I'll go ahead and answer that for you -- it's a definite "no." At least according to this study, which looked at what grows in the biofilms ("goop") that form along dishwasher door seals. First of all, it's kind of amazing that anything can survive the crazy environmental fluctuations of a dishwasher: from heat to salts and detergents, dishwashers are designed to destroy organic matter. But life finds a way, and apparently in biofilms, which in this case included large numbers of bacterial ...read more
Light as a feather, stiff as a board: It's a game you may have played growing up, anxiously repeating the phrase in the hopes that your friend would start levitating. Thanks to new research published Monday in Physical Review Letters you might have an alternative means to lift you and your friends' besides fingertips and witchcraft.
Researchers from the University of Bristol demonstrated that it’s possible to steadily trap particles larger than a wavelength in an acoustic t ...read more
Passengers aboard jetliners making transatlantic flights are getting from point A to B much far faster.
On Thursday, a Norwegian 787 Dreamliner reached a speed of 779 mph after getting some help from a vigorous, 224 mph tailwind. The flight, DY7014, set a new subsonic transatlantic record, flying from JFK Airport in New York to London’s Gatwick airport in 5 hours, 13 minutes. That’s roughly 30 minutes faster than average, and three minutes faster than the record set in 2015.
&ldquo ...read more
Considering viruses are thought to be the most prevalent biological entities on Earth, you would expect that plenty of research has focused on finding them in space, right?
Wrong.
To date, almost no research has looked into the possibility of viruses “living” in space or on other worlds. But now, Portland State University biology professor Ken Stedman wants to kick-start the search.
According to an article published in the February 2018 issue of Astrobiology, Stedma ...read more
Maslow’s motivational pyramid is but a house of cards if we don’t eat. And ever since we started shoving sustenance into our gullets, our species has devised means to do it faster—lest we beleaguer our journey to transcendence.
In 2011, a team of archaeologists working near Kenya’s Lake Turkana unearthed several stone tools in sediment that was 3.3 million years old; they were the oldest ever found. From this starting point chiseled from stone, the parabolic arc of meal- ...read more
