Deep within the planet Earth, unseen by our eyes, are gigantic blobs of hot rock that extend hundreds of miles in every direction. These humongous blobs, which go by many names like "thermo-chemical piles" and "large low-shear velocity provinces" (LLSVPs) still baffle scientists up to this day.

Geologists don't know much about where these blobs came from or what they are, but they do know that they're gargantuan. The two biggest blobs, which sit deep below the Pacific Ocean and Africa, account for nearly 10% of the entire mantle's mass, one 2016 study found — and, if they sat on Earth's surface, the duo would each extend about 100 times higher than Mount Everest. However, new research suggests, even those lofty analogies may be underestimating just how big the blobs really are.

In a study published June 12 in the journal Science, researchers analyzed the seismic waves generated by earthquakes over nearly 30 years. They found several massive, never before-detected features along the edges of the Pacific blob.

Know more about this study over at Live Science.

(Image Credit: Sanne.cottaar/ Wikimedia Commons)

Like us humans who emit different sounds to mean different things, narwhals do the same, and scientists have identified some of the sounds that these creatures make, in order to better understand what they do.

Evgeny Podolskiy, a geophysicist at Hokkaido University in Japan. Podolskiy and his colleagues study the soundscape of glacial fjords. They are noisy places, where icebergs crash into the ocean and air bubbles fizz out of melting ice. These fjords are also home to narwhals.

The animals are sometimes called Unicorns of the Sea because of their single long spiraled tusk. And they are shy, which makes them hard to study. So Podolskiy teamed up with local Inuit hunters, who snuck up on narwhals in kayaks and captured audio.

Listen to the many sounds that narwhals emit over at Scientific American.

(Image Credit: Wikimedia Commons)

For a long time, people rarely got a glimpse of an intact, giant squid. It seems that the situation changes as a dead yet intact giant squid was washed ashore at a beach in South Africa. Actually, humans have never successfully captured a live giant squid, and the dead specimens that wash ashore are usually partial. Salon has more details: 

The first-ever video footage of a giant squid in its natural habitat was captured just  seven years ago, in 2013.

Adéle Grosse of Cape Town told Live Science that when she saw the large tentacled sea creature on the beach, her initial instinct was to try to save its life.

"At first, I just wanted to get it back into the ocean. [But] on closer observation, one could see that it was dead," Grosse explained. She explained that she and her husband discovered the beached giant squid during a morning walk in Brittania Bay and that they were taken aback by its appearance.

"Oh my word, seeing it at first really took my breath away. Honestly, it looked like a majestic prehistoric animal," Grosse told Live Science. She is unsure how it died, although she noted that "we had big swells the night before, and it was my understanding that the swell washed up this beautiful squid onto the beach in the early hours of the morning. We looked for bite marks or injuries and could not really find anything."

image via wikimedia commons

Malala Yousafzai, who at age 15 was shot in the head by the Taliban for advocating for the education of girls in Pakistan in 2012, and was awarded the Nobel Peace Prize in 2014, has graduated from Oxford University with a degree in Philosophy, Politics and Economics. Redditor starstarstar42 sums up the family celebration.

Doesn't matter if you've won a Nobel Prize. Doesn't matter if you are the voice of your generation. Doesn't matter if you are an inspiration to people of all ages and religions around the world. Doesn't matter if you graduated from one of the top schools on the planet. Doesn't matter what you've accomplished because...

...some relative will always be there to give you bunny ears in a photo.

That wasn't the only indignity showered on the graduate.



She handled it like a pro. -via reddit

(Image source: @malala)

Bees are one of the most important creatures on the planet, as they play a major role in helping plants grow and reproduce by pollination. And so we must protect them at all costs. But what if bees do become extinct one day? Scientists have been trying to think of alternatives to bees in case that happens. Just recently, some scientists have developed high-tech drones that blow soap bubbles to pollinate flowers.

