Science

Why Does Your Voice Sound Different When It’s Recorded?

If you’ve ever listened to a recording of yourself and thought you sound completely different, you’re not alone. But more than that, you were also correct. Here’s why it sounds different. You see, when you speak, you hear your voice as other people do, but you also hear a contribution which comes from vibrations passing…

5 Crazy New Man-Made Materials That Will Shape the Future

Forget Mother Nature: when it comes to all matters matter, the sheer ingenuity of the human mind can give rise to some of the most insane—and useful—new materials you’ve ever encountered. Here are five crazy new man-made materials whose uses could be practically limitless. Aluminum Bubble Wrap Imagine your favorite packing-based stress reliever—made of metal.…

Does Space Go On Forever?

Infinity is one of those mind-boggling concepts that even manages to confuse some of the smartest scientists. But when it comes to the universe, is it infinite or just… big? Fact is, it depends on how you’re looking at things. Even if the universe is finite in size, it could perhaps be infinite. Wait, what?…

This Celestial Caterpillar May Not Become A Stellar Butterfly

IRAS 20324+4057 is a mouthful, and it’s about 4,500 light years away, but it’s also a star on the move. It’s expanding to form a new star, but it’s unclear how massive that new star will be. “Energetic” wind and light is displacing a lot of the gas and dust that would normally go into…

East Coasters: Watch Tonight’s NASA Launch From Your Yard, Here’s How

For the longest time, Floridians had all the fun, getting to see NASA rockets launch into the night sky. Tonight, folks from North Carolina to Maine get to join that club, by watching the first moon mission to launch from NASA’s Wallops Island facility in Virginia. It’s just about as easy as walking outside, but…

Parallel Worlds: How Human History Turns on the Tilt of the Multiverse

Andy Murray’s unexpectedly strong start against Roger Federer in the Wimbledon 2012 final put the Daily Telegraph columnist Matthew Norman in a science-fiction mood. Contrasting Murray with the doubles champion Jonny Marray — who still rents a flat and drives a Ford Fiesta, despite holding a Grand Slam title — the Daily Mail opined: ‘The…

Oh hey, NASA launched its official Instagram account today. So far it’s all moon-related, anticipating tonight’s launch of the Lunar Atmosphere and Dust Environment Explorer, but it’s definitely worth a follow. [NASA]

Watch a Virgin Galactic Test Flight from Onboard the Engine

This is what a Virgin Galactic supersonic flight with the SpaceShipTwo looks like, up close and personal. It’s not quite space, but it’s still damn gorgeous to watch. Virgin Galactic conducted its second supersonic test flight over the Mojave desert. After being released from the WhiteKnightTwo mothership at 42,000 feet, SpaceShipTwo fired a column of…

You Wouldn’t Want To Be Inside This NASA Spin Test

This is a picture of NASA’s Lunar Atmosphere and Dust Environment Explorer (LADEE) observatory, which is due to launch tomorrow—but it’s spinning fast enough to make you feel really quite sick. In fact, it’s being tested on a spin table to make sure it’s stable at high speeds. Hence the blur: because it’s rotating at…

The Newest Gravity Trailer Makes Space Look Like a Scary Roller Coaster

Are you ready for Alfonso Cuarón’s Gravity? Alternatively, are you ready for a panic attack to melt your brain into grey ooze? This latest trailer basically takes you on a roller coaster of fear through the gigantic emptiness of space. You’ll see Sandra Bullock twist and turn and spin and basically lose all control and…

This Handheld Robot Uses X-Ray Vision To Painlessly Insert an IV

Inserting an IV is as common a medical procedure as stitching up a wound, but finding a vein through trial and error means it can still be painful for a patient. And researchers at The Hebrew University of Jerusalem want to change that with a handheld robotic device that uses infrared and electrical sensors to…

Color-Changing Ink Ensures These Syringes Are Never Re-Used

Vaccines can be a vital way to stop the spread of disease in some parts of the world. But in underdeveloped countries, it turns out that the syringes used for vaccine injections are re-used again and again, which actually results in the spread of other dangerous conditions. To discourage this, Dr. David Swann of Huddersfield…

How We Go Looking For Life on Other Planets

There are, as best we can estimate, hundreds of billions of galaxies in the universe. (There may be more.) Average galaxies carry the weight of hundreds of billions of stars. If a habitable planet whirls around just one star in every million, the number of worlds which could harbor life would number in the quadrillions.…

This Dried-Up Salt Lake Lets Satellites Set Their White Balance

This image shows a great white expanse on the surface of Earth, but it’s not snow or super-fine sand: in fact, it’s a dried up salt lake in Turkey called Lake Tersakan—and satellites even use it as a calibration tool. The second biggest lake in Turkey and one of the largest saline lakes in the…

Surprising No One, But This Time Everyone, Water Is A Great Lubricant

Water is kind of important, right? Basis for life on Earth, defines biomes and weather, etc. And even on a really small scale water continues to strut its stuff. And we’re talking really small. Researchers have found that water is the optimal lubricant for nanomachines one molecule big, aka a few dozen atoms, aka tiny.…

This Bathroom Scale Also Suggests Exercises To Maintain Your Weight

Good news if you’re tired of your personal fitness trainer’s constant nagging you about eating healthy and staying active. You can just replace them with this bathroom scale that not only tells you how much you weigh, but also what kind of activities you can do to maintain your current physique. For starters it’s just…

Hubble Captured a Huge, Light-Year-Long Flaming Space Monster

This beautifully bright, light-year-long heap of gas and dust particles was caught by the Hubble telescope hurtling through space on its way to becoming a star some 4,500-odd light years away. And this little cosmic caterpillar-that-could is all the more incredible when you know what it’s fighting against. Located in what’s called the Cygnus OB2…

The Giant Telescope That Helps Take the Sharpest Space Photos Yet

The Hubble Telescope has revolutionized our understanding of the cosmos but the venerable telescope has been orbiting for nearly a quarter century and is quickly nearing the end of its already-extended service life. That’s not a bad thing, mind you, telescope technology has advanced significantly since the Hubble went up in 1990. And by the…

Curiosity Just Took the Sharpest Photos of a Solar Eclipse on Mars Yet

Thanks to Curiosity’s lonely existence, we just got the clearest, most detailed images of a solar eclipse that’s ever been taken from the surface of Mars—at least, the clearest images ever taken by humans. The moon pictured in the photos above (which were each taken three seconds apart on August 17) is Mars’ largest moon,…

NASA’s New Martian Explorer Will Explain Where All the Water Went

We know that Mars once had an Earth-like atmosphere dense enough to support liquid water on the surface of the planet, we’ve found the dry riverbeds and the presence of minerals only formed in water to prove it. We’re also pretty sure that the planet slowly lost that atmosphere into the depths of space on…