Earth and Space

2021 Meteor Shower Guide

Bird With A Twenty Foot Wing Span

“Our fossil discovery, with its estimate of a 5-to-6-meter wingspan — nearly 20 feet — shows that birds evolved to a truly gigantic size relatively quickly after the extinction of the dinosaurs and ruled over the oceans for millions of years,” said first author Peter Kloess, a graduate student at the University of California (UC), Berkeley.

Finding Signs Of Alien Life

When it comes to looking for alien life, scientists mostly focus on where there is water. Now researchers suggest that looking at "bioessential" elements such as phosphorus and molybdenum could help judge a world's potential for life.

Space Debris

The growing amount of so-called "space junk" orbiting the Earth could lead to catastrophic collisions with satellites. Watch the moment the UK-led RemoveDebris mission left the International Space Station (ISS).

Mars

Mars - One of the biggest mysteries of the universe is whether life may be possible beyond our home planet. Two announcements from NASA represent major steps forward in cracking that case.

A History Of The First Computers

A machine that took up an entire room at a laboratory in Manchester University ran its first program at 11am on 21 June 1948. The prototype completed the task in 52 minutes, having run through 3.5 million calculations. The Manchester Baby, known formally as the Small-Scale Experimental Machine, was the world's first stored-program computer.

Kilauea's Gems

Olivine, a green mineral, is found inside lava erupting from fissures.

Cassini's Last Images Of Saturn

Three of Saturn’s moon are visible: Mimas (above the ring line), Janus (just touching ring line), and Tethys (below). Image: NASA/JPL-Caltech/Space Science Institute

Bowhead Whales

Bowhead whales, the black filter-feeding giants of the Arctic that can live for 200 years devouring tons of tiny marine creatures, boast another remarkable quality. Their unique underwater songs make them wonderful "jazz" artists.

Lupus 3

Lupus 3, a dense cloud of gas and dust that collapses to create new stars. Read more:

Mars 2020 Rover

How To Look For Dinosaur Fossils

Here are five tips to maximize your chances of making a big fossil discovery and help you figure out what to do if you find one.

On Science and Hip Hop

Q&A with the Wu-Tang Clan’s GZA The artist discusses music as a means to get kids excited about science, and the inspiration he took from astrophysics and polar bears.

Iridescent Dinosaur

The discovery of a crow-sized, bird-like dinosaur with colorful feathers from northeastern China that lived 161 million years ago during the Jurassic Period.

GPS For Spaceships - The Stars

Spaceships could use blinking dead stars to chart their way.

Ban The Glitter

When washed down the drain, glitter becomes a subset of marine plastic litter known as microplastic. Microplastics, which measure less than five millimeters in length, are found throughout the world’s oceans, from the surface to the deep sea floor. They are consumed by plankton, fish, shellfish, seabirds, and other marine life.

An Unusual Planet

WASP-18b is an exoplanet located 325 light-years from Earth. The planet's mass is 10 times that of Jupiter, and it orbits its star once every 23 hours.

Soft Robots

These soft robots cost less than a dollar and are built in minutes. Soft robotic muscles can give future robots a more human-like look, greater strength, and more versatility.

Scallops Have Eyes

The structures are so complex that they almost defy belief.

Last Image Of Saturn

Cassini snapped the series of images that were stitched together to create this photo on September 13 before making its plunge into Saturn's atmosphere on September 15, destroying the spacecraft in the process.

Elon Musk's To Do List By 2030

It's a lengthy list. Click on the image to read article.

Scuba Diving Fly

Researchers at Caltech found that like other flies, alkali have small hair-like structures and a coating that lets water slip off their back. But unlike other flies (including kelp flies and fruit flies), these insects have more ‘hairs’ and an even more water-repellent coating. The combination means that the flies can trap a small bubble of air around them as they squiggle their way underwater.

Are Aliens Trying To Contact Us?