It’s a “really cool” approach, says Henry Williams, a roboticist at the University of Auckland, who was not involved in the work. But some biologists are skeptical that drones will ever be an effective replacement for bees.

Several groups have devised devices that mimic pollinating honey bees. In 2017, Eijiro Miyako, a materials chemist at the Japan Advanced Institute of Science and Technology, adapted a 4-centimeter-long toy drone to pollinate flowers. He and colleagues glued horsehairs to the underside of the drone and coated the hairs with a gel to make them stickier and more flexible. The idea was that, just as on a bee, the hairs would pick up pollen from one flower and deposit it on another. Steered by remote control, the drone pollinated lilies, but it damaged the flowers with its propellers.

Miyako visualized a way to fix that problem while blowing bubbles in a park with his 3-year-old son. The child had cried when Miyako used up the last of the bubble solution. To soothe his son, Miyako bought a toy bubble gun. Watching the stream of bubbles—and seeing one bump his son’s forehead—Miyako thought it might be a way to gently deliver pollen to flowers.

And so Miyako, along with his colleague, tested his soap bubble hypothesis.

Check out Science Magazine for more details about this bubbly study.

(Image Credit: Eijiro Miyako/ Science Magazine)

Because AirPods are very expensive, and because losing them will cause great pain to their owner, it is only fitting that the owner stores them in a case which decreases the chance of losing them. And of course, the case should be a remarkable one so that he will always remember where he put these expensive earpieces.

Check out this fancy AirPod case that looks like a Mini-Cooper. It is available on Amazon for $15.

It holds either an AirPods 1 or 2 charging case inside, while still working with wireless or plug-in charging via the cutout in its rear license plate.

Even cooler, the headlights and taillights glow in the dark, with a bluish glow up front, and red in the back. And if some other AirPods case doesn’t see them and rear-ends your AirPods, they’ll be okay since they’ll just bounce off of the rubbery silicone.

(Image Credit: elago/ Technabob)

Two circles can be seen in this photo. One is inside a rectangle, while the other isn’t. While the circle in the rectangle looks like a lighter shade of grade when compared to the other circle, the truth is that the two circles have the same color. But why does this happen? Why do the circles look like they’re different shades of gray? This has been a question that scientists have for over 100 years, and now it would seem that there is an answer to this age-old mystery.

It turns out luminance, even though we're not always conscious of it, does contribute to our brightness estimates, suggesting high-level thought processes are not required to make this judgement between contrasts.

The team found that our estimates of brightness occur very early in our visual processing pathway, before information from both eyes is even merged in our brains 

More details about this enlightening study over at ScienceAlert.

Ryan George plays the part of the first guy to ever have a home, or apparently any kind of shelter. He also plays a stranger he's explaining it to. However, the home is fairly contemporary and we know that it was something that evolved over a long time. Maybe it would be better to pretend this is a homeowner trying to explain the concept to an alien from another dimension. It would be pretty strange to someone who's never seen been exposed to the concept of shelter or privacy or property. Oh yeah, the skit is only three and a half minutes, the rest is an ad. -via Geeks Are Sexy

Which cat breeds are more aggressive to family members? Which are shy towards strangers? Which cat breeds groom a lot, and which cats groom less? These might be some factors that you might want to consider when adopting a cat. A group of researchers decide to examine the behaviors of different cat breeds, as well as the heritability of their behaviors.

Salonen et al. (2019) surveyed Finnish cat owners on their cats’ behaviors, which included “tendency to seek human contact," “aggressiveness towards human family members, strangers, or other cats," and “shyness towards strangers or novel stimuli." In total, 5,726 cats were studied. The researchers then separated these cats into 19 breeds. The researchers controlled for environmental factors including “weaning age, access to outdoors, presence of other cats,” and general characteristics (sex, age of cat) in their analyses.

Check out the summary of the study over at Psychology Today.

(Image Credit: ClaudiaWollesen/ Pixabay)

Finding it difficult to win in PS4 racing games? Consider making your own steering wheel and attaching it to the controller just like this man did. That, or you could just buy a steering wheel compatible with the video game console.

