SpaceX’s Falcon Heavy will launch on its first commercial flight tomorrow. The rocket launch was postponed from early April due to unspecified concerns, and then postponed again just this week due to weather. But Wednesday has a clear forecast with an 80% probability of a launch, so odds are good the mission will proceed. The launch window opens at 6:35am EDT.
Falcon Heavy is a modified version of SpaceX’s standard Falcon 9 rocket, essentially made up of three Falcon 9’s strap ...read more
There are so many ways to engage in Citizen Science Day on April 13. Participate in any SciStarter affiliate project to earn a personalized certificate.
Start with the Stall Catchers Megathon, a gamified, online inter-generational game to accelerate research on Alzheimer's!
Join the virtual SciStarter Megathon team or organize or join an in-person Megathon meet-up. Find all you need on CitizenScienceDay.org .
Citizen Science Day and the Stall Catchers Megath ...read more
One of the great challenges in searching for life on other planets is that we still have so much to learn about life on our own Earth. Amazingly, that is true not only at the micro level of biochemistry and genetic codes, but at the macro level as well. You would think that there would be little left to learn about elephants, bears, penguins, and jaguars--the creatures sometimes lumped together by jaded zoologists as "charismatic megafauna"--but you would be wrong.
The new series "Hostile ...read more
I don’t mean to alarm you, but the average human brain size is shrinking. And we can’t blame reality T.V. or twitter. No, this decline began tens of thousands of years ago.
It’s something of a well-known secret among anthropologists: Based on measurements of skulls, the average brain volume of Homo sapiens has reportedly decreased by roughly 10 percent in the past 40,000 years. This reduction is a reversal of the trend of cranial expansion, which had been occurring in hum ...read more
Baseball is back, and fans can anticipate another season of amazing catches, overpowering pitching, tape-measure home runs – and, yes, controversial calls that lead to blow-ups between umpires and players.
Home plate umpires are at the heart of baseball; every single pitch can require a judgment call. Yet ask any fan or player, and they’ll tell you that many of these calls are incorrect – errors that can affect strategy, statistics and even game outcomes.
Just how many mistak ...read more
It’s not just you. As you age, it gets harder to remember the digits of a phone number, or calculate how much tip to leave without resorting to an app. Our so-called "working memory" is responsible for keeping this kind of information at the forefront of the mind. And it fades with age.
Now researchers have found that stimulating the brain with weak electrical currents can restore working memory in older adults. The discovery lays the groundwork for combating memo ...read more
Suppose, if you will, that alien scientists came down to Earth and began to study the local lifeforms. But let's suppose that these aliens arrive by the side of a busy expressway, and stay there. Our extraterrestrials might conclude that cars are the dominant inhabitants of Earth.
Cars clearly exhibit intelligent behaviour, being able to navigate around obstacles and follow complex instructions on road signs. How, the aliens may wonder, do the cars manage this? What is the seat of car int ...read more
Slavery from Space is a citizen science project that allows users to further the antislavery movement by mapping the locations of activities in which people are frequently found to be enslaved.
How many slaves do you think there are in the world? You might be surprised. In 2016, the International Labour Organization estimated that 40.3 million people were enslaved globally, of which 28.7 million are women and girls and 24.9 million are in forced labor. To put those numbers into perspectiv ...read more
Citizen science has been around as long as science, but innovative approaches are opening doors to more and deeper forms of public participation.
Below, our editors spotlight a few projects that feature new approaches, novel research, or low-cost instruments. They all provide opportunities to act upon issues you may care about.
Cheers!
The SciStarter Team
Colony B
Unravel the secrets of microscopic life! Colony B is a mobile gaming app developed at McGill Universit ...read more
