Elephants inhale water at 330 mph

 Posted on January 12, 2023  |  4 minutes  |  717 words  |  Fernande Dalal

Elephants' trunks suck a lot — and that's a good thing. Powerful suction allows elephants to deftly grasp small and delicate pieces of food, even fragile tortilla chips that would otherwise be crushed or fumbled by the grip of their muscular trunks. High-speed video recently revealed that this suction success stems from the forcefulness of elephant inhalation. Researchers calculated that elephants can inhale at speeds of over 336 mph (540 km/h), which is more than 30 times the speed of expelled air during a human sneeze (about 10 mph or 16 km/h) and faster than a Japan Rail bullet train (199 mph or 320 km/h, according to Japan Rail). [Read More]

Galaxy Group 13 Billion Light-Years Away Could Be Ending the Cosmic 'Dark Ages' Before Our Eyes

 Posted on January 12, 2023  |  3 minutes  |  558 words  |  Arica Deslauriers

For hundreds of millions of years after the Big Bang, the entire universe was a thick soup of hydrogen atoms swimming in total blackness. So dense was this cosmic goulash that the first light from the first stars in existence couldn't penetrate it — the hydrogen fog simply absorbed and scattered the starlight in circles, trapping the universe in a cosmic dark age as ever more stars, galaxies and black holes slowly smoldered to life. [Read More]

Gallery of Dead Sea Scrolls: A Glimpse of the Past

 Posted on January 12, 2023  |  2 minutes  |  328 words  |  Patria Henriques

The Great Isaiah ScrollThe Great Isaiah Scroll is one of the original seven Dead Sea Scrolls discovered in Qumran in 1947. It is the best preserved of the scrolls, and is nearly complete. The Great Isaiah Scroll, TranslatedAt the Israel Museum's website, mousing over the Great Isaiah Scroll provides an English translation of the text. The Temple ScrollThe Temple scroll is the thinnest of the Dead Sea Scrolls. Discovered in 1956, it contains God's instructions on how to run the Temple. [Read More]

Giant Armadillos Create Homes for Other Animals

 Posted on January 12, 2023  |  4 minutes  |  716 words  |  Mittie Cheatwood

Like phantoms of the Amazon, giant armadillos are barely known and rarely seen, as they dig deep burrows to hide themselves during the day and only come out at night. Growing up to 5 feet (1.5 meters) long from snout to tail, these armadillos are always on the move, and generally only stay in their 16-foot-deep (5 m) holes for two nights before excavating new ones. New research shows that these burrows are surprisingly important for other animal communities in the area and provide shelter for at least 25 other species, from tortoises to lesser anteaters. [Read More]

Is the Personal Robot Finally Here?

 Posted on January 12, 2023  |  4 minutes  |  722 words  |  Patria Henriques

She's a personal assistant, photographer, butler and home security guard all in one — and she's a robot. Robotbase, a robotics company headquartered in New York City, is developing a personal robot that can perform a variety of daily functions at home or at work— everything from turning on lights to managing social calendars. The bot can even read a bedtime story to your kids, and adjust the color of the room's lighting based on the story's mood, the makers said. [Read More]

People See Odd Numbers as Male, Even as Female

 Posted on January 12, 2023  |  5 minutes  |  920 words  |  Mittie Cheatwood

Gender is so fundamental to the way we understand the world that people are prone to assign a sex to even inanimate objects. We all know someone, or perhaps we are that person, who consistently refers to their computer or car with a gender pronoun ("She's been running great these past few weeks!") New research suggests that our tendency to see gender everywhere even applies to abstract ideas such as numbers. Across cultures, people see odd numbers as male and even numbers as female. [Read More]

Scientists discover exotic new mineral forged in the furnace of a Russian volcano

 Posted on January 12, 2023  |  3 minutes  |  494 words  |  Trudie Dory

Volcanoes rank among the most destructive and awe-inspiring phenomena on the planet. But these fiery fissures do much more than just destroy. They also create. In a new study, researchers in Russia report the discovery of one such creation – an unusual mineral never before documented by scientists: an alluring, vibrantly blue-and-green crystallized substance the team have called petrovite. The mineral was found in the volcanic landscape of Russia's far east, atop the Tolbachik volcano in the Kamchatka Peninsula. [Read More]

Some Sharks Take Aim and Go Miles for a Meal

 Posted on January 12, 2023  |  2 minutes  |  411 words  |  Arica Deslauriers

Sharks aren't relegated to swimming randomly in search of prey to chomp on. New research indicates two species — tiger sharks and thresher sharks — somehow orient themselves and navigate toward a target across long distances. It's not clear how those sharks orient themselves, but they appear to intentionally travel long distances. Thresher sharks travel from under a half-mile to 1.2 miles (400 to 1,900 meters), while tiger sharks make journeys of at least 3. [Read More]

Swarms of CICADA Drones Could Aid Hurricane Research

 Posted on January 12, 2023  |  2 minutes  |  422 words  |  Arica Deslauriers

Researchers are developing a tiny, gliding drone that can be dropped from airplanes to gather data directly from hurricanes, and these teensy machines share a name with a noisy spring-emerging insect. Close-in Covert Autonomous Disposable Aircraft MK5, or CICADA, is "essentially a flying circuit board," an autonomous, GPS-controlled drone so inexpensive to make that it would be considered disposable after a single use, representatives of the U.S. Naval Research Laboratory (NRL) said in a statement. [Read More]

1 in 10 Sober People Have Cocaine or Heroin on Their Fingertips

 Posted on January 11, 2023  |  4 minutes  |  696 words  |  Fernande Dalal

There's a lot of cocaine and heroin in the world, and there's a pretty good chance you've got a tiny bit of it on your body right now — even if you've never knowingly touched the stuff. That's the conclusion of a new paper published in the journal Clinical Chemistry today (March 22), which found that 13 percent of drug-free study participants had traces of the drugs on their fingertips. The participants, residents of the United Kingdom tested at the University of Surrey, didn't have enough heroin or cocaine on their fingers for it to be visible, and certainly not enough to get them (or anyone) high. [Read More]