(Credit: HappyRichStudio/Shutterstock)
The same stuff that’s been linked to red wine’s heart-health benefits could also someday help astronauts walk on Mars. In a new study published in the journal Frontiers in Physiology, researchers say that resveratrol, a compound found in wines, could lessen muscle loss on the long trip to Mars.
The Trouble With Traveling to Mars
Currently, a one-way trip to Mars will take something like nine months. To make the trek, whichever spacecra ...read more
Researchers had a lucky break that helped them crack the code of Egyptian hieroglyphics, like the ones shown on this artifact. But many lost languages remain undeciphered, with no Rosetta Stone to point the way. (Credit: Zoran Karapancev/shutterstock)
Since the invention of writing several thousands of years ago, humans have come up with myriad scripts that turn the phonetic sounds of spoken languages into something visual. Most of these written languages have already been deciphered, from E ...read more
The VR glove in action.(Credit: Song et al, Scientific Reports, (2019) 9:8988)
Our squishy human brains are notoriously easy to fool. Whether it’s optical illusions or more advanced trickery, it doesn’t take much to exploit our mind’s weaknesses. But, that’s also what enables virtual reality (VR) systems, where technology can effectively transport us to a digital world. And thanks to a newly developed VR glove, the effect might soon be better than ever.
A team of en ...read more
Tropical storms loom large over different parts of the globe, while extreme heat and droughts wreak havoc on other areas. Flash floods and landslides plague parts of India, as dust storms make it difficult to drive and breathe in the southwestern United States.
Extreme weather. We may feel powerless, but there are ways we can help scientists better predict these events and help provide warning systems. That’s empowering.
Stay safe.
The SciStarter Team
ISeeChange
...read more
A photo of Thwaites Glacier taken during a reconnaissance flight. (Credit: U.S. National Science Foundation)
Climate change is melting the West Antarctic Ice Sheet. A recent swell in warm ocean water on the western side of the continent is eating away at two predominant glaciers, Pine Island Glacier and Thwaites Glacier. And the retreating glaciers mean the entire larger ice sheet could disintegrate, leading to a 10-foot rise in sea level around the world. This surge in water levels imperils ...read more
An artist's illustration shows Starship, SpaceX's future passenger vehicle, launching above the clouds. (Credit: SpaceX)
On Tuesday, SpaceX ran its second test of Starhopper, the prototype
for their enormous future passenger spacecraft. The static fire test was meant
to measure the Raptor engines that power the craft. But at the end of the five
second test, Starhopper was instead surrounded by an enormous fireball, as
shown in a video from the rural Texas test site gathered by Everyday Astro ...read more
Gravitational waves can be detected from the collision of massive objects in the universe, but also from much smaller objects like dark matter particles. (Credit: EPA/R. Hurt / Caltech-JPL)
In 2015, scientists made history by detecting the first gravitational waves — ripples in space-time predicted by Albert Einstein a century earlier. The waves were created by the merger of two black holes, each one much larger than the sun. And since then, the Laser Interferometer Gravitational-Wave O ...read more
An Oklahoma home damaged in 2011 during an earthquake that was likely spawned by injecting wastewater during fossil fuel extraction. (Credit: USGS)
Earthquakes used to be uncommon in Middle America. But in the last decade, quakes numbers have skyrocketed in Oklahoma and Kansas. The major uptick in seismic activity has risen alongside the growth of oil and gas production in the area. When fossil fuel companies dispose of wastewater by injecting it into underground wells, the increased pressur ...read more
President Nixon greets Apollo 11 astronauts, left to right, Neil A. Armstrong, Michael Collins, shoulders only, and Edwin E. Aldrin, Jr. (Credit: NASA/Apollo)
It’s easy, amid the celebrations of the 50th anniversary of the Apollo 11 moon landing, to see it as an inevitable success. NASA had been preparing for the task for years, ever since President John F. Kennedy made his famous speech at Rice University in 1962, declaring America would “go to the moon in this decade.” Whe ...read more
(Credit: Petr Bonek/Shutterstock)
If you cooked dinner today — even a Cup O Noodles — you did something extraordinary and uniquely human. While the rest of the animal kingdom subsists on raw food, we Homo sapiens cook our chow.
And according to some researchers, this distinction made all the difference: When our ancestors mastered cooking roughly 2 million years ago it changed the course of human evolution, they say. Because cooked food provides more energy, the habit led to s ...read more
