The Parkes radio telescope “heard” the first fast radio burst in 2001. Could bursts actually be going off every second? (Credit: CSIRO) Fast radio bursts (FRBs) are one of the hottest topics in astronomy right now. These short but extremely powerful bursts last only milliseconds, but release tremendous amounts of energy during that minute period of time. Since publication of their initial discovery in 2007 (the burst itself occurred in 2001), just over 25 of these sources have been ...read more

Like many people, I was first introduced to the world of archaeology by Indiana Jones, that adventuresome character who lit up the big screen rescuing artifacts from villains by the skin of his teeth. Indy was awesome and will always have a place in my heart. But while he succeeded in making archaeology seem romantic, I never understood why it was important or believed I could join the adventure until I was introduced (via the small screen) to a real life archaeologist named Sarah Parcak. Parcak ...read more

(Credit: Shutterstock) Where there’s a will, there’s a way, and hackers have plenty of will and countless ways to attack a secure network—even if it’s not connected to the internet. In the latest demonstration proving no network is safe, researchers at Ben-Gurion University of the Negev used security cameras equipped with night vision to send and receive data from a network that wasn’t even connected to the internet. Firewalls, intrusion detection and prevention s ...read more

Ivan Ivanovich’s face obscured by the sign proclaiming him a dummy. via Astronautix The countryside near Perm in the Soviet Union was rocketed by what sounded like an explosion in the afternoon of March 25, 1961. A capsule was falling from the sky, and before it hit the ground an ejection seat shot out, sending a passenger to a soft landing not far away. When recovery crews and volunteer helpers finally reached the landing site they rushed to the lifeless figure lying on the snowy gr ...read more

Mount Hora in Malawi, where researcher Jessica Thompson obtained the oldest African DNA ever successfully sequenced. (Credit Jessica Thompson/Emory University) A great irony about Africa is that, even though it’s the birthplace of our species, we know almost nothing about the prehistoric populations who lived there: the bands of hunter gatherers who moved across the massive continent, interacting with and sometimes replacing other groups. Today that changes. Thanks to new research th ...read more

A global map from NASA of how Earth’s surface temperatures last month departed from the 1951-1980 August average. (Source: NASA GISTEMP. Note: part of Antarctica is gray because data from some stations there were not yet available at the time of this analysis.) Last month was among the very warmest on record, according to two new analyses – and the heat is very likely to continue. With less than four months left to go in 2017,  the year will probably come in as second ...read more

Have researchers been as wrong about the dinosaur diet as famed illustrator Charles Knight was about hadrosaurs in this rather sketchy 1897 rendering? Duckbilled dinosaurs like this fella usually put four on the floor, and no dino dragged its tail or had the sprawling posture shown here. (Credit American Museum of Natural History) Like that vegetarian friend of yours who sneaks a piece of bacon when no one’s looking, it appears that at least some dinosaurs previously though ...read more