Tag: Science

A: There is no one ‘best’ way to reach the moon because space travel always trades off between time, fuel, and payload mass. If a mission carries a human crew, mission designers will prioritise speed to minimise the astronauts’ exposure to space radiation, at the expense of burning more fuel. Conversely, a robotic cargo mission...

People who lived and died thousands of years ago have left behind their skeletal remains as a legacy. In recent years, scientists have isolated and sequenced the DNA from more and more of these remains. A team of researchers led by scientists at the Harvard Medical School in the U.S. has compared 15,836 ancient DNA...

For almost 25 summers, Sunita (name changed) gets a severe ‘sweat rash’ on her neck in the hot and humid weather of Mumbai. The rash turns black, looks almost burnt, and stays that way until the monsoons arrive. Then, as if miraculously, the dead skin is shed and her neck looks just fine all over...

Older dawn of horse-riding could have changed Eurasia Scientists have challenged the claim that horse riding began after 2100 BC. They have reported archaeological evidence showing humans rode horses at least 1,000 years prior after analysing three early horse populations in Eurasia. Those at the Botai site indicated horse use by 3500 BC; skeletons of...

Sperm whales communicate using short sequences of clicks known as codas, which they exchange while coordinating within their groups. Scientists have long classified these sequences using the number of clicks and the timing between them. A study published on April 15 in Proceedings of the Royal Society B has however reported that there’s more to...

Along a meandering river in ​a warm and arid region that is now Thailand roughly 113 million years ago, a plant-eating behemoth almost 90 feet (27 meters) long browsed on ‌the treetops without much fear of predators due to its sheer size. This was Nagatitan chaiyaphumensis, ​the largest-known dinosaur from Southeast Asia. Researchers have unearthed...

Back when dinosaurs stomped the Earth, mammals scurried about in their shadows. Those furballs, hiding in underground burrows, provided a fresh niche for a novel reptile: the snake. Skinny snakes could squeeze into mammals’ holes and gobble them up. At least, that’s how the dawn of snakes is imagined by Marc Tollis, an evolutionary biologist...

A normal human hears sound in the frequency range 20 hertz (Hz) to 20 kilohertz, and the normal loudness, measured in decibels (dB), is between 30 and 70 db. Higher volumes, e.g. 85 dB and above, can lead to hearing damage. Ultrasound is defined as sound frequencies far beyond the audible range, and are expressed...

Scientists are tweaking a powerful cancer therapy in hopes it could fight HIV instead, by supercharging patients’ own immune cells. On May 12, researchers said a single dose of those revved-up cells strongly suppressed HIV in two people — one for nearly a year and the other for nearly two years — without requiring their...

Volcanoes change the earth’s atmosphere by releasing gases and particles in large quantities. When a volcano erupts, it blasts sulphur dioxide high into the sky, which reacts with water to form aerosols. Since aerosols scatter sunlight, a powerful eruption can end up cooling the earth’s surface for many years. Large eruptions also spew clouds of...