List of All Articles with Tag 'science and tech'

Experts have explained the reason why every glass of water we consume has dinosaur urine in it and it's not as gross as it sounds. When you get a cold glass of water from the tap, chances are you don’t think much about it before getting it down the hatch, so long as it looks clean. But, water experts have explained that the water you’re drinking may have gone through a dinosaur or even through your neighbour, before getting to you. This is because every drop of water on Earth has gone through a continuous water cycle over billions of years, and the amount of water on the planet at any given time is always the same. Severn Trent Water explained more, telling the Birmingham Mail how our planet's water cycle works. Sign up to our free Indy100 weekly newsletter They explained: “ Heat energy from the sun causes water to evaporate into the atmosphere from sea, lakes and the soil. “Air currents containing water vapour rise over higher ground into cooler temperatures which causes condensation and creates clouds. “More air currents cause the clouds to move around the Earth, across sea and land. As the clouds cool, precipitation as snow, sleet, hail or rain.” They explained that the vast majority of precipitation on Earth ends up back in waterways, such as seas, lakes and rivers. Continuing, they revealed: “97 per cent of the world’s water is salty sea water, two per cent is frozen in the polar ice caps and one per cent is fresh water for us to use.” Water companies collect and store water in reservoirs, which is then treated and tested by the Environment Agency and Drinking Water Inspectorate. It can then be distributed to homes through pipes. Then, the wastewater that has been used is transported through drains and sewers to sewage treatment works and returned to streams and rivers. Have your say in our news democracy. Click the upvote icon at the top of the page to help raise this article through the indy100 rankings.

Could we have aliens to thank for preventing a nuclear war on Earth? That’s what one former Nasa astronaut has claimed. Edgar Mitchell, who was involved in the Apollo 14 mission, gained a reputation for sharing conspiracy theories when he arrived back from the moon in 1971. Mitchell was the sixth man on the moon and was the Lunar Module Pilot on Apollo 14. Before his death in 2016, Mitchell spoke at length claiming that aliens visited Earth. Speaking to the Mirror, he alleged that aliens were responsible for preventing nuclear war between the US and the Soviets at the height of Cold War tensions. Sign up to our free Indy100 weekly newsletter At the time, Mitchell focused on the White Sands Missile Range facility in New Mexico. “White Sands was a testing ground for atomic weapons – and that's what the extraterrestrials were interested in,” he said. "They wanted to know about our military capabilities. My own experience talking to people has made it clear the ETs had been attempting to keep us from going to war and help create peace on Earth." White Sands Missile Range is where the first atomic bomb was tested in 1945, and Mitchell claimed that officers there had told him aliens had shot down missiles flying over the site. The claims were, as you’d expect, disputed. UFO expert Nigel Watson told IFL Science at the time: "To me, this is just another case of UFO fantasy and speculation. When you try getting to the facts it is like trying to herd cats." Meanwhile, a UFO conspiracy theorist recently described the south pole as an “air traffic control” hub for aliens. A recent discussion centred on the Amundsen–Scott South Pole, which Eric Hecker claimed communicated with “exotic” crafts by sending neutrino rays up into space. Hecker went further by talking about “digital optical modules” buried a mile beneath the surface under the ice. He claims they were buried in order to detect neutrino interactions while being deep enough not to interfere with radiation readings. Have your say in our news democracy. Click the upvote icon at the top of the page to help raise this article through the indy100 rankings.

