A new statistical method could help solve which Beatles wrote which songs. (Credit: Nationaal Archief/Wikipedia Commons) In interviews, John Lennon and Paul McCartney have explained that, though they were listed as co-writers for Beatles tunes, one or the other usually wrote most of a song. McCartney wrote most or all of “Yesterday,� “Martha My Dear� and “Lady Madonna,� for exam ...read more
Cygnus X-1 is a black hole feeding off its nearby binary companion, a young blue supergiant star. (Credit: NASA/CXC/M.Weiss) Discovered in the early 1960s by rocket-borne X-ray detectors, Cygnus X-1 is a binary system containing a supergiant star and a stellar-mass black hole. That black hole is both accreting matter — pulling gas off its companion and funneling it into a swirling disk — and shooting out powerful jets. The processes of accretion and jet fo ...read more
In 1990s’ Total Recall, Arnold Schwarzenegger terraformed Mars atmosphere into breathable air in mere minutes thanks to a secret alien turbinium reactor. (Credit: TriStar Pictures/Courtesy Everett Collection) On Monday, a study published in Nature Astronomy took an exhaustive look at what it would take to terraform the Red Planet and fulfill generations of sci-fi dreams. In it, leading Mars experts tallied the planet’s stores of carbon dioxide, a powerful g ...read more
A study of rhesus monkeys shows that anxious adults can lead to more anxious offspring. (Credit: Skynavin/Shutterstock) You have your mother’s eyes. You have your father’s nose. But might you also have Grandpa Joe’s high anxiety? That’s a possibility, according to a study of rhesus monkeys published July 30 in the Journal of Neuroscience. In recent years, researchers have explored the heritability of personality, inclu ...read more
Subway riders in Hong Kong. (Credit: Sean Pavone/Shutterstock) Microbes are all around us and in us and especially on us. Our skin can be both a barrier between our bodies and the microbes in our environment and a way in. Once microbes find their way onto our hands, they’re a step closer to getting inside us through our eyes, mouths, and noses. Don’t despair. A diverse ecosystem of bacteria calls our skin and bodies home without causing us any harm at all. ...read more
Chinese scientists have discovered how a plant tricks wasps into carrying its seeds great distances. Photo Credit: adapted from Chen et al. 2017 Figure S1; used with permission from Gao Chen Stemona tuberosa is well known for its use in Chinese traditional medicine, but it’s got a much more intriguing claim to fame: It’s one of less than a handful of plants known to science that engages in vespicochory—that i ...read more
(Credit: Monty Python/YouTube) Any nerd worth her NaCl knows all about English comedy group Monty Python, and their version of the King Arthur legend, “Monty Python and the Holy Grail.â€� But lesser known are the troupe’s other feature-length films, including 1983’s “The Meaning of Life.â€� Amidst a dinner party with Death and a machine that goes “ping!â&euro ...read more
Doctors recently discovered rat lungworm in Chinese red-headed centipedes after two people became ill from eating them raw. Centipede Photo: Yasunori Koide When the 78 year old woman arrived at the hospital, it was clear something was wrong. She’d been suffering from headaches and been in a drowsy fog for weeks. So doctors checked her cerebral spinal fluid, and found it was cloudy and yellow instead of clear. It was brimming with white blood cells, indicating a ...read more
An aerial view of the Andes mountains in Argentina. (Credit: Nicolas Prieto/Unsplash) There’s only one place on the planet where you can see flamingos roaming salt flats, vicuñas grazing in herds and condors soaring overhead, all as hot springs bubble beneath towering volcanoes. It’s the Altiplano of South America — a nearly 1,000-kilometer-long, otherworldly plateau that stretches from southern Peru through Bolivia and in ...read more
Artist’s illustration of the dusty disk of the early Solar System with an inset microscope image of a hibonite crystal. (Credit: Field Museum, University of Chicago, NASA, ESA, and E. Feild (STSCL)) Tiny crystals in meteorites were witness to the sun’s unruly behavior in its earliest years. The sun sends a lot more than sunshine and rainbows our way. High-energy particles capable of messing with the nuclei of atoms stream off our star constantly. Earth&aci ...read more