“Although unlikely, there is also a possibility that the signals are due to highly peculiar chemical compositions in a small fraction of galactic halo stars.” said Trottier and Borra.

7 Earth-Size Planets Discovered

The length of each planet’s day — how quickly it spins on its axis — may sync with its sun’s orbit. That would make the innermost planet’s day 1.5 Earth days long and the outermost one’s 20 Earth days long. That would be like Earth rotating once in 365 days instead of in 24 hours.

Oldest Plants On Earth Found

The discovery may overturn ideas of when relatively advanced life evolved, say scientists in Sweden.

Black Holes Swallow Stellar Debris

In the center of a distant galaxy, almost 300 million light years from Earth, scientists have discovered a supermassive black hole that is "choking" on a sudden influx of stellar debris.

Scientists Discover Six New Species

Researchers found a new species of 'Hoff' crab, two snails, a limpet and two new species of worm.

U.S. Use Of Solar Power

U.S. sets staggering record with 191% growth in solar power installations in 2016.

World's Oldest Water Discovered

The vast age of the water is not the only important discovery. When the researchers analyzed the liquid, they found traces of life within it. While they are yet to find actual living bacteria, what they did discover was in effect the fingerprint of life.

48 New Volcanos Found On IO

There are plenty of weird volcanoes in our Solar System, from icy variants on dwarf planets to pancake volcanoes on Venus. On IO, though, they are utterly bonkers.

Algae And Sneakers

Harvesting wild algae to make your next pair of sneakers? Read more...

Ceres

The tiny world where volcanoes erupt ice.

Autonomous Tractor

Instead of a human driving the tractor across the land, autonomous tractors drive themselves.

Kardashev Scale

According to the Kardashev scale, a Type II civilization is a society that has managed to harness (and control) the energy of a star. Here's what that means.

How Did Life Evolve On Earth?

The answer to this question would not only fill one of the largest gaps in scientists' understanding of nature, but also would have important implications for the likelihood of finding life elsewhere in the universe.

Jupiter's Great Red Spot

Observations show that Jupiter's upper atmosphere — above the Great Red Spot — is hundreds of degrees hotter than anywhere else on the planet.

Largest Dinosaur Print Found

A footprint measuring over a meter wide that was made by a meat-eating predator some 80 million years ago has been discovered in Bolivia, one of the largest of its kind ever found.

Dogs Can Understand Human Speech

Planet Number Nine?

Work since 2014 has defined Planet Nine’s potential properties. Evaluation of "neighboring" small body orbits indicate that it is many times more immense than Earth, possibly around 15 times the size, and at the nearest point of its extremely extended, oblong orbit it is a minimum of 200 times more distant from the Sun than Earth, or more than 5 times the distance from the Sun to Pluto.

Oldest Known Fossil

Scientists find 3.7 billion-year-old fossils.

NASA's Mars Mission 2020

All the details and news releases found here.

New Discovery

Byzantine-era settlement dating back to the 6th and 7th centuries CE discovered in Israel.

To Feed Or Not To Feed?

Reduce bird-window collisions, beneficial not only for birds but also for the millions of people who feed them.

What Do Whales Eat?

The plan is to find out more about the whales' diet and the areas they use to forage for food as well as what makes these areas so productive.

Breeding A Cold-Weather Bee?

Canadian researchers will evaluate the traits of 1000 colonies, sequence their genomes, and gather information to help beekeepers breed their own specialized insects.

Collecting Meteorites

All it takes is a magnet and knowing where to look.

Cocoa Trees - How Old Are They?

Chocolate, produced from seeds of the cacao tree Theobroma cacao, is one of the most popular flavors in the world, with sales around 100$ billion dollars per year. Yet, as worldwide demand increases, there are fears the industry will fail to cope with growing public hunger for the product. Read more

Citizen Scientists Discovery

Using the Planethunters.org website, a Yale-led international team of astronomers identified and confirmed discovery of the phenomenon, called a circumbinary planet in a four-star system. Only six planets are known to orbit two stars but none of these are orbited by a distant binary.

