Science

Researchers have recently discovered a 2,300-year-old sword from an ancient tomb in Xinyang city, Henan Province. The sword is thought to come from the time of the Warring States, which was a period of 250 years between 475 BC and 221BC which saw numerous fierce wars fought between the eight states of the Zhou Dynasty.

China unveiled its most ambitious project ever yet as the country plans to land on the moon by 2018 and orbit Mars by 2020. This is not the first time the country has explored space given that China’s first mission was back in 2003. The ambitious future space travel plans were revealed in a white paper released by the Cabinet’s …

NASA revealed that the NEOWISE mission has found two new near-Earth objects. One is not distinctly an asteroid or comet, and the other is a comet. An object called 2016 WF9 was detected by the NEOWISE project on Nov. 27, 2016. It’s in an orbit that takes it on a scenic tour of our solar system. At its farthest distance …

In the X-Men comic books, Wolverine’s mutant power is an accelerated healing process, allowing him to regenerate damaged tissues within seconds. Now, a new material could see Wolverine’s self-healing talents replicated in real-life. Researchers including several from the University of California, Riverside, have developed a new self-healing substance that regenerates itself opening up the possibility of creating robots that repair …

Researchers are near to bringing back from the dead mythical giant beasts that once stamped through Europe’s forests. Since its inception in 2009, the project, spearheaded by a team of European researchers, has successfully produced 300 calves whose genomes are a combination of present-day cattle DNA together with the genes from aurochs. This intermingling of genomes is the result of …

The carcasses of thousands of sea creatures have mysteriously washed up on the western coast of Nova Scotia. Normally, you’d expect a particular sickness to affect only one species of marine life, retired veterinary pathologist Ted Leighton told the CBC. Whatever this is, it seems almost indiscriminate. “What we know is that around one spot a large number of species …

As NASA prepares to one day send astronauts to Mars, such missions come with a host of engineering and habitability problems, to say the least. Now, the nation’s space-exploration agency has a potential engineering solution that relies on an unexpected building material: ice. Researchers and experts at NASA’s Langley Research Center have came up with a novel, efficient solution that …

The northern lights put on a festive show over northern Canada just before Christmas, and a NASA satellite captured a stunning infrared image of the spectacular display. With the “day-night band” (DNB) of the Visible Infrared Imaging Radiometer Suite (VIIRS), the Suomi NPP satellite acquired this view of the aurora borealis on December 22, 2016. The northern lights stretched across …

The 117th annual Audubon Christmas Bird Count is underway, and residents have a chance to volunteer to gather data about the health of regional birds. In Canada, the counts are added to a database by Bird Studies Canada. In the U.S., the data is collected by the Audubon Society. Started in 1900, the Christmas Bird Count is North America’s longest-running …

Cheetahs, the fastest animal in the world, are on the brink of extinction according a study published Monday in the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences. Just 7,100 cheetahs remain across the globe as the species continues to face a range of threats largely caused by humans The research noted that Asiatic cheetahs have been especially screwed, with one …

Cloud-Aerosol Lidar with Orthogonal Polarization or CALIOP is a giant laser in the sky. No, it won’t eradicate humankind, but it helps us see and understand our oceans better. “CALIOP was a game changer in our thinking about ocean remote sensing from space,” said Chris Hostetler, a research scientist at NASA’s Langley Research Center. “We were able to study the …