Thousands of dead fish have mysteriously washed up on the Texas coast as a result of 'low-dissolved oxygen' in the water. According to Texas Parks & Wildlife, low oxygen levels are common in the summer when temperatures rise, making it so the fish can't 'breathe'. However, the footage looks like something out of a horror movie, with piles of silver carcasses lining the sand, 65 miles south of Houston. Most of the fish are thought to be Gulf menhaden, which are often used for bait. Sign up to our new free Indy100 weekly newsletter

You may have been hearing a lot about UFOs lately, and that’s largely thanks to Ufologist Dr. Steven Greer who has been hosting a conference on the subject. A range of people were invited to share their insights as part of an event streamed online and it saw Eric Hecker describe the south pole as an “air traffic control” hub for aliens. The conspiracy theorist made some pretty out-there claims at the conference, but it’s the discussion about the Amundsen–Scott South Pole Station that was most significant. Hecker claimed that in 2010 Raytheon, the US aerospace and defence conglomerate chose him to be a contractor on the research centre operated by the United States National Science Foundation. Sign up to our free Indy100 weekly newsletter There was “much more” to the station that first met the eye, according to Hecker. Monday, June 12, 2023! Dr. Greer's Groundbreaking National Press Club Event! FREE to Watch! www.youtube.com He claimed the station actually operated as an “air traffic control” centre for UFOs and communicated with “exotic” crafts by sending neutrino rays up into space. Hecker went further by talking about “digital optical modules” buried a mile beneath the surface under the ice. He claims they were buried in order to detect neutrino interactions while being deep enough not to interfere with radiation readings. He also said he personally saw a “powerful green laser” pointing “at the cosmos.” It comes after a whistleblower who claims that the US government has been operating UFO retrieval research in secret has reportedly said that UFOs have been responsible for the deaths of humans. David Grusch worked for the National Geospatial-Intelligence Agency (NGA) and the National Reconnaissance Office (NRO) and was involved with the Unidentified Aerial Phenomena Task Force. He claimed that some of the “non-human intelligences” discovered have malevolent intentions and have killed people. Have your say in our news democracy. Click the upvote icon at the top of the page to help raise this article through the indy100 rankings.

Paul McCartney has revealed a 'final' song by The Beatles is set for release, all thanks to help from artificial intelligence. The tech has managed to replicate the voice of John Lennon, and although currently unnamed, it's like to be a 1978 song by the late artist, called 'Now And Then'. The group had previously attempted to finish the song without Lennon, and vowed it would be completed one day. "We just finished it up and it'll be released this year," McCartney said on BBC Radio 4's Today programme, much to the excitement of fans. Click here to sign up for our newsletters

Many of us look to the stars for answers to life’s most complex questions. But actually, some of the greatest mysteries lie beneath our very feet. One might think we’d know the Earth pretty well by now but, in fact, our planet’s core remains shrouded in enigma. Indeed, there are two gigantic blobs located beneath Africa and the Pacific Ocean that occupy around six per cent of the world’s entire volume. And yet, we’re still not entirely sure what they’re made of or where they came from. There are a number of hypotheses, including that they are piles of oceanic crust that have accumulated over billions of years. Sign up for our free Indy100 weekly newsletter But a more interesting theory is that they are huge chunks of an ancient planet that hit the Earth around 4.5 billion years ago. To give an indication of just how massive these things are, the structure under Africa – an area known as Tuzo – is thought to be around 800km (497 miles) tall – the equivalent of some 90 Mount Everests stacked on top of one another, as IFLScience notes. The problem with determining the origin of these monster formations is that there are no direct ways of observing the Earth’s core. The deepest hole humans have ever dug – branded the "entrance to hell" – reached a pretty staggering 12,263m (40,230ft), but that doesn’t even come close to breaking through the crust to the layers beneath. Our most effective tool for analysing what lies beneath the ground is a technique called seismic tomography, which looks at how waves of energy travel when earthquakes occur. Since rocks and liquids have different densities, the waves move through them at different speeds. By measuring the tremors from different points on the surface, geologists can determine what kind of material the waves are travelling through and, in so doing, map out the Earth’s interior. It was by using this technique that the two unusual structures – known as large low shear velocity provinces (LLSVPs) – were found. Waves travel more slowly in these areas – fondly known as “blobs” – than through the surrounding lower mantle, indicating that they’re made of something different. We can’t tell what this material is based on seismic tomography data alone, but some scientists like to believe that they are the remnants of an ancient planet called Theia – an idea known as the “giant impact hypothesis”. According to this hypothesis, around 4.5 billion years ago, a Mars-sized object collided with the Earth. This impact not only created the planet we call home today, but also threw off enough rock to form the moon that lights up our night skies. Some scientists suggest that some of Theia’s leftovers also sunk to the bottom of the planet, probably settling somewhere above the core – thereby forming at least one of the two LLSVPs. More Updates About Strange Blob Structures Inside Planet Earth youtu.be Experts have been investigating the area for decades but there’s still no way of knowing for sure just what these two giant blobs are. Still, studies into Theia have offered important insights into how the possible collision might have kickstarted key plate tectonic and mantle motion inside our planet – crucial processes for establishing the world on which we live. It’s also a useful reminder that we still have so much to learn about our planet and where we came from. Have your say in our news democracy. Click the upvote icon at the top of the page to help raise this article through the indy100 rankings.

