TIL of a monk who had taken an old book written by Archimedes, erased the contents, and wrote over it with prayers. Scientists have determined that that monk erased a previously unknown book by Archimedes, that laid out the foundations of Calculus thousands of years before Newton and Leibniz.

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SpaceX is about to send a lethal superbug into orbit

SpaceX is preparing to launch a lethal, antibiotic-resistant superbug into orbit on February 14, to live its days in the microgravity environment of the International Space Station (ISS).

The idea is not to weaponise space with MRSA - a bacterium that kills more Americans every year than HIV/AIDS, Parkinson's disease, emphysema, and homicide combined - but to send its mutation rates into hyperdrive, allowing scientists to see the pathogen's next moves well before they appear on Earth.

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Scientists Just Found One of the Most Promising Malaria Vaccine Targets to Date

In spite of a decade of intense research, we still don't have a commercially available vaccine for malaria.

While a candidate vaccine is being piloted next year, scientists have found a potentially more promising target in the bridge malaria makes with our red blood cells, which could lead to a more effective, cheaply made vaccine.

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Physicists Calculate Long-Lost Signals Emitted Fractions of a Second After the Big Bang

For the first time, theoretical physicists have calculated the precise frequency of specific gravitational wave signals that would have emerged fractions of a second after the Big Bang.

Just like we had to figure out the frequency of the Higgs boson before scientists could detect it, this means scientists can now start to track down the signals of long-lost cosmological phenomena called 'oscillons', allowing us to peer back further into the Universe than ever before.

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Emergency Evacuations Underway Amid Fears of "Immediate Failure" at America's Tallest Dam

Emergency evacuations are currently underway in Oroville, California, as locals fear that a gaping hole in the severely eroded auxiliary spillway of America's tallest dam could give way at any moment.

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27 years ago today, Voyager 1 took its last photos ever. Turning its cameras inward toward the sun, it captured the only portrait of our solar system. Including the famous "Pale Blue Dot".
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Google's New AI Has Learned to Become "Highly Aggressive" in Stressful Situations

Late last year, famed physicist Stephen Hawking issued a warning that the continued advancement of artificial intelligence will either be "the best, or the worst thing, ever to happen to humanity".

We've all seen the Terminator movies, and the apocalyptic nightmare that the self-aware AI system, Skynet, wrought upon humanity, and now results from recent behaviour tests of Google's new DeepMind AI system are making it clear just how careful we need to be when building the robots of the future.

In tests late last year, Google's DeepMind AI system demonstrated an ability to learn independently from its own memory, and beat the world's best Go playersat their own game.

It's since been figuring out how to seamlessly mimic a human voice.

Now, researchers have been testing its willingness to cooperate with others, and have revealed that when DeepMind feels like it's about to lose, it opts for "highly aggressive" strategies to ensure that it comes out on top.

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Monkeys master a key sign of self-awareness: recognizing their reflections

Strange as it might seem, not all animals can immediately recognize themselves in a mirror. Great apes, dolphins, Asian elephants, and Eurasian magpies can do this—as can human kids around age 2. Now, some scientists are welcoming another creature to this exclusive club: carefully trained rhesus monkeys. The findings suggest that with time and teaching, other animals can learn how mirrors work, and thus learn to recognize themselves—a key test of cognition.

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NASA Plans to Send This Robot Lander to Look for Alien Life on Europa

Is there life on Europa – that scarred, icy moon orbiting Jupiter? NASA is determined to find out, with the space agency having just revealed plans to drill into the moon's crust in search of extraterrestrials.

A new report details plans for a lander that could drill roughly 10 cm (4 inches) deep into the moon's surface, and analyse samples using on-board instruments to give researchers vital information on what Europa's made up of, and whether life could flourish there.

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Earth Has a New Continent Called
'Zealandia', Study Reveals

Kids are frequently taught that seven continents exist: Africa, Asia, Antarctica, Australia, Europe, North America, and South America.

Geologists, who look at the rocks (and tend to ignore the humans), group Europe and Asia into its own supercontinent - Eurasia - making for a total of six geologic continents.

But according to a new study of Earth's crust, there's a seventh geologic continent called 'Zealandia', and it has been hiding under our figurative noses for millennia.

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It's Time: Scientists Are Getting Really Close to a Malaria Vaccine

A new malaria vaccine candidate has proven up to 100 percent effective in clinical trials.

The potential vaccine introduces live malaria parasites into patients, paired with the medication needed to combat them. It was given to 67 healthy humans, and the nine participants given the highest dose were 100 percent protected against the disease for at least 10 weeks after vaccination.

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Mars Rover Curiosity's Drill Malfunction Puts Organics Hunt at Risk

Scientists hoping for a more detailed look at organic material on Mars — possibly including molecules relevant to life — are patiently awaiting an act of engineering genius from NASA.

Since December, the team in charge of NASA's Mars rover Curiosity has been working to resolve a problem with the robot's drill, an essential tool for obtaining powered samples from inside Martian bedrock for chemical analysis.

Such sample analysis already has shown that Mars once had ingredients and habitats suitable for microbial life. Curiosity also has found chlorinated organics, though their origins remain unknown.

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Scientists Are About to Switch on a Telescope That Could Photograph a Black Hole's Event Horizon

Black holes are among the most fascinating objects in the known Universe. But despite the fact that they're suspected to lurk at the centre of most galaxies, the reality is that no one has ever been able to actually photograph one.

That's because black holes, as their name implies, are very, very dark. They're so massive that they irreversibly consume everything that crosses their event horizon, including light, making them impossible to photograph. But that could be about to change, when a new telescope network switches on in April this year.

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High resolution picture of the moon.
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Price of Lab-Grown Burger Falls from $325K to $11.36

Lab-grown meat could be on your plate within the next five years. For the past few years, the barrier to getting test-tube meat into the hands of consumers has been the cost of production. In 2013, it was around $325,000 to make this stuff in a lab, but the process has been refined, and the cost now is just $11.36.

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