Read Conor Gearin’s coverage of the India Space Research Organization’s launch or a reusable shuttle. In NewScientist: https://www.newscientist.com/article/2089757-indias-reusable-space-plane-takes-its-first-test-flight/?utm_source=NSNS&utm_medium=SOC&utm_campaign=hoot&cmpid=SOC|NSNS|2016-GLOBAL-hoot
When a building caught fire in colonial America, fire trucks equipped with high pressure water did not arrive to dampen the flames because they had yet to be invented. But fires still needed to be quenched. Consequently, these early Americans borrowed a practice dating back to the time of the Roman Emperor Nero. Full Article »
If a black hole is the senior starting quarterback on your high school football team—dark, handsome, well-known, and admired by everyone—then a neutron star is the starting quarterback’s kid brother, a gangly freshman who marches to the beat of his own drummer and can’t help being overshadowed by the sheer magnitude of his older sibling. Full Article »
When a child cannonballs into a pool, a simple series of waves radiate outward from the point where they plunged in. But if two children jump in at once, they create a more intricate waterscape. Where the two sets of waves meet, they interfere with each other. In some spots, the peak of one wave meets the valley of another, and they cancel each other out. The waves in that location disappear. Full Article »
The heart of every star is a forge for the building blocks of the universe. Since the day the universe began, stars have been taking the materials spit out by its formation and transforming them into the elements that make up everything we know: deserts, dinosaur bones, oak trees, apartment buildings, giant squids, jellybeans, and you. Full Article »
When people heard in 2006 that Pluto was no longer a planet, many were outraged. The beloved ninth planet, the satisfying conclusion to the list of the solar system’s members rattled off by many a schoolchild, was no longer special. Some accused celebrity astrophysicist Neil deGrasse Tyson of killing Pluto; Tyson confessed only to driving the “getaway car.” The real villain was California Institute of Technology astronomer Mike Brown, who discovered an object called Eris that’s slightly bigger than Pluto. This observation suggested that Pluto was just one among many other “dwarf planets.” Full Article »
In which sense does the Universe make sense?
In the sense you sense a sense.
—Victor Weisskopf Full Article »
When Alfred McEwen tells you a place on Mars has warm summers, don’t picture the Florida Keys—think Antarctica at its balmiest. McEwen, the lead scientist for the filing-cabinet-sized camera riding on NASA’s Mars Reconnaissance Orbiter, took photos five years ago of dark, water-like trails on slopes where temperatures on summer days can sometimes reach the melting point of water. But to test to see if water really created the trails, the scientists needed more than ordinary photos. Full Article »
It’s as if salty tears of joy are streaking Mars’ dusty face while the planet struggles to contain its emotion. A bit melodramatic? Perhaps, but news of water on Mars has recently grabbed the red planet an impressive amount of fanfare.
For a team of scientists, their finding was simply an incremental step in research confirming what they considered to be a forgone conclusion. But it quickly ballooned into a massive story that captured the public’s imagination. Full Article »
Looking for inspiration in these dark times? Meet the conductor.
In most respects, the conductor is a pretty ordinary bundle of atoms. Peek through the insulating rubber, and you’ll notice him hard at work inside your local lamp cord or power line.[1] The conductor is a transporter—his job is to usher electricity as quickly as possible from where it’s made (say, a power plant) to where it’s meant to be (sizzling through the filament of that local lightbulb).[2] The conductor is able to do this fairly quickly and efficiently, thanks to the arrangement of his electrons. Each of his atoms has an outermost electron level that isn’t completely full, which means those further-out electrons can easily jump between atoms from beginning to end, like square dancers twirling through a line of partners. Full Article »