Despite making this however, the man still placed last in the race.

Watch The Q's video on YouTube.

What are your thoughts about this one?

(Image Credit: The Q/ YouTube)

To study how humans evolved large brains compared to other primates, scientists experimented with marmosets, a small primate with a small brain that is still genetically similar to humans. At the heart of the study is one of a few genes that appear in no other species besides humans.

ARHGAP11B, a gene found only in humans, is known for its role in expanding neocortex, the part of the brain responsible for higher cognitive functions such as language and planning. In experiments detailed in a new study published today in the journal Science, researchers inserted the gene into the fetuses of marmosets, who, like humans, are primates, but don’t carry the gene. The team found that after 101 days, the neocortices of the monkeys’ developing brains were larger and had more folds in the tissue than normal monkey fetuses without the gene.

If this experiment sets off your cringe response, you aren't alone. How man human brain genes can be transferred to another species before that species becomes human? More than one, apparently. Read about the experiment and what it could mean for the study of "humanness" at Smithsonian.

(Image credit: Leszek Leszczynski)

Did you have a Little Tikes Cozy Coupe when you were a kid? You might be interested in the history of the toy, which has become fairly universal since its development 40 years ago. -via Digg

The sun is the source of all of our energy, directly or indirectly. The sun has always been the subject of myths, legends, and even religious worship as long as people have observed the star. The sun takes on even more meaning in latitudes further from the equator, where the sun comes and goes over the course of a year. The June solstice is the point that sun climbs the highest in the sky in the Northern Hemisphere and gives us the longest daylight, so the date was important for those who lived before artificial climate control, spawning festivals, celebrations, and rituals of all kinds.  

In Ireland, the Midsummer fires were lit at sunset after being sprinkled with holy water. In Ireland and Scotland bonfires were lit in memory of the Baal fires, a name derived from either Celtic sun god Bel (bright) or the Saxon word bael (fire). These bonfires were believed to boost the ebbing power of this life-giving, mysterious solar fire. In Irish folklore, fairies took the form of whirlwinds to try and extinguish these powerful Baal fires but throwing burning wood in their direction usually discouraged them. Children joined hands and leapt through the embers to symbolise the growth of corn and harvest abundance. Farmers drove animals through the ashes to protect them from disease. On the Isle of Man, blazing furze was carried around cattle for the same purpose. In Cornwall, the Midsummer fire was lit by “The Lady of the Flowers” who cast flowers into the flames. Cornish elders could then predict futures by reading the fire.

That's just a few of the rituals associated with the summer solstice. Read more of them at Folklore Thursday. -via Strange Company

(Image credit: Andrew Dunn)

Just ready $16,000 for donations, of course. The actor is auctioning off a phone call via fundraising portal Greater Giving. Reeves is doing a phone call for a cancer charity, and the bidding for a special phone call from the star is up to $16,800 and climbing. Interested? MentalFloss has more details: 

The call is intended to benefit Camp Rainbow Gold, a nonprofit that provides support for patients and families in Idaho dealing with cancer. Reeves has reportedly long been active in various charitable efforts for the disease following his sister’s leukemia diagnosis in 1991.

Organizers have a few caveats. The call has to take place the week of July 6, pending the availability of both Reeves and the winning bidder. If the caller exhibits any “threatening or inappropriate behavior,” the conference will be terminated. Otherwise, the winner should feel free to discuss Reeves’s career, including the forthcoming Bill and Ted Face the Music, due out August 14.

image via MentalFloss

Vitamins and other forms of supplements have been marketed to “boost one’s immune system.” During the pandemic, people have been inclined to purchase more of these to strengthen themselves against COVID-19. But do vitamins really do what they’re marketed to do so? James Hamblin and Katherine Wells discuss the effectiveness of these supplements in their podcast Social Distance. You can listen to the episode here. 

image via wikimedia commons