EverythingScience

We finally have a solid lead on one of space’s most mysterious signals Where do fast radio bursts come from? Fast radio bursts (FRBs) are among the most explosive and mysterious signals ever detected from space. They only last milliseconds, but in that short period of time, they generate as much energy as the Sun does in an entire day. And we have no idea where they come from. Until now, we've detected just a handful of the strange events, and only ever through radio wave emissions. But for the first time, researchers say they've now spotted a huge burst of gamma rays - high-energy waves on the opposite end of the electromagnetic spectrum to radio waves - that corresponds with an FRB. Image Full Story Brought to you by @EverythingScience Join our chat: @EverythingScienceChat

Why scientists say dark energy could have just disappeared (Video) Where did it go? You might have read the headlines a few weeks ago about a controversial study that found evidence that the Universe might not actually be expanding at an accelerating rate. The paper was big news for the scientific community. Not only are our future projections about the Universe based on the idea that it's expanding faster and faster, but so is the entire concept of dark energy - the hypothetical force that scientists think is pushing the Universe apart faster than gravity can pull it back in. In other words, if the Universe isn't actually expanding at an accelerating rate, did dark energy just disappear? Video Full Story Brought to you by @EverythingScience Join our chat: @EverythingScienceChat

Feeling inspired? Have an idea to discuss? Or just want to ask a science question? Join our chat! @EverythingScienceChat

Scientists have measured the smallest fragment of time ever We just witnessed an electron escaping an atom. Our understanding of time and the world around us just got way more precise. Physicists have successfully measured changes in an atom on the level of zeptoseconds. That's a trillionth of a billionth of a second - the smallest fragment of time ever observed. With this new level of detail, they were able to measure the entire process of an electron escaping its atom for the first time, in a stunning test of Einstein's photoelectric effect. The photoelectric effect was first proposed by Albert Einstein in 1905, and occurs when particles of light, known as photons, strike the electrons orbiting an atom. According to quantum mechanics, the energy from these photons is either absorbed entirely by one electron, or divided among a few of them. But until now, no one has been able to study this process in enough detail to know for sure how it's decided. The end result is that an electron is sent flying from the bonds of its parent atom in an incredibly rapid process. Previous research has shown that the whole thing from start to finish takes between 5 and 15 attoseconds (10-18 seconds). But before this, researchers had only been able to measure in detail what happened after the electron fled its atom. Now a team led by the Max Planck Institute of Quantum Optics in Germany has been able to see the other side of the process for the first time - and measure what happens in the tiny amount of time before the electron leaves the atom. Image Full Story Brought to you by @EverythingScience

This world-first brain implant is letting a 'locked-in' woman communicate Paralysis is about to get a whole lot less lonely. A paralysed woman in the Netherlands is the first to be fitted with a new type of brain implant that allows patients who cannot speak or move to communicate using nothing but their thoughts. The new implant, which works with a computer interface to help her spell out words and sentences, can be used anywhere, allowing her to communicate with people in the outside world, without medical experts on hand to help. "This is a world first," neuroscientist and lead researcher Nick Ramsay, from the University Medical School Utrecht, told CNN. "It's a fully implantable system that works at home without need for any experts to make it work." Image Full Story Brought to you by @EverythingScience

Diver Finds Long-Lost Nuke While Hunting Sea Cucumbers A man diving off the coast of British Columbia, Canada, may have stumbled upon a nuclear weapon that the United States lost decades ago. Now, the Royal Canadian Navy is scoping out the strange object to see if it is indeed a Mark IV bomb that was jettisoned by an American pilot in 1950 just before his plane crashed. The man, Sean Smyrichinsky, was using an underwater scooter to hunt for sea cucumbers near Pitt Island, when he came upon a weird bagel-shaped object. After straying from his boat, he came upon a bizarre object that looked a bit like a half-cut bagel the size of a king-sized bed, he told CBC. "I came out from the dive and I came up and I started telling my crew, 'My god, I found a UFO. I found the strangest thing I'd ever seen!' Smyrichinsky told CBC. "It resembled, like, a bagel cut in half, and then around the bagel these bowls molded into it." Image Full Story Brought to you by @EverythingScience

A Mysterious Unidentified Object Crashes in Myanmar A large, unidentified metal object fell from the sky Thursday (Nov. 10) in the remote mountainous region of Myanmar. The cylindrical object, which is about 12 feet (3.7 meters) long and 5 feet in diameter, blasted into the village of Lone Khin, near a jade mine. Villagers woke early in the morning to a loud boom and vibrations, when the object fell to the ground. Though no one was injured, the UFO ripped through a jade miner's tent, and afterwards, the smell of burning filled the air, according to The Myanmar Times. "Initially, we thought it was a battle. The explosion made our houses shake. We saw the smoke from our village," Lone Khin villager Daw Ma Kyi told The Myanmar Times. At first glance, the object looks like it may have come from an aircraft. "I think it was an engine because I found a diode and many copper wires at the tail of the body," villager Ko Maung Myo told The Myanmar Times. "It also looks like a jet engine block." However, government officials say that they haven't identified the object and are sending experts to examine it. One former government official with the Department of Aviation said that the image shown on Facebook of the metal "UFO" looked more like a rocket booster than part of a commercial plane. Image Full Story Brought to you by @EverythingScience

