Tag Archives: ScienceAlert

Signs of a rogue immune system may be present more than a decade before the debilitating physical symptoms of multiple sclerosis (MS) reveal themselves. A new study found poor mental health may be one of the earliest hints of this disease, which impacts about 2.8 million people globally. University of British Columbia epidemiologist Marta Ruiz-Algueró and colleagues investigated the medical …

By recreating extreme conditions found inside deep space interstellar clouds, scientists have produced methanetetrol, or C(OH)4 – a ‘super alcohol’ that was long theorized about but never actually seen before. This is not the kind of alcohol you can ask for in a cocktail: it’s a highly unstable molecule made up of four hydroxyl groups (OH) at a single carbon …

The first chemical reactions in the wake of the Big Bang have been recreated for the first time in conditions similar to those in the baby Universe. A team of physicists led by Florian Grussie of the Max Planck Institute for Nuclear Physics (MPIK) in Germany has reproduced the reactions of the helium hydride ion (HeH+), a molecule made from …

Centenarians, once considered rare, have become commonplace. Indeed, they are the fastest-growing demographic group of the world’s population, with numbers roughly doubling every ten years since the 1970s. How long humans can live, and what determines a long and healthy life, have been of interest for as long as we know. Plato and Aristotle discussed and wrote about the ageing …

On November 1st, 2024, Project Hyperion – an international, interdisciplinary team of architects, engineers, anthropologists, and urban planners – launched a design competition for crewed interstellar travel. The event was hosted by the Initiative for Interstellar Studies (i4is), a UK-based non-profit organization dedicated to the robotic and human exploration of exoplanets around nearby stars, and eventually settlement. With a prize …

Since conventional explanations have failed to pony up dark matter, one physicist is looking towards the unconventional. In a series of two papers, physicist Stefano Profumo of the University of California, Santa Cruz has proposed two strange, but not impossible, origins for the mystery material responsible for the excess gravitational effects we see out there in the Universe. In the …

A vast blob of hot rock moving slowly beneath the Appalachian Mountains in the northeastern US is now thought to be the result of a divorce between Greenland and Canada some 80 million years ago. A study by an international team of researchers challenges the existing consensus in both geographical and chronological terms. It was previously thought the breaking up …

The speed of your steps could make a significant difference in adding years to your life, according to a new study. Researchers led by a team from Vanderbilt University in the US analyzed the physical activity of 79,856 adults in 12 US states, comparing links between time spent walking slowly, time spent walking quickly, and eventual cause of death (where …

A collection of dinosaur teeth hailing back to the Cretaceous and Jurassic periods has given scientists a new window into the world’s prehistoric climate. By studying an isotope of oxygen in the fossils to infer atmospheric carbon dioxide levels, a team led by geochemist Dingsu Feng of the Georg August University of Göttingen in Germany has reconstructed the very air …

Researchers have discovered an effective method of getting people to drink less alcohol: Highlight the increased risk of cancer that comes with imbibing and pair that with counting each and every drink. This particular combo of ‘why to reduce’ and ‘how to reduce’ messaging can be useful for promoting good health in a population, the researchers found in a 2021 …