Tiny iron nanoparticles unlike any found naturally on Earth are nearly everywhere on the Moon — and scientists are trying to understand why. A new study led by Northern Arizona University doctoral candidate Christian J. Tai Udovicic, in collaboration with associate professor Christopher Edwards, both of NAU’s Department of Astronomy and Planetary Science, uncovered important […]
Read MoreHidden pockets of water could be much more common on the surface of the moon than scientists once suspected, according to new research led by the University of Colorado Boulder. In some cases, these tiny patches of ice might exist in permanent shadows no bigger than a penny. “If you can imagine standing on the […]
Read MorePlant-based meat substitutes taste and chew remarkably similar to real beef, and the 13 items listed on their nutrition labels — vitamins, fats and protein — make them seem essentially equivalent. But a Duke University research team’s deeper examination of the nutritional content of plant-based meat alternatives, using a sophisticated tool of the science known […]
Read MoreWhat transpires in comedies and cartoons when a character has a devil on one shoulder and an angel on the other is not far off from people’s perceptions of the real world, finds a new study from the University of Waterloo. Intended to illustrate the characters’ decision-making dilemma with comedic results, the moral character and […]
Read MoreResearchers from the University of Kent, the Research Institute for Environment Treatment and Vita-Market Ltd have discovered a universal mathematical formula that can describe any bird’s egg existing in nature, a feat which has been unsuccessful until now. Egg-shape has long attracted the attention of mathematicians, engineers, and biologists from an analytical point of view. […]
Read MoreAnxiety, addiction, and other psychiatric disorders are often characterized by intense states of what scientists call arousal: The heart races, blood pressure readings rise, breaths shorten, and “bad” decisions are made. In an effort to understand how these states influence the brain’s decision-making processes, scientists at the Icahn School of Medicine at Mount Sinai analyzed […]
Read MoreA new study led by the University of Colorado Boulder reveals the complex history behind one of the Grand Canyon’s most well-known geologic features: A mysterious and missing gap of time in the canyon’s rock record that covers hundreds of millions of years.The research comes closer to solving a puzzle, called the “Great Unconformity,” that […]
Read MoreNew models of neutron stars show that their tallest mountains may be only fractions of millimetres high, due to the huge gravity on the ultra-dense objects. The research is presented today at the National Astronomy Meeting 2021. Neutron stars are some of the densest objects in the Universe: they weigh about as much as the […]
Read MoreAmyloid plaques are protein deposits that collect between brain cells, hindering function and eventually leading to neuronal death. They are considered a hallmark of Alzheimer’s disease (AD), and the focus of multiple investigations designed to reduce or prevent their formation, including the nationwide A4 study.But amyloid deposits may also occur in the retina of the […]
Read MoreA region of active star formation in the constellation Ophiuchus is giving astronomers new insights into the conditions in which our own solar system was born. In particular, a new study of the Ophiuchus star-forming complex shows how our solar system may have become enriched with short-lived radioactive elements. Evidence of this enrichment process has […]
Read MoreA team of astronomers have used the European Southern Observatory’s Very Large Telescope (ESO’s VLT) in Chile to shed new light on planets around a nearby star, L 98-59, that resemble those in the inner Solar System. Amongst the findings are a planet with half the mass of Venus — the lightest exoplanet ever to […]
Read MoreNew research published in Nature has revealed the solution to Jupiter’s ‘energy crisis’, which has puzzled astronomers for decades.Space scientists at the University of Leicester worked with colleagues from the Japanese Space Agency (JAXA), Boston University, NASA’s Goddard Space Flight Center and the National Institute of Information and Communications Technology (NICT) to reveal the mechanism […]
Read MoreThe major Atlantic ocean current, to which also the Gulf stream belongs, may have been losing stability in the course of the last century. This is shown in a new study published in Nature Climate Change. The Atlantic Meridional Overturning Circulation, or AMOC, transports warm water masses from the tropics northward at the ocean surface […]