Artificial intelligence has been used to generate images showing some of the most controversial world leaders as babies and the results are strangely sweet. In recent years, AI has come to the fore as one of the most powerful and perhaps terrifying new types of technology we have ever seen. It has the ability to learn via data and produce results based on the information it is fed. One person has now used the technology to produce images of different world leaders as babies. On Instagram, a user named Planet AI explained they asked “AI to Draw World Leaders as Babies” and the results were pretty surprising. Included in the images were Canada’s Prime Minister, Justin Trudeau, the French President, Emmanuel Macron, the UK’s former PM Boris Johnson and the former US president Donald Trump. Remarkably, the AI-generated image managed to make the war-mongering Russian leader Vladimir Putin appear relatively sweet and innocent. Sign up to our free Indy100 weekly newsletter In the comments, people certainly had some thoughts about the images AI had come up with. Someone commented: “Kim Jong Un did not change.” Another said: “I'm finding it really funny that Pope Francis is still in his pope clothes. Makes me think of a baby running the Catholic church.” “Putin is so sweet and Obama also,” another argued. On Twitter, another person wrote: “Joe Biden looks so old that even his baby version looks about 60 years old!” While AI technology can be used for relatively harmless entertainment purposes, one woman discovered how powerful it can be after claiming she “lost her job to AI” and had to apply for the job to train it. Have your say in our news democracy. Click the upvote icon at the top of the page to help raise this article through the indy100 rankings.

A white dwarf star is undergoing the process of turning into a “cosmic diamond” as it begins to crystalise. The lullaby “Twinkle Twinkle Little Star” talks about stars in the sky looking like diamonds, but for one specific type of star, that observation is truer than for others. Astronomers have observed that when a specific type of dead star starts to cool, it begins to crystalise and harden. An international team of astronomers, led by Alexander Venner of the University of Southern Queensland in Australia, have explained in a new paper Monthly Notices of the Royal Astronomical Society how a white dwarf star around 104 light-years away is doing just that. They noticed that the star, composed primarily of carbon and metallic oxygen, has a temperature-mass profile that suggests its centre is hardening into a dense “cosmic diamond” made of crystallised carbon and oxygen. The study explained: "In this work we present the discovery of a new Sirius-like quadruple system at 32 parsecs distance, composed of a crystallizing white dwarf companion to the previously known triple HD 190412.” Sign up to our free Indy100 weekly newsletter It continued: “By virtue of its association with these main sequence companions, this is the first crystallizing white dwarf whose total age can be externally constrained, a fact that we make use of by attempting to empirically measure a cooling delay caused by core crystallization in the white dwarf.” All stars eventually die out when they run out of energy. Of those that have a mass of less than around eight times that of the Sun, the vast majority will form a white dwarf star. The matter of a white dwarf star is highly compressed and as they gradually cool, they evolve into a black dwarf star when they lose heat and crystalise. Scientists’ calculations estimate the process takes around a quadrillion years (one million billion years) to complete, though the signs that the process is occurring can be identified by experts. Have your say in our news democracy. Click the upvote icon at the top of the page to help raise this article through the indy100 rankings.

