Exist

Diamonds are the hardest naturally occurring material on Earth, but a supercomputer just modeled stuff that’s even harder. Called a ‘super-diamond,’ the theoretical material could exist beyond our planet—and maybe, one day, be created here on Earth.Do We Have to Send Humans to Mars for Exploration?Like normal diamonds, super-diamonds are made from carbon atoms. This specific phase of carbon, composed of eight atoms, should be stable at ambient conditions. In other words, it could exist in an Earth laboratory.The specific…

But because of the literal groundwork the rovers are performing, scientists are finally investigating, in-depth and in unprecedented detail, the planet’s evidence for life, known as its “biosignatures.” This search is remarkably complicated, and in the case of Mars, it is spanning decades.As a geologist, I have had the extraordinary opportunity to work on both the Curiosity and Perseverance rover missions. Yet as much as scientists are learning from them, it will take another robotic mission to figure out if Mars has ever…

The Apple Vision Pro has been on sale for more than a month now and while some of the excitement has started to die down, it's still one of the hottest products around. So much so that it's a topic of discussion among other companies as they try to get their ducks in a row for a post-Apple Vision Pro world. Camera-maker Canon is one such company, and it's already hard at work to make cameras that are designed to cope with the extremely high demands of creating content for use on mixed reality headsets.The Apple Vision…

Coined by the World Health Organization to denote a hypothetical future pandemic, "Disease X" is at the center of a blizzard of misinformation that American conspiracy theorists are amplifying – and profiting from.The falsehoods, including that the unknown pathogen indicates an elitist plot to depopulate the Earth, appeared to originate in the United States but spilled to Asia in multiple regional languages, AFP fact-checkers found.The fast-spreading misinformation, which experts say illustrates the perils of reduced…

NASA's new space telescope spotted a 13 billion-year-old galaxy that is much too complex to exist that early in the Universe.The galaxy, which is bigger than the Milky Way, could upheave what we know about how dark matter shaped the early Universe.Scientists had been tracking the galaxy, called ZF-UDS-7329, for a while, but they had never been able to get a close enough look, Karl Glazebrook, an astronomer at the Swinburne University of Technology who led the team, said in a statement.With the James Webb Space Telescope,…

When Sampson Dahl was looking for an apartment to rent in New York City, he stumbled upon a former laundromat on an online forum that caught his eye. His girlfriend at the time labeled the place, located in Maspeth, Queens, “disgusting,” but Sampson didn’t care. In 2019, he moved in and began calling it his home.At the time, he was paying $1,850 a month— his rent has since increased to $1,900, according to CNBC.On average, he pays $120 for electricity and $60 for internet.A former tenant of the place—which stopped…

Folks have historically made fun of the likes of Wish and Craigslist for featuring items and services that raise more questions than they answer.Well, apparently, Amazon is guilty of this too. On a smaller scale, but one that still exists. And you bet there’s a dedicated online group that’s all about sharing the gems found on it, namely the subreddit r/AmazonWTF, or The Deep, Dark Rabbit Hole Of Amazon.com. Folks have historically made fun of the likes of Wish and Craigslist for featuring items and services that…

As climate change supercharges some hurricanes, scientists are exploring how to better communicate their force to the public — including adding an extra category to reflect their power.The current maximum on the Saffir-Simpson Hurricane Wind Scale is Category 5, which is open-ended to any storm with wind speeds greater than 252 km/h. A new peer-reviewed study, published Monday in Environmental Sciences, examined storm data between 1980 and 2021 and found five storms that would have been classified as Category 6 — all of…

Astronomers working with the JWST found a dwarf galaxy they weren't looking for. It's about 98 million light years away, has no neighbors, and was in the background of an image of other galaxies. This isolated galaxy shows a lack of star-formation activity, which is very unusual for an isolated dwarf.Most isolated dwarf galaxies form stars, according to a wealth of observations. What's different about this one?The JWST's PEARLS (Prime Extragalactic Areas for Reionization and Lensing Science) observing program is aimed at…

Robyn Cory’s daughter Kristen was 15 when she was allowed to open her own Instagram account. “We thought we’d been responsible and done everything we could to make it safe,” says Cory. Months later, Kristen disappeared from the family home after being groomed on Instagram’s direct message service by a criminal gang, who then sold her for sex on the streets of Houston.Her daughter never recovered from her ordeal, Cory says. Kristen returned home but has since gone missing after being trafficked again. Her mother does not…