Read MoreFrom the thrill of hearing an ice cream truck approaching to the spikes of pleasure while sipping a fine wine, the neurological messenger known as dopamine has been popularly described as the brain’s “feel good” chemical related to reward and pleasure. A ubiquitous neurotransmitter that carries signals between brain cells, dopamine, among its many functions, […]
Read MoreWind energy is of outstanding importance to the energy transition in Germany. According to the Federal Statistical Office, its share in total gross electricity production of about 24% is far higher than those of all other renewable energy sources.“To reach our climate goals, it is important to further expand these capacities and to replace as […]
Read MoreBatteries are potentially a game-changing technology as we decarbonize our economy, and their benefits are even greater when shared across communities, a University of Otago-led study has found. Co-author Associate Professor Michael Jack, Director of the Energy Programme in the Department of Physics, says reducing costs are seeing rapid deployment of batteries for household use, […]
Read MoreAuditory hallucinations, a phenomenon in which people hear voices or other sounds in the absence of external stimuli, are a feature of schizophrenia and some other neuropsychiatric disorders. How they arise in the brain has been unclear, but new research indicates that altered brain connectivity between sensory and cognitive processing areas may be responsible.The study […]
Read MoreThe human body is essentially made up of trillions of living cells. It ages as its cells age, which happens when those cells eventually stop replicating and dividing. Scientists have long known that genes influence how cells age and how long humans live, but how that works exactly remains unclear. Findings from a new study […]
Read MoreSince early 2019, researchers have been recording and analysing marsquakes as part of the InSight mission. This relies on a seismometer whose data acquisition and control electronics were developed at ETH Zurich. Using this data, the researchers have now measured the red planet’s crust, mantle and core — data that will help determine the formation […]
Read MoreFor the first time, astronomers have uncovered evidence of water vapor in the atmosphere of Jupiter’s moon Ganymede. This water vapor forms when ice from the moon’s surface sublimates — that is, turns from solid to gas.Scientists used new and archival datasets from NASA’s Hubble Space Telescope to make the discovery, published in the journal […]
Read MoreParis: Imagine a world where you could sit on the same couch as a friend who lives thousands of miles away, or conjure up a virtual version of your workplace while at the beach.Welcome to the metaverse: a vision of the future that sounds fantastical, but which tech titans like Facebook founder Mark Zuckerberg are […]
Read MoreImagine a dust particle in a storm cloud, and you can get an idea of a neutron’s insignificance compared to the magnitude of the molecule it inhabits.But just as a dust mote might affect a cloud’s track, a neutron can influence the energy of its molecule despite being less than one-millionth its size. And now […]
Read MoreWhen people see a toothbrush, a car, a tree — any individual object — their brain automatically associates it with other things it naturally occurs with, allowing humans to build context for their surroundings and set expectations for the world.By using machine-learning and brain imaging, researchers measured the extent of the “co-occurrence” phenomenon and identified […]
Read MoreAstronomers have made the rare sighting of two stars spiralling to their doom by spotting the tell-tale signs of a teardrop-shaped star. The tragic shape is caused by a massive nearby white dwarf distorting the star with its intense gravity, which will also be the catalyst for an eventual supernova that will consume both. Found […]
Read MoreTantalising evidence has been uncovered for a mysterious population of “free-floating” planets, planets that may be alone in deep space, unbound to any host star. The results include four new discoveries that are consistent with planets of similar masses to Earth, published today in Monthly Notices of the Royal Astronomical Society.The study, led by Iain […]
Read MoreA new literature review suggests refined dietary guidelines for the prevention of cardiovascular disease (CVD). The paper emphasizes pleasure, education, and sustainability as key factors in long-term dietary success.It is worth noting that funding sources and author affiliations present conflicts of interest.In a recent article, researchers explored the findings of past studies into heart-healthy eating. […]
Read MoreAn unknown methane-producing process is likely at work in the hidden ocean beneath the icy shell of Saturn’s moon Enceladus, suggests a new study published in Nature Astronomy by scientists at the University of Arizona and Paris Sciences & Lettres University. Giant water plumes erupting from Enceladus have long fascinated scientists and the public alike, […]
