Welcome. The True Strange News Archives is a 20+ year grab-bag of generally positive news and interesting stuff. Discover and explore unusual science breakthroughs, odd ideas and unlikely true events from around the world. Purposefully ad free, pure education/entertainment, because that’s the way the Internet began.
My boyfriend and I were on our balcony when I looked up and noticed a stationary object in the sky. We live east of Los Angeles where we have been among many to see UFO’s of the San Gabriel Mountains. This is our fifth sighting this year but this is the first one we have… Read More »
Through the thick fog of our own galaxy, astronomers have spotted an ultimate prize: one of the largest-known structures in the Universe. Called the Vela supercluster, the newly discovered object is a massive group of several galaxy clusters, each one containing hundreds or thousands of galaxies. … Kraan-Korteweg and her team published their discovery of… Read More »
Space is a dangerous place. It’s not just the lack of oxygen or gravity; the biggest threat, at least in low Earth orbit, is micrometeorites and other debris that circle our planet at very high speeds. At several kilometers (miles) per second, or faster, even small objects pack a punch, so much so that they… Read More »
Researchers at a California lab have got one step closer in achieving self-sustaining nuclear fusion. If successfully harnessed, fusion – the process which powers the sun – could become an unlimited, and crucially, cheap source of energy. In order to become a viable, sustainable form of energy, power plants driven with fusion would need to… Read More »
During an epoch of dramatic climate change 200,000 years ago, Homo sapiens (modern humans) evolved in Africa. Several leading scientists are asking: Is the human species entering a new evolutionary, post-biological inflection point? Paul Davies, a British-born theoretical physicist, cosmologist, astrobiologist and Director of the Beyond Center for Fundamental Concepts in Science and Co-Director of… Read More »
… In law, Fukushima plant operator Tepco should pay the full costs of the accident. But there is a loophole: Tepco can’t pay. So the government stepped in and nationalised the company, meaning Japanese taxpayers will pay for this disaster. What’s worse, is that this protection system works even better for the companies that supply… Read More »
AFTER President Obama’s recent announcement of a plan to invigorate the study of neuroscience with what could amount to a $3 billion investment, a reasonable taxpayer might ask: Why brain science? Why now? Here’s why. Imagine you were an alien catching sight of the Earth. Your species knows nothing about humans, let alone how to… Read More »
New York City Mayor Michael Bloomberg blasts the judge’s ruling on the NYPD’s “stop and frisk” tactic, saying “the judge clearly telegraphed her intentions” before the start of the trial.The New York Police Department’s “stop and frisk” tactic, under which millions of mostly black and Hispanic people have been questioned by police over the past… Read More »
Outdoor air pollution contributed to 1.2 million premature deaths in China in 2010, nearly 40 percent of the global total, according to a new summary of data from a scientific study on leading causes of death worldwide. Figured another way, the researchers said, China’s toll from pollution was the loss of 25 million healthy years… Read More »
Researchers at Massachusetts General Hospital (MGH) have taken the first step toward developing artificial, lab-grown limbs, building a rat forelimb with functioning vascular and muscular tissue. This experimental approach could be applied to the limbs of primates – creating replacement limbs suitable for transplantation, a challenge because of the composite nature of limbs. “Limbs contain… Read More »
Extrasolar planet spotted by Hubble “shouldn’t exist” according to current planet formation theories. The TW Hydrae protoplanetary disk is much wider than our solar system. The gap in the TW Hydrae disk produced by a suspected planet resides 7.5 billion miles from the star. At this distance, the planet would orbit beyond our Kuiper Belt,… Read More »
A woman who said she saw, heard, spoke with and even smelled God during a near-death experience in 2009 recounted her experiences on an episode of Fox News’ “Fox and Friends” on Tuesday. Crystal McVea, an Oklahoma native, said she spent time in heaven when she went into full respiratory arrest after a medical procedure… Read More »
Currently, transplants move hair follicles from the back of the head to the front, relocating hair but not increasing the amount. The procedure can take eight hours, and leave a large scar on the back of the head. The new technique would remove a smaller patch of cells involved in hair formation from the scalp,… Read More »
Dog owners who refuse to fit Fido with a microchip may someday find themselves fetching a hefty fine, the British government said Wednesday. All dogs in England will have to be fitted with microchips by 2016, authorities said, meaning that canines across the country will be chasing cars with a tiny circuit embedded in the… Read More »
Flexible electronics are now one step closer to being a reality thanks to new research from the University of Michigan — the researchers there created an extremely stretchable electrical conductor out of networks of gold nano-particles embedded in elastic polyurethane. “Polyurethane studded with gold nanoparticles can conduct electricity even when stretched to more than twice… Read More »
Water drilled from rock in a North American mine is among the oldest yet found on Earth, say scientists. Novel dating techniques used by the Canadian and UK team suggest the fluid is at least 1.5 billion years old. The water was probably once on the surface and then percolated through the ground where it… Read More »
Catching a glimpse of even regular neutrinos – low-energy particles generated in the atmosphere – is difficult enough, but spotting a “cosmic neutrino” left over from the Big Bang has been downright impossible. That is until this cubic kilometer buried under Antartica’s frozen wastes started looking. Known as the IceCube Neutrino Observatory, this $279 million… Read More »
Drug developers may have a new tool to search for more effective medications and new materials. It’s a computer algorithm that can model and catalogue the entire set of lightweight, carbon-containing molecules that chemists could feasibly create in a lab. The small-molecule universe has more than 10^60 (that’s 1 with 60 zeroes after it) chemical… Read More »