NASA’s news of the TRAPPIST-1 solar system generated quite the buzz recently. The agency announced that the system’s star — an ultra-cool dwarf just a bit bigger than Jupiter — has a collection of seven Earth-sized planets circling it. Researchers confirmed two of these planets in 2016 but upped the tally to seven after they gathered more data. Three of the worlds lie in the star’s habitable zone, where there is the greatest likelihood of having liquid water and may ...read more
Dr. Edith Bone has decided not to cry.
On this autumn afternoon in 1956, her seven years of solitary confinement have come to a sudden end. Beyond the prison gates, the Hungarian Revolution’s final, scattered shots are echoing down the streets of Budapest. Inside the gates, Bone emerges through the prison’s front door into the courtyard’s bewildering sunlight. She is 68 years old, stout and arthritic.
Bone was born in Budapest in 1889 and proved an intelligent — if disobe ...read more
Scientists debate whether the faces humans make mean the same thing around the world.
Everyone smiles in the same language, right? For decades, psychologists have backed up the idea that facial expressions are universal. Paul Ekman’s research in the 1960s was a driving force behind this popular notion. He found cultures worldwide describe facial expressions the same way: For example, a scrunched-up nose signals disgust. Even in the isolated Fore tribe of Papua New Guinea, Ekman’ ...read more
Rare Earthquakes Within Tectonic Plates Are Highly Deadly
New Jersey Coast: Before and After Sandy
Finally, a Home Where You Can Enjoy the Post-Apocalypse
The Colorado Deluge
CO2 ‘Time Bomb’ From Thawing Permafrost More Like Slow Leak
97. Seismologists Convicted for Failed Quake Prediction
Iceland Eruption, Largest for a Century, Shows No Signs of Stopping
Hurricanes with Female Names Are Deadlier Than Masculine Ones
Solving the Mystery ...read more
Hearing Hairs Restored: Tiny hairs in our inner ears, called cochlear hair cells, are vital to our natural perception of sound, and once we lose them, we don’t grow them back. But scientists published in Cell Reports that they’ve discovered a way to regenerate those cells in mouse, primate and human tissue samples. After exposing supporting cells — cells that can create new cochlear hairs — to a specialized drug mixture, the team saw significant new hair cell growth.
Baby ...read more
With a series of papers out today, Homo naledi gets both a birthdate and more complete.
Discovered in a South African cave, H. naledi first came to light in 2015, in a paper by University of the Witwatersrand anthropologist Lee Berger. Though the remains were undated at the time, estimates put them at anywhere from 100,000 to several million years old. This was based on a physical analysis of the bones, which contained a curious mixture of modern and archaic traits. Now, aft ...read more
The filagree of atmospheric patterns at Jupiter's south pole bears an eerie resemblance to a phenomenon here on Earth
When I spotted this image of Jupiter on NASA's website, I felt a bit disoriented.
At first glance, it looked like a fanciful artist's conception of the giant planet. But it's actually a real image of Jupiter's south polar region, acquired by the Juno spacecraft. (Make sure to click on it, and then click again to enlarge it.)
The image has been enhanced to help bring ...read more
A new paper in the prestigious journal PNAS contains a rather glaring blooper.
The paper, from Oxford University researchers Eiluned Pearce et al., is about the relationship between genes and social behaviour. The blooper is right there in the abstract, which states that "three neuropeptides (β-endorphin, oxytocin, and dopamine) play particularly important roles" in human sociality. But dopamine is not a neuropeptide.
Neither are serotonin or testosterone, but throughout the paper, Pea ...read more
Amazon and Google's dreams of delivery drones dropping off packages or pizza still face the problem of short delivery ranges. Most drones have limited battery life that restricts their services to less than a 10-mile delivery radius. A recently-approved IBM patent offers an unusual way to extend delivery ranges by having drones transfer packages in midair.
The IBM patent envisions several possible ways for delivery drones to hand off their packages without having to land. One ide ...read more
An 80-mile crack is spreading across the Antarctic Peninsula’s Larsen C ice shelf. And once that crack reaches the ocean, it will calve an iceberg the size of Delaware. The chunk looked like it could break off a few months ago, but it’s still clinging on by a roughly 10-mile thread. Earlier this week, scientists from the MIDAS project, which monitors Larsen C, reported a new branch on that crack.
Icebergs naturally calve from ice shelves all the time. But scientists are concerned th ...read more