A whistleblower who claims that the US government has been operating UFO retrieval research in secret has reportedly said that UFOs have been responsible for the deaths of humans. David Grusch worked for the National Geospatial-Intelligence Agency (NGA) and the National Reconnaissance Office (NRO) and was involved with the Unidentified Aerial Phenomena Task Force. He claimed that some of the “non-human intelligences” discovered have malevolent intentions and have killed people. Speaking to NewsNation [via the Daily Mail], he also reportedly claimed that the US is in a race with Russia and China to study extraterrestrial life. Sign up to our free Indy100 weekly newsletter “I think the logical fallacy there is because they’re advanced, they’re kind. We’ll never really understand their full intent and that’s because we’re not them. But I think what appears to be malevolent activity has happened.” He added: “That’s based on nuclear site probing activities and witness testimony. Grusch was then asked if UFOs had ever killed humans and he replied: “While I can’t get into the specifics because that would reveal certain US classified operations, I was briefed by a few individuals on the program that there were malevolent events like that.” The 36-year-old also suggested that the US government would go to extreme lengths to keep secrets covered up, saying: “At the very least, I saw substantive evidence that white-collar crime was committed… unfortunately. “I’ve heard some really un-American things I don’t want to repeat right now.” Grusch previously claimed that the US government has a "non-human origin" in-tact craft that they're keeping from the public. Speaking to NewsNation, Grusch said: "These are retrieving non-human origin technical vehicles, call it a spacecraft if you will, non-human exotic origin vehicles that have either landed or crashed." Have your say in our news democracy. Click the upvote icon at the top of the page to help raise this article through the indy100 rankings.

Astronomers believe they might have found the source of the brightest explosion ever in space. The record-breaking explosion recorded in October 2022 was the most powerful ever seen, leaving equipment and instruments struggling to measure it as it pointed directly at planet Earth. The bright gamma-ray burst is officially called GRB 221009A and when it first went off, scientists were left scrabbling to point telescopes in its direction to record it. The explosion has affectionately been nicknamed BOAT, standing for “brightest of all time”, and was caused by the death of a large star located 2.4 billion light-years away – relatively close in terms of space activity. The star collapsed into a black hole after ejecting its outer envelope, causing this huge, bright explosion comprised of gamma rays, producing not only a narrow structured jet but with an additional outflow of gas. Sign up to our free Indy100 weekly newsletter This “exceptionally rare event” surprised astronomers, who had not predicted the existence of gas, and certainly provides plenty of new information around the question of how black holes form. The study’s lead author and astronomer from George Washington University, Brendan O'Connor, explained: “GRB 221009A represents a massive step forward in our understanding of gamma-ray bursts, and demonstrates that the most extreme explosions do not obey the standard physics assumed for garden variety gamma-ray bursts.” He continued: “GRB 221009A might be the equivalent Rosetta stone of long GRBs, forcing us to revise our standard theories of how relativistic outflows are formed in collapsing massive stars.” The huge and long-lasting blast measured up to 18 teraelectronvolts which is a staggering record for a gamma-ray burst, leaving scientists to hypothesise that it was a supernova. Have your say in our news democracy. Click the upvote icon at the top of the page to help raise this article through the indy100 rankings.

