New Horizons visits a Kuiper Belt Object. If astronomers luck out,they might net a third flyby target for the well-traveled spacecraft. (Credit: NASA/Johns Hopkins University Applied Physics Laboratory/Southwest Research Institute/Steve Gribben)
The eyes of the world turned from NASA’s New Horizons spacecraft after its 2015 flyby at Pluto. But on New Year’s Eve next year, the space probe will zoom past another object unlike any astronomers have ever seen before.
This world, current ...read more
This artist’s rendering shows NASA’s Cassini spacecraft above Saturn’s northern hemisphere, heading toward its first dive between Saturn and its rings on April 26, 2017. (Source: NASA/JPL-Caltech)
On July 1, 2004, Cassini became the first spacecraft ever to orbit Saturn. And today, the spacecraft has likely achieved another milestone: Using its 13-foot-wide high-gain antenna as a shield, it probably has made the first ever dive between the rings and the giant gaseous planet it ...read more
Neuroscientists have launched an assault on the American Psychiatric Association headquarters and are engaged in bitter, boardroom-to-boardroom fighting. Psychiatrists have captured the leader of a militant pro-brain faction. A ceasefire, brokered by the American Association for the Advancement of Science, is due to come into effect at midnight.
Yes, indeed. A blog post by Daniel Barron in Scientific American yesterday claimed that there is a War between Neuroscience and Psychiatry
Here’ ...read more
Tal Danino explores the diversity of the microbial world through synthetic biology and artistic projects, like “Microuniverse,” above. (Image: Ana Pantelic)
Bacteria are – like nearly every other life form – social beings, responding to their neighbors and surroundings in intricate ways. Modifying metabolism based on nearby organisms allows single celled creatures to have outsized impact, by making extensive biofilms or swarming to degrade a new food source, for example ...read more
Image: Flickr/Paul Stevenson
If the above image disturbs you, move along; this post is not for you! In this study, published this week in the journal Soft Matter (yes, seriously), scientists from the Georgia Institute of Technology report their detailed studies of the pooping habits of a wide variety of mammals. Using video recordings of the fecal extrusions and measuring the resulting turds, they deduce that “Despite the length of rectum ranging from 4 to 40 cm, mammals from cats t ...read more
Old Einstein and young Einstein both get their close-ups in Genius. (Credit: National Geographic/Dusan Martincek)
If you are going to create a television show called Genius, you had better grapple with the nature of genius. If you are going to do that kind of grappling, you might as well focus on the very first face that comes to mind when people say “genius.” And if you are going to do a show about Albert Einstein–which is exactly where the creators of the new series Genius ...read more
As shown in this illustration, during its Grand Finale mission stage Cassini will fly through the 1200-mile gap between Saturn’s cloud tops and rings 22 times. (Illustration credit: NASA Jet Propulsion Laboratory)
Every scientist and engineer who has been part of the Cassini mission team will probably be a bit anxious during tomorrow’s early morning hours. The craft will fly through a 1200-mile-wide gap between Saturn’s cloud tops and its inner ring, giving humankind new views ...read more
A conceptual illustration of the view from a flying car taxi service. Credit: Bell Helicopter
Uber sees no need for startups to bet on a risky “if you build it, they will come” strategy for flying taxis. Instead, the tech giant believes the demand for a faster aerial commuting option already exists among its 60 million monthly users–especially if the flying taxi service can cost about the same as hailing an UberX car. As a result, Uber has partnered with s ...read more
Blood Falls in Antarctica. (Credit: Wikimedia Commons)
In the McMurdo Dry Valleys of Antarctica, pristine glaciers are marred in one spot by a striking feature: a crimson stain on the white cliffs, looking not unlike a gaping wound in the ice.
The five-story gash goes by the unnerving name of Blood Falls, although the color is not at all organic in nature. The salty water that seeps from the glacier is actually stained red by its rich iron content, and harbors a community of extremophile ...read more