Read MoreOur universe is expanding, but our two main ways to measure how fast this expansion is happening have resulted in different answers. For the past decade, astrophysicists have been gradually dividing into two camps: one that believes that the difference is significant, and another that thinks it could be due to errors in measurement.If it […]
Read MoreA near-perfectly preserved ancient human fossil known as the Harbin cranium sits in the Geoscience Museum in Hebei GEO University. The largest of known Homo skulls, scientists now say this skull represents a newly discovered human species named Homo longi or “Dragon Man.” Their findings, appearing in three papers publishing June 25 in the journal […]
Read MoreA worldwide team led by UC Santa Barbara scientists at Las Cumbres Observatory has discovered the first convincing evidence for a new type of stellar explosion — an electron-capture supernova. While they have been theorized for 40 years, real-world examples have been elusive. They are thought to arise from the explosions of massive super-asymptotic giant […]
Read MoreScientists at Cornell University and the American Museum of Natural History have identified 2,034 nearby star-systems — within the small cosmic distance of 326 light-years — that could find Earth merely by watching our pale blue dot cross our sun. That’s 1,715 star-systems that could have spotted Earth since human civilization blossomed about 5,000 years […]
Read MoreNidhal Guessoum The Pentagon has released its eagerly awaited report on “unidentified aerial phenomena” (UAP), but with rather bland and unspectacular conclusions. It left UFO enthusiasts unhappy, if not fuming. Still, the report was a very interesting development. Let us review this. First, why did the US Department of Defense need to release a report […]
Read MoreUsing neural networks, researchers from the University of Copenhagen have developed a new method to search the human genome for beneficial mutations from Neanderthals and other archaic humans. These humans are known to have interbred with modern humans, but the overall fate of the genetic material inherited from them is still largely unknown. Among others, […]
Read MoreTo the human eye, most stationary objects appear to be just that — still, and completely at rest. Yet if we were handed a quantum lens, allowing us to see objects at the scale of individual atoms, what was an apple sitting idly on our desk would appear as a teeming collection of vibrating particles, […]
Read MoreIt could be a milestone on the path to detecting life on other planets: Scientists under the leadership of the University of Bern and of the National Centre of Competence in Research (NCCR) PlanetS detect a key molecular property of all living organisms from a helicopter flying several kilometers above ground. The measurement technology could […]
Read MoreAstronomers have spotted a giant ‘blinking’ star towards the centre of the Milky Way, more than 25,000 light years away.An international team of astronomers observed the star, VVV-WIT-08, decreasing in brightness by a factor of 30, so that it nearly disappeared from the sky. While many stars change in brightness because they pulsate or are […]
Read MoreFour planets locked in a perfect rhythm around a nearby star are destined to be pinballed around their solar system when their sun eventually dies, according to a study led by the University of Warwick that peers into its future.Astronomers have modelled how the change in gravitational forces in the system as a result of […]
Read MoreAn international group of collaborators, including scientists from NASA’s Jet Propulsion Laboratory and The University of New Mexico, have discovered a new, temperate sub-Neptune sized exoplanet with a 24-day orbital period orbiting a nearby M dwarf star. The recent discovery offers exciting research opportunities thanks to the planet’s substantial atmosphere, small star, and how fast […]
Read MoreWhat is happening deep beneath the surface of ice planets? Is there liquid water, and if so, how does it interact with the planetary rocky “seafloor”? New experiments show that on water-ice planets between the size of our Earth and up to six times this size, water selectively leaches magnesium from typical rock minerals. The […]
Read MoreNASA’s Hubble Space Telescope is giving astronomers a rare look at a Jupiter-sized, still-forming planet that is feeding off material surrounding a young star. “We just don’t know very much about how giant planets grow,” said Brendan Bowler of the University of Texas at Austin. “This planetary system gives us the first opportunity to witness […]
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