(Credit: Natasha Breen/Shutterstock)
If you lived among the ancient Maya, let’s hope you liked your fish super salty.
Archaeologists working at a former Maya salt mine near the coast in Belize say that they’ve found evidence of the fairly large-scale production of salted fish for trade at markets further inland. In the jungle, where seafood was a luxury and food wouldn’t keep well, the salty fish could have been a valuable commodity.
It’s further evidence that producing ...read more
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Scientists are making science fiction a reality. For the first time, three people have read each other’s minds, researchers report in a new study recently posted to the preprint server arXiv. The new interface combines noninvasive brain imaging and brain stimulation to let multiple people communicate through their thoughts. Its creators say the fresh tech could allow humans to solve problems using a “social network” of connected brai ...read more
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If you’re a fish, it sucks to have a hole ripped in your mouth by a hook.
Actually, researchers found, it sucks less.
New research out today in the Journal of Experimental Biology found that fish can’t suck up food as well after having a hole poked in their mouth by a fishing hook.
The team, led by Tim Higham at UC-Riverside, focused on marine shiner perch for their study. These perch are a common target for anglers and belong to a broader group of f ...read more
Greenhouses and food production will be an important component of any future martian settlement. Credit: NASA/CASE FOR MARS
A visit to Mars is almost guaranteed within the next decade or so, with everyone from NASA to warring tech billionaires setting their sights on the Red Planet. And long-term occupation may not be much farther behind.
But before we do, there are many obstacles to overcome, some highly technical. But one of them is a challenge humans have been tackling almost since our ance ...read more
This visualization compares the orbits of “The Goblin” and other, similar objects.(Credit: Illustration by Roberto Molar Candanosa and Scott Sheppard, courtesy of Carnegie Institution for Science)
Astronomers have found a dwarf planet out beyond Neptune called “The Goblin” because of its initial discovery around Halloween. The Goblin, officially named 2015 TG387, joins other small objects far out in our solar system, and it adds to a tantalizing theory about anothe ...read more
The crew of Apollo 7, form left to right: Command Module pilot, Don F. Eisele, Commander, Walter M. Schirra Jr. and Lunar Module pilot, Walter Cunningham. (Credit: NASA)
Almost exactly 50 years ago, NASA launched the first crewed Apollo mission into space. The goal was to test the latest spaceship tech, ensuring humans could survive their long trip to the moon, and the expedition also marked the first 3-person American space crew, as well as the first to broadcast a live television f ...read more
Penitentes on the Upper Rio Blanco, Central Andes of Argentina. Such fields of jagged ice could cover Europa’s equatorial latitudes. Arvaki (Wikipedia)
Jupiter’s icy moon Europa has come into the spotlight as one of the likeliest places in the solar system to find Earth-like life. Scientists believe that beneath its icy shell lurks a liquid ocean, perhaps even one that’s relatively warm and hospitable to life. NASA’s Europa Clipper mission, currently with a launch date ...read more
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The Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change, or IPCC, released a special report Monday on the impact of global warming of 1.5 degrees Celsius above pre-industrial levels. The IPCC report says that based on humanity’s current use of fossil fuels, they’re highly confident the world will reach those levels between 2030 and 2052. Warming to 1.5C will mean warmer average temperatures and increased flood hazards in some regions as well as biodive ...read more
NASA’s Hubble Space Telescope, photographed during the first astronaut servicing mission in 1993. (Credit: NASA)
On Friday, NASA’s iconic Hubble Space Telescope, our window into the universe since 1990, went into a protective safe mode after one of its gyroscopes failed.
Hubble was built with six gyroscopes designed to keep the telescope pointed the same way for long periods of time. These six gyroscopes were replaced during a 2009 repair mission to the telescope. But, ove ...read more
The image shows the heliosphere that wraps around the Sun, its planets and far beyond. The heliosheath is the outermost later of the heliosphere, and is where Voyager 2 is traveling through to get it to interstellar space. (Credit: NASA/JPL-Caltech)
When it comes to space exploration, no one has the Voyager missions beat. On October 5, NASA reported that their Voyager 2 spacecraft is nearing our heliosphere’s outer borders, and could soon enter interstellar space. Data shows that th ...read more
