Neutron stars are extreme objects composed of 95 percent neutrons and five percent protons.(Credit: NASA’s Goddard Space Flight Center)
Neutron stars are the remnants of violent supernovas, all that’s left behind when a star tens of times the mass of our sun ends its nuclear fuel-burning life. These extreme objects pack more mass than our sun — about 1.4 suns’ worth of mass, to be more exact — into a stellar remnant about the width of a small city (6 to 12 miles [ ...read more
The tiny dwarf galaxy Fornax UCD3 (inset) orbits around a giant elliptical galaxy called NGC 1399. Astronomers used the Very Large Telescope in Chile to discover a supermassive black hole at UCD3’s heart. (Credit: Courtesy of NASA/STScI/ESO/Afanasiev et al.)
A small galaxy some 70 million light-years from Earth has been hiding a big secret.
This week, astronomers announced they’d found a supermassive black hole (SMBH) lurking at the center of a galaxy called Fornax UCD3. It’s ...read more
(Credit: swa182/shutterstock)
BOULDER, Colo. – Severe storms cause tens of billions of dollars in property damage each year. And that cost will likely go up in the coming years thanks in large part to hailstorms.
Climate scientists, meteorologists and insurance experts gathered at the National Center for Atmospheric Research (NCAR) here in Boulder, Colorado, this week for a three-day workshop to discuss how climate change affects these storms and brainstorm how to better detect and forec ...read more
An ancient eruption on the present day Greek island of Santorini devastated the Minoan people, possibly inspiring the myth of Atlantis. (Credit: Aleksandra H. Kossowska/shutterstock)
A long-standing controversy over the date of a volcanic blast that possibly inspired the myth of Atlantis may have been resolved with the aid of ancient tree rings, a new study finds.
One of the largest volcanic eruptions in the past 4,000 years burst from the volcano Thera on what is now the Greek island of Santo ...read more
The Pepper robotic assistant. (Credit: MikeDotta/Shutterstock)
As prices drop and their functionality expands, you can expect to see humanoid robots in more places, including schools, airports, and hospitals. That’s made researchers curious how androids and their kin will influence human behavior. In a study published today, scientists found that meaner, colder robots can help people concentrate — and that could help us better understand human-robot relationships.
The experiment, p ...read more
When kids were asked if certain lines are longer or shorter than others, they deffered to the robots’ answers. (Credit: Tony Belpaeme / Ghent University)
Those of us of a certain age may recall the D.A.R.E. program wafting through our classrooms like so many puffs of smoke. In addition to the evils of drugs and alcohol, and the importance of just saying no, the program highlighted the power of peer pressure. No matter how much our friends and classmates might say something’s cool, ...read more
(Credit: Gregory Zamell/Shutterstock)
Millions of years ago, a gene in mammals became useless. Now scientists have discovered the gene has come back to life in elephants, where it’s exceptionally good at killing damaged cells. The “zombie” gene may explain why the long-lived pachyderms rarely develop cancer and how large animals evolved.
A Cancer Mystery
Elephants are a paradox for scientists. The giants appear largely resistant to cancer, which is odd as their long lifespans ...read more
(Credit: tommaso79/Shutterstock)
If you wanna shiver right, you gotta exercise.
That’s the suggestion of a new study in The Journal of Physiology looking at how mice fared in the cold after they’d spent some time undergoing regular jogging sessions on a wheel. Compared to couch-potato mice, the fit mice lost less weight in the cold and had higher body temperatures. The findings reveal that physical fitness likely plays a role in how well we deal with chilly situations.
Shiver ...read more
(Credit: ESA – P.Carril)
Think that the Moon is the only object orbiting Earth? You might want to think again.
Researchers have theorized the existence of “mini-moons” — tiny asteroids pulled into Earth’s orbit by forces of gravity — ever since discovering one with NASA’s Catalina Sky Survey in 2006. These fast moving asteroids revolve around the planet before either falling toward the surface as a meteor, or being ejected back out into space ...read more
