An artist depicts the powerful quasar blowing away material immediately around it, but with the outer reaches of the galaxy still containing red dust and gas. (Credit: Michelle Vigeant)
Quasars are supermassive black holes actively gobbling material from the galaxy around them. While black holes are known for pulling material in, the turbulent swirl of that whirlpool often also flings material and radiation out at high energies, enabling quasars to be seen from across the universe. They are ...read more
This animated spiral portrays the simulated changes in the global average monthly air temperature from 1850 through the present relative to 1850-1900, and then where they are projected to head if we do nothing to reduce emissions of carbon dioxide. (Source: Jay Alder, USGS)
The Trump administration has rolled back Obama-era climate change rules in an effort to save coal-fired electric power plants in the United States.
The action comes in the form of the "Affordable Clean Energy rule," wh ...read more
The lines scribbled over this famous Georges Seurat painting come from an experiment that tracked how the human eye jerks around as it takes in the details of the scene. (Credit: R. Wurtz / Daedalus 2015 / Public Domain)
The image above, “A Sunday Afternoon on the Island of La Grande Jatte,” was painted in 1884 by French artist Georges Seurat. The black lines crisscrossing it are not the work of a toddler wreaking havoc with a permanent marker, but that of neuroscientist Robert Wu ...read more
Climate change could mean trouble for Himalayan glaciers. New research reports that they're melting twice as fast today as they were at the turn of the century. (Credit: Nik Bruining/Shutterstock)
Home to Mount Everest and many more of the world’s tallest peaks, the Himalayas rise up from the Ganges River north to the Tibetan Plateau. This iconic mountain range is also home to thousands of glaciers.
These rivers of ice provide valuable fresh water to surrounding regions. But th ...read more
NEEMO 23 crew members test out a prototype of the LESA device. (Credit: ESA/NASA)
This week, astronauts and scientists are venturing under the sea as part of NEEMO-23, the 23rd expedition of the NASA’s Extreme Environment Mission Operations. NEEMO sends specialists to Aquarius, an underwater research station located 3.5 miles off the coast of Key Largo in Florida, and 62 feet under the surface.
Thanks to the buoyancy of seawater and the sandy seafloor,
the area around Aquarius is a ...read more
A flooded rice field. Microbes in the soil release methane when rice fields are flooded, adding to greenhouse gas emissions. (Credit: Jet Rockkk/.Shutterstock)
The real impact of climate change depends on tiny organisms we can’t even see, argues an international panel of more than 30 microbiologists in a consensus statement published Tuesday.
Microbes, or microorganisms, are any organism or virus invisible to the naked eye. Numbering in the nonillions (in the U.S., that’s 10,0 ...read more
(Credit: SewCream/Shutterstock)
When it comes to medical diagnoses, Alzheimer’s is a grim one. Those who develop the disease, which causes ever-worsening memory and behavioral problems, don’t have many treatment options. There are a handful of drugs that can ease symptoms, but none of them slow down the disease’s progression or offer a cure. But one approach, outside the realm of drugs and medications, is quickly showing some strong potential for treatment -- fasting.
Typ ...read more
The robot fish in its natural environment. (Credit: James Pikul)
When it comes to designing better gizmos, efficiency is the name of the game. Why have two separate components to do two separate tasks, if you can have one do both? We have a whole bird-killing metaphor about how great it is to be efficient.
Well, what’s good for the goose, it turns out, is also good
for the robot fish.
A team of engineers at Cornell and the University of Pennsylvania have created a soft fish-shap ...read more
The James Webb Space Telescope -- minus the telescope -- recently underwent another round of testing. (Credit: NASA/Chris Gunn)
The James Webb Space Telescope (JWST) is NASA’s long-planned – and long-delayed – successor to Hubble. But after a recent spate of testing to mimic the extremes of space, it’s looking like the telescope is still on track for its 2021 launch date.
The telescope itself, along with its instrumentation, passed many of its final tests last year ...read more
(Credit: POLIGOONE/Shutterstock)
I don’t know who said “you are what you eat,” but it really doesn’t make sense. I am objectively not made of peanut butter and coffee, though I’m certain that would be my fate if the sentiment were true. That said, the general idea — that what we eat matters — seems to hold more and more weight as studies of our diet pile up. Now, researchers say there's yet another wrinkle to the question of what to eat, one rooted in ...read more
