-
6 days ago | 
zmescience.com | Tibi Puiu |Zoe Gordon
The water trickled, and the lights blinked on. In a new study, researchers in Singapore describe a way to turn falling water into electricity using nothing more than droplets, a narrow plastic tube, and a surprising flow pattern called “plug flow.” The setup, they say, can turn something like rainfall into a source of clean, renewable energy — enough to light a dozen small bulbs.
-
6 days ago | 
zmescience.com | Mihai Andrei |Zoe Gordon
Researchers claim to have found the “strongest evidence” of biological activity outside the solar system. The findings are tantalizing, but we wouldn’t draw any conclusion just yet. When the James Webb Space Telescope (JWST) first opened its gold-coated eye to the cosmos, we were all thinking it. Finding alien life wasn’t its main goal, but we were all hoping astronomers might glimpse signatures of life beyond Earth. Now, a team led by the University of Cambridge believes it just might have.
-
1 week ago | 
zmescience.com | Tibi Puiu |Zoe Gordon
The water trickled, and the lights blinked on. In a new study, researchers in Singapore describe a way to turn falling water into electricity using nothing more than droplets, a narrow plastic tube, and a surprising flow pattern called “plug flow.” The setup, they say, can turn something like rainfall into a source of clean, renewable energy — enough to light a dozen small bulbs.
-
1 week ago | 
zmescience.com | Tibi Puiu |Zoe Gordon
In 1828, thousands gathered in Bury St Edmunds to watch William Corder hang for the murder of Maria Marten, his lover, in a crime so infamous it became known as the Red Barn Murder. His punishment did not end at the gallows. After his execution, surgeons dissected his body — and bound a book about his trial in his skin. Talk about a dark read. Now, nearly two centuries later, a second such book has emerged.
-
1 week ago | 
zmescience.com | Mihai Andrei |Zoe Gordon
At a lab in Tokyo, a machine that looks nothing like a chicken might just be the future of poultry. Cultured meat is already a proven technology, but the biggest problem isn’t growing cells — it’s keeping them alive. Most lab-grown meats die on the vine, so to speak. And this is because they lack what nature provides effortlessly: a way to circulate nutrients deep into tissue. Cells suffocate, tissue turns necrotic, and what could have been steak ends up more like paste.
-
1 week ago | 
zmescience.com | Mihai Andrei |Zoe Gordon
Geologic maps don’t make headlines. You probably haven’t seen one unless you work in energy, construction, or science. Yet, over the past century, these documents have quietly shaped the way we build, drill, and prepare for natural disasters. In the US, geologists have spent millions of hours (and billions of dollars) to make them. But the payoff is stunning.
-
1 week ago | 
zmescience.com | Tibi Puiu |Zoe Gordon
By the time most of us hit middle age, we’ve learned to keep an eye on salt. Doctor’s orders. High sodium, after all, is a known contributor to the silent killer — hypertension. But what if a humble nutrient found in bananas, beans, and spinach quietly does more than we ever imagined to shield our hearts? A new study led by Melissa Stadt and Anita T. Layton at the University of Waterloo reveals that potassium doesn’t just counterbalance salt’s harmful effects.
-
1 week ago | 
zmescience.com | Tibi Puiu |Zoe Gordon
CT scans — those marvels of modern imaging that can peer inside our bodies in seconds — may also be contributing to a slow-moving wave of cancer. A new modeling study estimates that radiation from CT scans performed in the United States in 2023 could eventually cause more than 100,000 cases of cancer. That’s nearly 1 in every 20 new diagnoses — putting it on par with alcohol as a cancer risk factor. The authors say this should be a wake-up call.
-
1 week ago | 
zmescience.com | Tibi Puiu |Zoe Gordon
For decades, scientists have known that ordinary matter — everything made of atoms — accounts for just 15% of the universe’s matter. The rest is mysterious dark matter. But even that modest slice didn’t fully add up. More than half of it was missing. Now, by stacking millions of galaxies like poker chips, a team of astronomers has located what may be the universe’s long-lost matter—normal atoms, forged in the Big Bang, that had somehow gone missing from view.
-
1 week ago | 
zmescience.com | Tibi Puiu |Zoe Gordon
A team of international scientists, led by researchers from the University of Southampton, has traced strange, out-of-place rocks in the jagged cliffs of Iceland’s west coast to Greenland, carried across the sea by icebergs during a sudden and severe cooling event in the 6th century AD. Known as the Late Antique Little Ice Age, this centuries-long chill followed a series of powerful volcanic eruptions. It also coincided with the last days of the Roman Empire.
