley delivered what was singularly the most uncomfortable lecture in the history of academia. What began as a presentation on the treatment of erectile dysfunction quickly transformed into an unwanted session of show-and-tell. More »
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Humans produce two flammable gases: hydrogen and methane. Flammable gases accumulate in an enclosed space and can ignite. Astronauts are humans who spend lots of time in enclosed space. The logic is irrefutable. So, what's the risk to farting astronauts? More »
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Between political disagreements, economic instability, and climate troubles, you might assume every newspaper is full of bad news. Weirdly enough, the exact opposite is true. No matter what's going on in the real world, English is a perversely positive language. More »
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Chronic pain is one of the hardest ailments to treat. You can keep medicating it forever, but over time people build up a tolerance for painkillers. Many people struggle with chronic pain for years. But today, researchers announced they may have found one way to get rid of at least some types of chronic pain forever. More »
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A fertilized, incubated chicken egg takes about 21 days to hatch; and while most of us have seen what chicks look like at either end of the developmental spectrum (either sunny-side-up in a frying pan or newly hatched in a nature documentary), the fact that egg shells aren't see-through means that not many people have seen what goes on between days 2 and 20. More »
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An attempt to win a small court battle this week has put Mountain Dew in peril of losing a much larger war. PepsiCo, the soft drink's parent company, defended itself against a man who claimed he found a dead mouse in a can of the citrus soda. More »
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Being outside gives us a sense of freedom and spaciousness, and as far as some German engineers are concerned, that means increased work efficiency. That's why they've invented a "dynamic luminous ceiling" that simulates working outside during a clouding day. More »
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Thousands of women have had to get their breast implants removed after a French company, Poly Implant Prothese (PIP), admitted that they had used industrial grade silicone in the implants. Not only was this class of silicone not approved for medical use, but some of it also contained fuel additives. Basically, PIP pumped some plastic bags full of silicone intended for use with fuels and food products - and then sold them as implants. Not surprisingly, the implants had a high breakage rate and many women had to get them removed even before news of the company's misdeeds was made public in 2010. More »
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How realistic are the medical practices in medical-themed romance novels? Dr. Cornelis H. (Kees) Langeveld investigated. Dr. Langeveld chose to publish his results in a medical journal, rather than in a romance novel. His study is: More »
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If you've ever seen strange geometric patterns while on drugs, you might have wondered what on Earth caused you to see these hallucinations. What mechanism is behind this weird effect? More »
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Researchers at the University of Texas Health Science Center at Houston have proved that brains are better at learning at certain periods than others, thanks to analyzing the brains of sea snails. More »
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Earlier this year, we found out that dogs can be trained to successfully detect cancer on the breath of humans — but we're still not sure exactly what smell it is they're responding to. More »
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Brain implantation and manipulation is a mainstay of science fiction. Often, characters can gain extra memory or get smarter, by having chips placed within the brain. (Or you can wind up mind-controlled by a psychopath. It's a mixed bag.) More »
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When I was in elementary school, I was obsessed with the Visible Human Project. The idea that a person could be frozen solid and subsequently sliced from head-to-toe, one-third of a millimeter at a time (a process known as cryosectioning) was almost too incredible for my adolescent brain to handle. More »
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Earlier this month, we told you about a mysterious, potentially biological white web that was found growing on nuclear waste at the Savannah River Site. More »
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The Scientist magazine has helpfully gathered together all the weirdest and worst science scandals of 2011, as well as bringing us updates on some ongoing science trainwrecks that started way back in 2010. Here are a few highlights. More »
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Generally, the future is so chaotic that there's no way of guessing what will come next. But one area is so obvious, so repetitive, so completely and utterly predictable that it's a breeze to guess what's coming next: pop music. More »
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You might think that democracies work best when people care and know about the key issues. But a new study argues that for a democracy to function at all, you need lots of ignorant people blindly siding with the majority. More »
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This is as fascinating as it is unsettling. Scientists at the Department of Energy's Savannah River Site — a nuclear reservation in South Carolina — have identified a strange, cob-web like "growth" (their word, not ours) on the racks of the facility's spent nuclear fuel assemblies. More »
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