Perhaps no name is more recognizable in connection with The Manhattan Project than Robert Oppenheimer. Oppenheimer, a genius theoretical physicist, was the director of the Los Alamos Lab, where the first atomic bomb was developed. (Credit:Jeffrey M. Frank/Shutterstock) replica nuclear weapon With a high level of intelligence and curiosity that started in childhood, Oppenheimer was a polymath. His breadth of knowledge exceeded the realm of physics and included history, the arts, language and ...read more

If you’ve heard Michael Jackson’s familiar refrain “Annie, are you OK?,” you know one of the first steps of performing CPR: assessing whether the other person is responsive. And that’s not a coincidence. It’s said that this particular lyric was directly inspired by Resusci Anne — the name given to the anatomical manikin found in first aid classes around the world. And she’s far more than just a pretty face.Receiving cardiopulmonary resuscitation, or CPR, can double or triple the ...read more

Out of all the hundreds of millions of cats and dogs alive on the earth, only a rare few live well beyond what’s considered their species’ average lifespans. For cats, that’s generally considered to be 12 to 15 years, with a fair number of felines making it to between 17 and 20. For dogs, it’s usually 10 to 13 years, with great variability given a dog’s breed and particular circumstances.But whether it’s a quirk of genetics, a perfect blend of diet and exercise, or the undying love o ...read more

Clusters of cells began grouping together about 800 million years ago. This enabled greater life development, and eventually, these cells became the Earth’s first animals. Scientists always believed sponges were the earliest animals, but recent evidence suggests that the comb jellyfish was actually the first. Many animals from prehistoric times became extinct, but these are five that still exist. 1. Komodo Dragon(Credit:Sydney Faith Woodward/Shutterstock)Dating back about four million year ...read more

The Science Near Me blog is a partnership between Discover magazine and ScienceNearMe.org.In 2017, people across America turned out to watch one of the most stunning celestial events visible from Earth: a solar eclipse. An estimated 215 million Americans — 88% of the adult population, almost twice as many viewers as the Super Bowl  — watched the eclipse either in person or virtually. Now, in just under a year, we’ll be seeing another eclipse cross the continental United States.On April 8, ...read more

Ireland and Britain should be, seismologically speaking, equally boring. The two islands lie thousands of kilometers from the nearest plate boundary and are not volcanic hot spots. But though the ground rarely rumbles in Ireland, neighboring Britain experiences plenty of weak and moderate earthquakes.The lithosphere—Earth’s outermost rocky veneer, which includes the crust and the solid upper mantle—is thicker and cooler beneath Ireland than it is beneath Britain, new research has suggeste ...read more

At first glance, the Earth’s orbit and oceans could not be more different. The former is located on the uppermost layers of the planet’s atmosphere and beyond, while the latter surrounds all the landmasses around the globe.But there is a glaring similarity between the two: Both are vast areas with no owner, making responsible and sustainable use of them incredibly challenging.Imogen Napper, a marine scientist at the University of Plymouth in England, says the high seas and the Earth’s orbi ...read more

Researchers have long used birdsong as a prime example when studying the complexities of speech. But a new study based on orangutans attempts to change that and shed some light on how humans acquired the ability to make more than one vocal sound at a time.The researchers spent a massive amount of time observing and recording the great apes in the wild – some 3,800 hours in Borneo and Sumatra within range of the animals. What they found connects present-day beatboxing sounds to early human lang ...read more

Back in October 2021, developers on the GitHub software development platform were given access to an exotic AI tool called Copilot. Created in association with OpenAI, the company behind ChatGPT, Copilot uses the same generative AI technology to produce computer code on request, rather than text. And it is pretty good at it. Github reckons that Copilot successfully autocompletes coding suggestions about 50 percent of the time, which should significantly increase the productivity of the millions ...read more

Despite the seemingly-infinite vastness of the cosmos, Earth is the only place known to harbor life. As such, humans have long wondered whether our world is the only place where life has emerged — a process known as abiogenesis. A new study may offer some tantalizing clues. Planetary scientists from the Max Planck Institute for Solar System Research in Germany showed that the metallicity of stars, or how much metal a star contains, is an important factor in our ongoing search for complex life ...read more