Aspirin, commonly held to help heart health, also poses dangers for some people. (Credit: fizkes/Shutterstock)
Many Americans have seen the television commercials from a leading Aspirin manufacturer saying their drug “can help prevent another heart attack.” The claims behind the commercials, which have been airing for decades, are based on research showing that taking low doses of Aspirin daily can prohibit the aggregation of platelets that can cause a heart attack.
But Aspirin ...read more
A SpaceX Dragon cargo craft on a resupply mission to the ISS. (Credit: NASA)
Just days after the three newest crew members arrived on the
International Space Station (ISS), SpaceX’s Dragon cargo capsule is set to launch
on a resupply mission.
At about 6:24 p.m. EDT on July 24, a Falcon 9 rocket with
the attached Dragon capsule are scheduled to blast off from the Space Launch
Complex at Cape Canaveral Air Force Base. Dragon is supposed to reach the ISS
for docking on Friday.
On ...read more
The tiny spheres, evidence of a long-ago asteroid strike, are smaller than grains of salt. (Credit: Mike Meyer/Meteoritics and Planetary Science)
In 2006, an undergraduate student from the University of
South Florida named Mike Meyer spent his summer collecting fossils from the
walls of a quarry. In typical intern glory, his job was to pry open fossilized
clams and wash away sediment, looking for shells of long-dead single-celled
organisms.
Instead, he found what appeared to be miniscule ...read more
(Credit: fizkes/Shutterstock)
Hey, what do you call a sleeping dinosaur? A dino-SNORE!
What’s wrong, don’t find that funny? Well, what if I told you the exact same joke, but instead of crickets, uproarious laughter accompanied the punchline? According to a study today in Current Biology, you’d find it noticeably funnier.
The researchers found that even if the laughter is fake — posed, and not actual spontaneous laughter — it’d still boost your opini ...read more
With help from dark matter annihilation, some of the universe’s earliest stars were able to grow much larger than they would otherwise. (Credit: Astronomy/Roen Kelly after NSF)
Powered by dark matter, dark stars are hypothetical objects that may have inhabited the early universe. If they existed, these mysterious beasts would not only have been the first stars to form in the cosmos, they also might explain how supermassive black holes got their start.
Fueled by Dark Matter
(Cr ...read more
By pinpointing the ages and origins of stars in the Milky Way, astronomers can trace its history. (Credit: Koppelman, Villalobos and Helmi/NASA/ESA/Hubble)
Ten billion years ago, the Milky Way encountered another galaxy in the vast emptiness of space, and consumed it. Dubbed Gaia-Enceladus by astronomers, this stranger was roughly a quarter the Milky Way’s size, and it forever changed the makeup and shape of our home galaxy.
Scientists have had evidence for a while that the Milky Wa ...read more
a's GSLV MkIII-M1 rocket on the launch platform before the launch in India. (Credit: ISRO)
The Indian Space Research Organization’s (ISRO) second moon mission, Chandrayaan-2, launched successfully into Earth orbit on July 22 after a week long delay. The mission ultimately aims to place a lander and a rover on the lunar surface later this fall.
At about 5:18 a.m. EDT, India’s GSLV MkIII-M1 rocket lifted off from the launch platform at the nation’s Satish Dhawan Space ...read more
This week I came across a brain stimulation device called Humm that promises to improve your cognitive function and memory if you stick it to your forehead.
The Humm device. Image adapted from https://thinkhumm.com/preorder
There are several broadly similar devices on the market, which make use of the principle of transcranial alternating current stimulation (tACS) - passing a current through the head (the front of the head, generally) in order to modulate brain activity.
In the case o ...read more
Buzz Aldrin's famous footprint. NASA.
Apollo was amazing. Footage moonwalking astronauts and breathtaking images of the Earth from space remain a source of inspiration, and on a personal level have been the driver behind my entire academic and professional career. Apollo's legacy, on the other hand, has crippled our progress in space. In short, I think Apollo sort of ruined spaceflight.
In the Very Beginning…
On July 29, 1955, White House Press Secretary James C. Hagert ...read more
An artist rendition of Starship on a future flight in space. (Credit: SpaceX)
In a series of Twitter responses, SpaceX CEO Elon Musk confirmed Starhopper, the prototype for the company’s next generation of spacecraft, survived what appeared to be an explosion during a recent test.
On Tuesday, July 16, Starhopper had undergone a “static fire test” to check recently added Raptor engines on a testing pad in Boca Chica, Texas. But about five seconds after the test, a fireball ...read more