Superstitions

Why We Cling To Superstitions, Even If Our Rational Side Knows They're Not True

How Taste Buds Work

What is generally categorized as “taste” is basically a bundle of different sensations: it is not only the qualities of taste perceived by the tongue, but also the smell, texture and temperature of a meal that are important.

Astronomy Quiz

How well do you know our solar system?

Facts About Pluto

The Globally Rare False Click Beetle

A single specimen of the globally rare False Click Beetle has been discovered in the 1,140-acre green space in south-west London, the first ever seen in the capital.

The Giggles Gene

A gene previously associated with marital bliss or blues may also come to be known as the giggle gene.

Oldest Horned Dinosaur

The new dinosaur — named Wendiceratops Pinhornensis after a famous fossil hunter who discovered the bone bed in Canada where these fossils were buried — is one of the oldest known horned dinosaurs.

What Gives Fireflies Their Greenish Glow?

Image credit - wikimedia.org

The Heat That Keeps On Giving

Burning fossil fuels provides a brief pulse of warming. But the warming brought on by the CO2 released at the same time lasts for centuries.

Trial-And-Error Learning

Instead of explaining things to kids from the front of a classroom, teachers are beginning to instead “guide from the side.” They are nudging kids to become Edisons — tinkerers who learn by doing.

New Species of Leafhopper Discovered

A new species of the leafhopper genus Flexamia from the New Jersey Pine Barrens, located just east of the megalopolis that extends from New York City to Washington, DC.

Horses Are Getting Faster

A new analysis of race times from 1850 to 2012 shows that racehorses, on average, are getting faster every year.

Some Risks May Be Good For Kids

Children are living more constrained lives than previous generations, and fewer are left alone to wander and get up to shenanigans as their parents did, said Tim Gill, a childhood researcher and the author of "No Fear: Growing Up in A Risk Averse Society" (Calouste Gulbenkian Foundation, 2007).

17,000 Species Face Extinction

Sea Lion now endangered. View the complete list at the link below.

Ice Age Mummified Puppy Found

The 3-month-old female was found in the permafrost, which kept the body in a remarkable state of preservation, with little decomposition. Parts of the puppy’s heart, liver, lungs, stomach, and intestines survived, as did its skin and fur.

Space Junk

Dana Arabiyat, 15, of Amman, Jordan, designed a satellite to collect and dispose of the space trash that threatens other satellites orbiting Earth.

Dark Matter Is Not as Sticky

The leading theory is that dark matter particles spread throughout the galaxy clusters do not frequently bump into each other. The reason the dark matter doesn't slow down is because not only does it not interact with visible particles, it also infrequently interacts with other dark matter. The team has measured this "self-interaction" and found it occurs even less frequently than previously thought.

The Quiet Life Of The Milky Way

TheMilky Way has had a sheltered life. A search for the signs of a violent galactic upbringing has come up empty, and the finding is helping astronomers understand our galaxy's history. It could also aid the search for dark matter.

DNA Code For The Woolly Mammoth

Scientists a step closer to "bringing back" mammoths...

How DNA Is Like A Yo-Yo

A new study shows that the coiled DNA acts much like the string on a yo-yo. And that’s good, because by being rolled up, each cell can store a lot of instructions.

Journey To Mars

Like cannonballs slamming into stained glass, high-energy particles can shatter the delicate tendrils that connect nerve cells, a study on mice finds. This neural destruction left mice with memory and learning problems, a finding that has implications for intrepid space explorers.

Puppy Love

A new study explains the bond between humans and dogs,

We Think Better Standing

"Standing workstations reduce disruptive behavior problems and increase students' attention or academic behavioral engagement by providing students with a different method for completing academic tasks (like standing) that breaks up the monotony of seated work. School districts that put standing desks in classrooms may be able to address two problems at the same time: academic performance and childhood obesity.