Viruses Found In 15,000-Year-Old Tibetan Glacier Ice Are Like Nothing Seen Before
Researchers have found the genetic codes of 33 viruses – 29 of which are new to science – while studying 15,000-year-old glacier ice from Tibet. The ice cores were collected near the Guliya summit, 6,700 meters above sea level, and the authors say that the viruses would have thrived in extreme environments. Luckily, the viruses that were found are very unlikely to cause harm to humans, being the type to infect bacteria instead.
Hubble Is Back To Doing Science Following A Month Of Efforts To Fix It
On June 13, 2021, the payload computer of the Hubble Space Telescope stopped working. Now, over a month later, NASA has finally fixed the issue and got the iconic 31-year-old space telescope back online and collecting data. Luckily, the hardware on Hubble has backups, and the mission team successfully moved things to the backup side of the Science Instrument Command and Data Handling unit and restored the scientific instruments out of safe mode.
First Total Artificial Heart Successfully Transplanted Into US Patient
A team at Duke University has performed the first transplant of a total artificial heart into a patient in the US, a 39-year-old man with unexpected and sudden heart failure. Since the operation, they say the patient is stable and under monitoring. This heart will allow the patient to stabilize while he waits for a full transplant, with an external power supply allowing more independence than previous pre-transplant options.
Lucid Dreams And Sleep Paralysis May Explain Alien Abduction Stories, New Study Argues
Millions of people in the US claim to have been abducted by aliens – but a new study has indicated that these experiences could be the result of vivid dreams. The researchers gathered people who had previously experienced a lucid dream, asking them to “try to find or summon aliens or UFOs”, with 75 percent of the volunteers able to successfully experience a dream that featured extraterrestrials or alien abductions.
93-Year-Old Butterfly Is The First US Insect To Go Extinct Because Of Humans
New research has confirmed the first American insect species extinction to be caused by humans. First described in 1852 and last seen in the 1940s, the Xerces blue butterfly has been the subject of debate around whether or not it was a unique species. Now, DNA analysis of a 93-year-old specimen from the Field Museum in Chicago has confirmed that it was unique, but now gone forever due to human activity.
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Universe 25: The Mouse "Utopia" Experiment That Turned Into An Apocalypse
What would happen if a colony of rodents lived in environment with no predators or disease, with every basic need met? One researcher set out to answer this question in the 1970s – and the results were a lot grimmer than you would expect.
