Scientists have made a bizarre discovery: a comet streaking through space is leaking a combination of alcohol and sugar.

This booze isn’t quite the kind you’d find in your local liquor store, but it is a complex organic molecule that represents one of the building blocks of life, and could help us better understand how life got here on Earth, according to an Agence France-Presse report.

Scientists have zeroed on on Comet Lovejoy, and in a study published in the journal Science Advances they detailed how they detected ethyl alcohol and glycolaldehyde, which is a simple sugar. The researchers think these organic molecules are part of the rocky material that formed planets.

It’s not the first time scientists have found organic molecules hitching a ride on comets, with the comet 67P/Churyumov-Gerasimenko — the one that Europeans landed the probe Philae on last year — hosting four complex organic molecules that until then had never been detected on a comet before.

Comets are excellent bodies to study to understand the origin of planets and even life itself because they are the remnants of ancient cosmic collisions, ejecting primitive material into deep space where it drifts about, occasionally crossing into our field of view. It’s like a time capsule from billions of years ago when our solar system began to take shape.

Comet Lovejoy is one of the most active comets in the Earth’s general vicinity, which is why it is a favorite of scientists for study. Researchers used a telescope at the Institut de Radioastronomie Millimetrique in Sierra Nevada, Spain to observe the comet during its brightest period back in January 2015.

NASA published a statement on the finding, which is available here.

Droughts, flooding, and superstorms are all in the mix for us if our Earth continues to heat up — but economic catastrophe is also in the cards, claims a new report.

A study published in the journal Nature by scientists from Stanford University and University of California Berkeley has determined that our economy will take a big hit this century, and it’s largely due to temperature changes, according to a Fortune report.

The reason is that researchers found there is a “Goldilocks” temperature where economies tend to function at a high level, and that is about 55 degrees Fahrenheit (13 degrees Celsius). Anything above or below that penalizes the performance of an economy.

The study examined 166 countries from 1960 through 2010 and looked for correlations in temperatures and gross domestic product (GDP). The data was gathered from the World Bank.

The largest economies in the world tend to be in areas where temperatures are in this range. Once the temperature starts rising, however, it could make a dent in the largest economies in the world.

Scientists think that a rise in temperatures of 7 degrees Fahrenheit would result in a loss of 1 percent of the GDP. That’s a big increase that won’t happen for a while — not until 2100 — but the slow rise will result in wide fluctuations in temperatures in the coming decades that could also have a big impact on productivity.

In all, the world would be made 23 percent poorer due to climate change if world leaders are unable to reduce carbon emissions and bring global warming under control.

The findings were published on Nature’s website, which can be found here.

An amazing animation just released by NASA depicts the unbelievable power of a black hole as it tears apart a star — something scientists are witnessing happen in real life.

The short animation shows what happens to a star as it drifts toward a black hole and becomes trapped by its gravitational pull, according to a Huffington Post report.

The black hole pulls the star apart and swallows it hole, but the story doesn’t end there, said Jelle Kaastra, who is from the Institute for Space Research in the Netherlands, in a statement. Most people might be surprised to find that a black hole actually can’t keep up with the pace with which it sucks in all that matter from the star, and it must eject a portion of it very violently. This is called a pulsar, and it is the brightest known thing in space.

NASA based the animation on a recent study published in the journal Nature describing an event known as ASASSN-14li, which is about 290 million light years from us and was first discovered by scientists last November. A star drifted too close to a black hole in a tidal disruption event as tidal forces pull the star to pieces, sucking some of it inside the black hole and ejecting the rest into space. The researchers have been using X-ray telescopes that orbit Earth to make these observations.

It’s a fascinating thing for scientists to view because it shows that black holes aren’t the infinite prisons that people think of them as, and that just because something slips beyond the event horizon doesn’t mean it can’t be ejected back out. Some even theorize that matter that enters the black hole enters an alternate universe, a hypothesis championed by none other than physicist Stephen Hawking.

A statement posted on the University of Maryland’s website describes the findings. It can be found here.

 

Those incredibly loud howler monkeys that inhabit Central and South American rainforests may be compensating for something.

A new study has found that howler monkeys with the loudest and most guttural calls apparently have the smallest testes as well, according to a Reuters report.

Howler monkeys have certainly earned their name, with the loudest call of any land mammal known on Earth. They have roars that have compared to that of a lion, and it is believed that they have a dual purpose of warding off competing males and attracting a mate.

But as it turns out, a male howler monkey either has one of the most powerful calls around, or regular or large sized testes — but not both.

In a study published in the journal Current Biology, a research team examined a bone above the larynx that helps them to amplify their calls. This bone, called the hyoid, was largest in those with the deepest calls, but it also correlated with smaller testes, meaning the male wasn’t as big of a sperm producer.

It’s an interesting finding because it indicates that there is a trade-off in evolutionary terms for howler monkeys, with some getting better “howls” that help them establish dominance, and some having better reproductive capacity. Each has its advantages, and disadvantages, and it doesn’t appear that they can have both.

