ScIence

Wow! Lightning illuminates beautiful thunderstorm over Pacific Ocean

A towering thunderstorm lights up the night skies over Panama, as seen at 37,000 feet. (Photo by Santiago Borja.) A pilot of a Boeing 767 captured a stunning photograph of a thunderstorm billowing over the Pacific Ocean last month. First Officer Santiago Borja snapped the photo from the cockpit as the plane was passing near Panama at 37,000 feet en route to South America, he told Angela Fr

Mind-Blowing Cloud Formations You Probably Haven’t Seen Before

Various cloud formations might be one of the most beautiful and romantic sights in nature. Still, these masses of liquid droplets is also a complex and scientifically interesting natural phenomenon. The interesting fact is that regardless of the shape and the looks of the cloud, they’re all made of the same thing – condensed water or ice. When the sun heats the ground, warm air starts to evapo

With 194 BILLION masks and gloves used monthly, new wave of pollution hits oceans and beaches

A new, sad side effect of the pandemic is millions of pieces of discarded personal protective equipment (PPE) that is littering the planet in shocking ways. When the COVID-19 pandemic swept across the world earlier this year, plunging much of the world into lockdown conditions, it seemed that nature was finally being given a major breather – so much so that breathless stories spread across

Multiple underground water reservoirs discovered on Mars, new study finds

A number of liquid bodies have been found on Mars, raising the tantalizing possibility that liquid water could exist on the Red Planet long believed to be desolate and hostile to life. A number of liquid bodies have been found on Mars, raising the tantalizing possibility that liquid water could exist on the Red Planet long believed to be desolate and hostile to life. A major new study publis

Astronomers Detect a Huge Gas Giant Orbiting a Much Smaller Dead Star

Astronomers have discovered a planet the size of Jupiter closely orbiting the smouldering remains of a dead star, the first time that an intact exoplanet has been discovered travelling around a white dwarf, according to research published Wednesday. Researchers said the fate of this giant planet, called WD 1586 b, offers a potential vision of our own Solar System when the Sun eventually ages in

Dust Determined The Early Rise of Human Civilisations More Than You’d Suspect

The spread of humans out of Africa through the Middle East may have been helped along by a very ordinary substance: dust. More specifically, the silty sediment known as loess seems to have played a crucial role in making the Southern Levant, on the east coast of the Mediterranean, such a fertile and hospitable corridor of land for our ancestors to travel through. Without this region developi

IBM Just Committed to Having a Functioning 1,000 Qubit Quantum Computer by 2023

We're still a long way from realising the full potential of quantum computing, but scientists are making progress all the time – and as a sign of what might be coming, IBM now says it expects to have a 1,000 qubit machine up and running by 2023. Qubits are the quantum equivalents of classical computing bits, able to be set not just as a 1 or a 0, but as a superposition state that can represen

This Year’s Atlantic Hurricane Season Is So Bad We Ran Out of Names Two Storms Ago

Here's how active this year's Atlantic hurricane season has been: When Tropical Storm Wilfred formed on September 18, the National Hurricane Center exhausted its list of storm names for only the second time since naming began in 1950. Within hours, two more storm had formed – now known as Alpha and Beta. Even more surprising is that we reached the 23rd tropical storm of the year, Beta, mor

“It’s a spaceship!” New Jersey UFO in viral videos turns out to be your basic Goodyear blimp

As it turns out, the “unidentified flying object” hovering over the Garden State was quite identifiable, and common – it was a simple Goodyear blimp. Widely-shared videos that purportedly depict a “spaceship” or UFO flying through New Jersey skies on Monday seemed to confirm that 2020 is shaping up to be quite the apocalyptic year. But as it turns out, the “unidentified flying ob

15 Of The Most Breathtaking Astronomy Photographs Of The Year 2020 Have Just Been Revealed

Is there anything more breathtaking and surreal than outer space? Often, I feel like there absolutely isn't. Maybe it's because of all the celestial masterpieces stars, galaxies, and planets paint, effortlessly sweeping us off our feet? Or maybe we feel this way about space because it's something we can't touch, tame, or change? Or perhaps, it's because of that nostalgic feeling you get when it's