When giant fungi ruled the Earth
420 million years ago, a giant feasted on the dead, growing slowly into the largest living thing on land. It belonged to an unlikely group of pioneers that ultimately made life on land possible...
Tagged: science
SpotMini and the rise of creepy robotics
SpotMini is a small four-legged robot that comfortably fits in an office or home. It weighs 30 kg. SpotMini is all-electric and can go for about 90 minutes on a charge, depending on what...
The engineering of the drinking bird
While most references credit Dr. Miles V. Sullivan as the inventor of the drinking bird because he patented it in 1946, the idea of using heat-driven oscillating liquids to repeatedly tip small mechanisms has...
Dissected human nervous system
The nervous system consists of the brain, spinal cord, sensory organs, and all of the nerves that connect these organs with the rest of the body. Together, these organs are responsible for the control...
19kg tumor
A 74-year-old woman who was given four weeks to live because a 19.5kg tumour in her stomach was squashing her vital organs has had it removed. The nail-biting moment doctors carried out the complex...
6 questions about dreaming
Adults dream for about two hours a night, on average—that’s one-twelfth of their lives, adding up to more than six years of dreaming during an 80-year life. World literature is filled with dreams. Dreams play...
Largest prime number discovered
At more than 23m digits long, the number is something of a beast. But for mathematicians, the latest discovery from a global gang of enthusiasts is a thing of beauty: the largest prime number...
Atlas: the humanoid gymnast
Boston Dynamics has released footage of a humanoid robot that can do box jumps and back flips. This is a significant improvement on robot capabilities – despite what years of sci fi movies have suggested,...
Scientists find potential “missing link” in chemistry that led to life on earth
Chemists at The Scripps Research Institute have found a compound that may have been a crucial factor in the origins of life on Earth. Origins-of-life researchers have hypothesized that a chemical reaction called phosphorylation...
‘Monster’ planet discovery challenges formation theory
A giant planet, which should not exist according to planet formation theory, has been discovered around a distant star. The new research is presented in a paper recently accepted for publication in the journal Monthly...