The Zoo Hypothesis: Are aliens avoiding Earth? In 1950, physicist Enrico Fermi asked a very important question over lunch at the Los Alamos National Laboratory. Based on the number of galaxies we know exist, how many stars are inside those galaxies, and how many planets potentially orbit those stars, probability states that there should be alien life. So, where is everybody? This question - known as the Fermi Paradox - raised a lot of eyebrows, because it’s a logical thought when considering just how vast our Universe is. While there are many different hypotheses out there that attempt to concoct an answer, one of the best and most thought-provoking is the zoo hypothesis. The zoo hypothesis was thought up in 1973 by MIT radio astronomer John Ball. He posited that, yes, there might well be intelligent aliens out there, but maybe they are simply ignoring us, forcing us to live in a cosmic 'zoo' or wildlife sanctuary where they can monitor our activity without disturbing it. In other words, the hypothesis assumes that alien life is out there, but it's so advanced, it either does not want to influence our primitive society, or it knows not to get involved with other intelligent lifeforms. Image Full Story Brought to you by @EverythingScience

DNews (Youtube) Why People Who Smoke Look Old ➖ @everythingscience ➖

These incredible brothers become paralysed when the Sun sets each day During the day, 13-year-old Shoaib Ahmed and his 9-year-old brother Abdul Rasheed are like any other kids - they go outside, walk, and play with their friends. But when the sun sets, the Pakistani brothers become paralysed, and are unable to move or speak again until the sun rises. It's the first known report of these symptoms, and doctors have no idea what's causing them. Image Full Story Brought to you by @EverythingScience

Accelerating cancer research with deep learning Despite steady progress in detection and treatment in recent decades, cancer remains the second leading cause of death in the United States, cutting short the lives of approximately 500,000 people each year. A research team has focused on creating software that can quickly identify valuable information in cancer reports, an ability that would not only save time and worker hours but also potentially reveal overlooked avenues in cancer research. Image Full Story Brought to you by @EverythingScience

DNews (Youtube) Why Some Animals Eat Their Own Young ➖ @everythingscience ➖

Telescope pointed at newly discovered planet Proxima b in search for aliens A giant dish telescope in Australia has been pointed towards a red dwarf star 4.2 light years away as part of a major new search for intelligent alien life. The Parkes radio telescope, in New South Wales, was aimed towards Proxima Centauri which was recently shown to have an Earth-sized planet in an orbit suitable for life. Scientists will use the 210ft telescope to scan a host of radio frequencies looking for signals from an extraterrestrial civilisation. Image Full Story Brought to you by @EverythingScience

DNews (Youtube) How We Know Europe's Mars Lander Crashed ➖ @everythingscience ➖

For the first time, a wireless brain implant has enabled paralysed primates to walk again Absolutely incredible. Scientists have used a wireless brain implant to bypass the spinal cord injuries of two paralysed rhesus macaques, giving them the ability to walk again. The system – which wirelessly transmits decoded brain signals to stimulate the muscles responsible for leg movement – represents the first time a neural prosthetic has restored locomotion in a primate. While the brain-spinal interface has only been tested on macaques so far, the team behind the research says one day the technology could help restore the ability to walk in humans paralysed by spinal cord injuries. Image Full Story Brought to you by @EverythingScience

Kurzgesagt – In a Nutshell (Youtube) Fusion Energy Explained – Future or Failure ➖ @everythingscience ➖

DNews (Youtube) Why We Can’t Always Trust DNA Evidence ➖ @everythingscience ➖

The Universe might rip itself apart until there's nothing left, new study suggests Is this how it ends? When it comes to the end of the Universe, most physicists think it will gradually get colder and fade out of existence, at the earliest, 2.8 billion years from now. But it might not be so simple. Calculations have shown that dark energy could cause the Universe to gradually tear itself apart until there's nothing left. And now a new study has provided a closer examination of what that fate might look like. It's not the first time that this possibility of the Universe ripping itself apart has been put forward. Our current understanding of the Universe is that around 68 percent of its energy is dark energy - a mysterious force that's gradually accelerating the expansion of the Universe. Image Full Story Brought to you by @EverythingScience

Genetically engineering disease-fighting cells The human body produces T cells to recognize and fight disease. Each T cell has a unique T cell receptor (or TCR) on its surface that surveils small fragments of proteins presented by other cells. Upon detecting evidence of cancer or infection, a subset of T cells binds the diseased cells and orchestrates their elimination. When tumors and infections cannot be eradicated naturally, researchers employ immunotherapies to boost the immune system's effectiveness. By inserting genes encoding a tumor-specific TCR into a patient's T cells, researchers can engineer a large population of T cells to target tumor cells. This approach, called TCR gene therapy, has yielded clinical successes where conventional cancer treatments have failed. However, TCR gene therapy is not without risk. The introduced receptor can become tangled with the resident receptor in each engineered T cell, causing some of these cells to attack healthy cells. A new technique developed by Caltech researchers prevents this from happening, increasing the safety of TCR gene therapy. Image Full Story Brought to you by @EverythingScience

DNews (Youtube) How Your Heart Actually Controls Your Emotions ➖ @everythingscience ➖