Mischaracterized as the “Atacama Alien,” a mummified skeleton from Chile that’s only six inches long has inspired numerous theories. DNA-based research out today explains the appearance of this unfortunate — and very human — individual. (Credit Bhattacharya S et al. 2018) Smaller than a Barbie doll, with an elongated skull and other anomalies, the mummified skeleton known as “Ata” was found in an abandoned mining town in Chile’s Atacama Desert in ...read more

An Uber self-driving car prototype on the road. Credit: Uber A self-driving Uber accident that killed a homeless woman represents a somber milestone in the development of self-driving car technologies. Now a video of the accident may raise more questions about why the Uber vehicle failed to react to the woman and thereby claimed the life of the first pedestrian victim in self-driving car history. The video released by police shows two views of the accident that took place in Temp ...read more

The MEG helmet. (Credit: Wellcome) When it comes to observing the inner workings of our brains, there are a few ways we can do it. But, for most, bulky machines and carefully controlled environments are the norm. The traditional trade-off researchers face for a glimpse inside the mind is a mind that’s constrained in some fairly unnatural ways. It can make doing research on how the brain works during basic human activities difficult. Researchers from the U.K., however, have found a better ...read more

Human-caused warming is popping the frozen corks that normally bottle up thick sea ice in the Arctic Ocean, allowing it to pour south NASA’s Aqua satellite captured these two views of different sea ice conditions over the Lincoln Sea, a part of the Arctic Ocean north of Greenland and Ellesmere Island. Breakup here happened much earlier than usual in 2017, allowing huge volumes of thick sea ice to pour south through a narrow passage and ultimately into the North Atlantic Ocean. (Image ...read more

(Credit: FCSCAFEINE/Shutterstock) Dreams can feel awfully real when you’re deep in sleep. Perhaps you find a hidden doorway in your home that leads to entirely new rooms and passageways. Maybe you went work in your underwear—yikes. When you wake up, you check your closet for that mysterious doorway; maybe you jolt awake in a cold sweat, instantly relieved you still have plenty of time to properly clothe yourself before leaving the house. Regardless, whatever you were experiencing f ...read more

Select Category Select Tag Select Archive ...read more

Sexual signaling back in the day was as subtle as today’s Axe body spray: “Do I make you horny, baby?” asks Styracosaurus, whose marvelous multi-horn display is among the most elaborate of the ceratopsians. (Credit Wikimedia Commons/LadyofHats) Triceratops to potential mate: “Hey baby, check out my frill and big horns…you know what they say, big horns, big everything, awwwww yeahhhhh…” Apparently, that’s how hook-ups went down in the Mesozoic, a ...read more

(Credit: Martin Hoscik/Shutterstock) Before he died, renowned cosmologist Stephen Hawking submitted a paper, with co-author Thomas Hertog, to an as-yet-unknown journal. The paper deals with the concept of the multiverse and a theory known as cosmic inflation. Though the paper currently exists only in pre-print form, meaning it hasn’t completed the process of peer-review, it’s received a significant amount of coverage. “Stephen Hawking’s last paper,” after all, doe ...read more

Subbing new risks for the current dyes’ dangers? (Credit: Evgeny Savchenko/Shutterstock) Graphene is something of a celebrity in the world of nanoscale materials. Isolated in 2004 by Nobel Prize winners Andre Geim and Konstantin Novoselov, these ultrathin sheets of carbon atoms are already finding novel uses in areas like electronics, high-efficiency heating systems, water purification technologies and even golf balls. According to recent research published in the journal Chem, hair dyes ...read more