Howler monkeys range from Mexico down to Argentina, where they spend most of their lives in the trees with howls so loud they carry up to three miles.

A news release on the findings have been posted on the University of Utah’s website, which can be found here.

Watch out, humankind: a brand new super computer from the Massachusetts Institute of Technology has just blown away a good chunk of human competition in a new test.

MIT has been testing a new computer system that is good at recognizing patterns, something humans have traditionally excelled at an artificial intelligence has struggled with. Called the Data Science Machine, it was able to beat a number of human teams in looking through a database of promotional sales dates and weekly profits in a recent test, according to a UPI report.

While computers are far faster than humans at most menial tasks, pattern recognition has been one area where scientists have struggled to figure out when designing new forms of artificial intelligence. While computers can often be very good at spotting patterns, they don’t do a good job of sorting and finding meaning to those patterns. However, MIT researchers think that the Data Science Machine could be the answer.

So they put the super computer against 906 human teams in a recent test. It managed to beat 615 of the teams — not perfect, but far better than previous computing systems.

The task the teams had to take on involved working on an algorithm capable of predicting patterns. The machine was able to do the prediction in no more than 12 hours — and sometimes in just two hours — whereas human teams would typically take months.

Then, the computer looked for similarities in the data by making use of numerical identifiers, and then updating those identifiers as it goes through the data. After that, the process is refined, and the Data Science Machine can start identifying trends.

Despite all the hand-wringing about AI taking over like in futuristic films, this may actually be a very good discovery for mankind. It could alleviate a lot of work, especially jobs that require analyzing data, and therefore free up labor for other uses.

The findings were to be presented at the IEEE International Conference on Data Science and Advanced Analytics.

The full press release from MIT can be found here.

In a rather strange finding, some have reported seeing what it appears to be a Buddha statue in recent photographs of Mars’ surface.

Of course, the more likely explanation is that this simply an ordinary rock formation that sort of kind of resembles something designed by intelligent people here on Earth, rather than signs of an ancient Mars civilization — but it still caused some interesting speculation online, according to a Huffington Post report.

A number of UFO websites seized on the photograph as signs of intelligent life, although even some self proclaimed UFOlogists wondered whether this was really a sign that could be taken to the United Nations as proof of intelligent life.

It’s actually not the first time this weird rock formation has been commented on before. NASA’s Curiosity rover took a picture of it last October, and the formation was seen amongst a group of other rocks, prompting stories on UFO websites proclaiming that a statue had been discovered on Mars.

One of them, Paranormal Crucible, even posted a video attempting to draw the statue in detail as it might appear in a clear image. The NASA image is quite blurry, so the site used colorization techniques and little imagination to rebuild it, according to the report. They suggested that perhaps it was from an advanced culture on Mars that created monuments to their gods.

Ever since the Curiosity rover landed on Mars, the photographs it has released have been subject to speculation from conspiracy theorists and UFOlogists. They have pointed to other supposedly alien artifacts in the pictures, which NASA typically dismisses as misidentified rock formations. One site claimed to see a traffic light, another a humanoid figure, and yet another a floating spoon. Some even claimed to see whole cities.

Forget the comfy queen bed: if you’re an astronaut like record-breaking Scott Kelly on the International Space Station, you’re sleeping in what is basically a padded broom closet and using velcro to keep yourself from bumping into things in the night.

Not exactly the most comfortable experience, but if comfort is the goal, most astronauts wouldn’t be doing what they’re doing anyway. Still, most people probably don’t realize what kind of discomfort goes into the daily life of an astronaut, and just how cramped the ISS really is.

Getting to the ISS is intense enough: it takes months of hard training and then a brutal trip blasting through the atmosphere while plastered to your seat hoping the rocket holds together. And once they make it to the ISS, they still need to get some rest.

Scott Kelly recently made the news by breaking the record for most days in space by a U.S. astronaut at 383. He’s in the midst of the first year-long stay aboard the ISS, and this mission provides an opportunity to see just what kind of a grueling environment astronauts like Kelly must endure.

Sleeping on the ISS is not for those with claustrophobia, as Kelly and others must sleep in what is little more than a glorified broom closet, according to a Business Insider report. NASA requires that they get 8.5 hours of sleep for each 24 hours spent on deck.

It also messes with a human being’s sleep patterns, as the ISS is not in any particular time zone. It’s moving at 17,150 miles per hour, circling the planet every hour and a half, which means his body gets the confusing message of 16 sunsets every single day.

This can result in a constant feeling of jet lag for astronauts. Our bodies rely heavily on the constant cycle of light each day to decide when to shut our body down, which is why jet lag can so severely impact our sleep. Jet lag for astronauts is far worse.

And their sleeping quarters are built for comfort, but only so much is possible. They use custom sleeping sacks that are bolts to the wall or the ceiling to keep them from floating around and bumping into stuff. Velcro straps further secure the individual in the bed.

Canadian astronaut Chris Hadfield even posted a video not long ago of how he tucks in on the ISS. It’s a pretty complicated process, as it turns out.