Many of us look to the stars for answers to life’s most complex questions. But actually, some of the greatest mysteries lie beneath our very feet. One might think we’d know the Earth pretty well by now but, in fact, our planet’s core remains shrouded in enigma. Indeed, there are two gigantic blobs located beneath Africa and the Pacific Ocean that occupy around six per cent of the world’s entire volume. And yet, we’re still not entirely sure what they’re made of or where they came from. There are a number of hypotheses, including that they are piles of oceanic crust that have accumulated over billions of years. Sign up for our free Indy100 weekly newsletter But a more interesting theory is that they are huge chunks of an ancient planet that hit the Earth around 4.5 billion years ago. To give an indication of just how massive these things are, the structure under Africa – an area known as Tuzo – is thought to be around 800km (497 miles) tall – the equivalent of some 90 Mount Everests stacked on top of one another, as IFLScience notes. The problem with determining the origin of these monster formations is that there are no direct ways of observing the Earth’s core. The deepest hole humans have ever dug – branded the "entrance to hell" – reached a pretty staggering 12,263m (40,230ft), but that doesn’t even come close to breaking through the crust to the layers beneath. Our most effective tool for analysing what lies beneath the ground is a technique called seismic tomography, which looks at how waves of energy travel when earthquakes occur. Since rocks and liquids have different densities, the waves move through them at different speeds. By measuring the tremors from different points on the surface, geologists can determine what kind of material the waves are travelling through and, in so doing, map out the Earth’s interior. It was by using this technique that the two unusual structures – known as large low shear velocity provinces (LLSVPs) – were found. Waves travel more slowly in these areas – fondly known as “blobs” – than through the surrounding lower mantle, indicating that they’re made of something different. We can’t tell what this material is based on seismic tomography data alone, but some scientists like to believe that they are the remnants of an ancient planet called Theia – an idea known as the “giant impact hypothesis”. According to this hypothesis, around 4.5 billion years ago, a Mars-sized object collided with the Earth. This impact not only created the planet we call home today, but also threw off enough rock to form the moon that lights up our night skies. Some scientists suggest that some of Theia’s leftovers also sunk to the bottom of the planet, probably settling somewhere above the core – thereby forming at least one of the two LLSVPs. More Updates About Strange Blob Structures Inside Planet Earth youtu.be Experts have been investigating the area for decades but there’s still no way of knowing for sure just what these two giant blobs are. Still, studies into Theia have offered important insights into how the possible collision might have kickstarted key plate tectonic and mantle motion inside our planet – crucial processes for establishing the world on which we live. It’s also a useful reminder that we still have so much to learn about our planet and where we came from. Have your say in our news democracy. Click the upvote icon at the top of the page to help raise this article through the indy100 rankings.

It feels like there have been staggering science stories emerging every other day recently, all of which have blown our tiny little minds. First, there was the discovery of a terrifying black hole pointing right at us, then there was a huge hole found in the sun and a missing continent found after going missing for 375 years. Now, people are only just realising that there’s a massive ocean hidden under the Earth’s crust. It turns out there’s a huge supply of water 400 miles underground stored in rock known as 'ringwoodite'. Sign up to our new free Indy100 weekly newsletter Scientists previously discovered that water is stored inside mantle rock in a sponge-like state, which isn’t a liquid, solid or a gas, but instead a fourth state. The scientific paper titled ‘Dehydration melting at the top of the lower mantle’ was published in 2014 and laid out the findings. "The ringwoodite is like a sponge, soaking up water, there is something very special about the crystal structure of ringwoodite that allows it to attract hydrogen and trap water," said geophysicist Steve Jacobsen at the time. "This mineral can contain a lot of water under conditions of the deep mantle,” added Jacobsen, who was part of the team behind the discovery. He added: "I think we are finally seeing evidence for a whole-Earth water cycle, which may help explain the vast amount of liquid water on the surface of our habitable planet. Scientists have been looking for this missing deep water for decades." Scientists made the findings at the time after studying earthquakes and discovering that seismometers were picking up shockwaves under the surface of the Earth. From that, they were able to establish that the water was being held in the rock known as ringwoodite. If the rock contained just 1 per cent water, it would mean that there is three times more water under the surface of the Earth than there is in the oceans on the surface. Have your say in our news democracy. Click the upvote icon at the top of the page to help raise this article through the indy100 rankings.