Science

Scientists have been trying to turn hydrogen into metal for the past 80 years. Now they may have actually done it, or so a team of scientists at Harvard University claim. Thomas D. Cabot Professor of the Natural Sciences Isaac Silvera and postdoctoral fellow Ranga Dias have long sought the material, called atomic metallic hydrogen. In addition to helping scientists answer …

A northern fur seal pup rescued off the coast of Vancouver Island is being nursed back to health at Vancouver Aquarium. The aquarium says the seals are usually found 20 to 150 kilometres offshore in B.C. during their feeding season between January and June, but the seven-month-old pup was spotted by the shores near the Ahousaht First Nation where there …

A new video from NASA allows space enthusiasts to land on Pluto, all without leaving their couch. It was in July 2015 that the New Horizons probe whizzed by Pluto, revealing an extensive catalogue of images and details of the dwarf planet that had never been seen up until that point. Most notably, the scientific community and the general public …

Scientists at the University of Alberta have conducted the first-ever study to use hydraulic fracturing fluids to examine effects on aquatic animals, such as rainbow trout. Horizontal drilling with high-volume hydraulic fracturing is a practice used globally for extracting oil and gas from tight reservoirs. Hydraulic fracturing uses large quantities of water and poses many environmental hazards in water, from …

To celebrate the robot’s birthday, NASA/JPL made this charmingly dorky video that outlines all the ways Opportunity has become teenager-like, which mostly has to do with increased autonomy, overconfidence, and a compulsion to send pictures electronically at all times. The golf-cart-size Opportunity rover landed on Mars on the night of Jan. 24, 2004, a few weeks after its twin, Spirit, …

A team of researchers from the Scripps Research Institute in La Jolla, California have created a lab organism that has been modified to add two more letters, giving it a genetic code of six letters. The team, whose work is published in the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences (PNAS) journal, have shown that their single-celled organism can hold …

The origin of hunting behavior may come from two sets of neurons tucked deep in the forebrain of most vertebrates, a new Yale University research suggests. Activating these neurons in living mice prompt them to pursue never-seen-before prey and to bite everything in their path, even sticks and bottle caps, the researchers report in the Jan. 12 issue of the …

A six million year old fossil belonging to a previously unknown giant otter species has been discovered and digitally reconstructed by US paleontologists working in China. The huge otter would have weighed about 110 pounds, and lived about 6.24 million years ago, according to a new report. The fossilized remains of this now-extinct ancient otter— one of the largest otters …

The spectacular first images from NOAA’s powerful new GOES-16 satellite were released Monday, providing the most vivid look yet at our hemisphere from a geostationary weather satellite. The pictures from its Advanced Baseline Imager (ABI) instrument, built by Harris Corporation, show a full-disc view of the Western Hemisphere in high detail — at four times the image resolution of existing …

A female zebra shark named Leonie in Australia has shocked scientists by producing three offspring after spending years away from her male partner. Subsequent analysis found that she had simply developed the ability to do it all on her own.. Researchers with Australia’s University of Queensland (UQ) observed the change at the Reef HQ Aquarium and have documented it in …

‘Fairy circles’ have long been one of nature’s greatest mysteries, prompting wild theories they were created by aliens or legendary gods. These images show the vast areas that are covered by the mysterious fairy circles that pock the grassy desert of Namibia and why they have captivated the imaginations of visitors to the region. Scientists have long debated how these …