Cosmology is the story of the fundamental particles, forces, and energies that shape and govern our universe. And that story is one of rhythm and motion. (Credit: Paul M. Sutter/Youtube)
For millennia, cosmological and religious systems of thought were intertwined—and usually indistinguishable. European artwork of, say, the arrangements of planets and stars often went hand-in-hand with theological guides, and not a little bit of moralizing. But then Copernicus, Brahe, Kepler, and Galileo ...read more
(Credit: Extreme Weather/Kellie Jaeger)
The citizens of Galveston, Texas, had achieved unprecedented economic prosperity. The city, built on a shallow, sandy island 2 miles (1.2 kilometers) offshore, had become the state’s leading center of trade, exporting some 1.7 million bales of cotton annually. At the turn of the century, the city stood in the doorway to an even more prosperous future.
This all changed September 8, 1900, when an unusually high tide and long, rolling sea swells gave ...read more
Miniature biomanufacturing kits like this prototype could revolutionize the pharmaceutical industry. (Credit: Amino Labs, CC BY-ND)
Soon after Federick Banting discovered that insulin could be used to treat diabetes in 1921, he sold the patent to the University of Toronto for about a dollar. Banting received the Nobel prize because his discovery meant a life-saving drug could become widely available. Nearly a century later, an American with diabetes can pay as much as US$400 per month for insu ...read more
Scientists turned to weather predictions and radar to create continental forecast maps for particular nights. Redder colors mean more migrating birds. (Credit: Benjamin Van Doren)
For many Americans and Canadians, a telltale sign of the changing seasons is a V-shaped flock of honking Canada Geese flying overhead during their migration.
These birds get attention for being large, common and noisy. But billions of other American birds migrate each fall and spring with hardly any fanfare, making t ...read more
Colors on this map show where and by how much monthly sea surface temperature differed from the 1981 to 2010 average during August 2018. (Source: NOAA)
As Hurricane Florence began lashing the Carolinas this morning, another potentially disruptive atmospheric and oceanic phenomenon continues to brew thousands of miles away in the Pacific: El Niño.
El Niño weather impacts. (Source: NOAA)
It’s not here yet, according to the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration&rsq ...read more
(Credit: Ollyy/Shutterstock)
The power of our fleshy brain to control our perceptions is well established, but it’s still hard to really believe, sometimes. It’s tempting to think of ourselves as perfect observers, passively gathering data and information. But however real reality may seem, it’s just whatever our brains our feeding us. We all have various biases that, unknown to us, color how we see and interpret information.
Confirmation bias is a particularly prominent ...read more
As Florence swirled toward the Carolinas today, an astronaut took some chilling photos of the hurricane
They eye of Hurricane Florence, as seen from the International Space Station on Sept. 12, 2018 (Source: ESA/NASA—Alexander Gerst)
“Ever stared down the gaping eye of a category 4 hurricane? It’s chilling, even from space.”
So writes Alexander Gerst, a European Space Agency astronaut aboard the International Space Station who shot this stunning photo looking ...read more
A view of Seattle, one of the cities included in the study, taken by satellite. (Credit: Naeblys/Shutterstock)
Scientists say they have a new way of measuring obesity — from space.
Can those jokes — it doesn’t have anything to do with individuals. Instead, researchers from the University of Washington took satellite maps of various U.S. cities and trained an AI to look for features of the neighborhoods that might be relevant to health. This included things like green spa ...read more
