PC: Wikipedia, Wilson44691 – Own work, Public Domain About 70 million years ago, during the late Cretaceous period, a year lasted roughly 372 days rather than 365, meaning each day was around half an hour shorter than it is today. The research team examined the growth layers of a single fossilised rudist bivalve, Torreites sanchezi,…
In the middle of the 19th century, sending a message across the Atlantic was still a distant ambition. Telegraph lines had already begun shrinking distances on land, but an ocean presented a different problem. A signal travelling through thousands of miles of cable could arrive so weak that ordinary instruments struggled to detect it. William…
Romania has placed its energy sector under a nationwide 30-day state of alert after the Danube river levels fell to exceptionally low levels. This has forced Unit 1 at the Cernavodă nuclear plant offline and put Unit 2 under continuous review.Emergency river works have kept Unit 2 online for now, but the latest hydrological outlook…
Representative Image (AI-generated) Sixteen years after the Deepwater Horizon oil spill injured extensive coral habitats in the Gulf of Mexico, scientists are developing new ways to help these fragile ecosystems recover. According to NOAA Fisheries, a recent restoration mission combined laboratory-reared corals, specialised technical diving and newly designed equipment to return corals to the deep…
Oyster farmers across Hiroshima Prefecture are pulling up their rafts this season to find that most of what they cultivated has not survived. In several coastal districts, mortality rates have reached as high as 90%, far above the usual seasonal loss of 30% to 50%. Producers in the city of Higashihiroshima have reported losses at…
Not everyone who closes their eyes and hits the bed at night goes to sleep. Some end up transitioning into a dream-like state that has them waking up while feeling hazy, lazy and heavy, with no feelings of rest and freshness. But is it the dreams that weigh you out or does it have something…
Quote of the day by Nikola Tesla (Image: Wikipedia) Every generation grows up surrounded by things that would have seemed genuinely impossible only a few decades earlier. A technology that once amazed an entire population can become so ordinary that people stop noticing it exists at all. Nikola Tesla, the inventor and engineer whose work…
MIT researchers melt resin pellets and spin them into thin, stretchy fibres designed for repeated recycling. MIT engineers have developed a new elastic yarn made from polyethylene that could offer a more recyclable alternative to conventional stretchy fibres such as spandex. The material is designed so its components can be melted together and processed into…
Scientists have pieced together the deepest genetic history of the North American bison ever assembled, using DNA drawn from 115 animals that lived before the species was pushed to near extinction in the 20th century. As per the findings, led by researchers at the University of California, and featured on the cover of the 6…
A decade ago, more than 99% of sunflower sea stars vanished from the depths of the ocean. Now, the discovery of a long-lost colony of these organisms is offering new hope for the region’s kelp forests.Sunflower sea stars, known as Pycnopodia helianthoides, may look like an aesthetic and purely decorative feature on the ocean floor,…
