An illustration of NASA’s Lucy spacecraft. (Credit: SwRI)
From Ryugu to Bennu, asteroid exploration has been all the rage among astronomers lately. And now, we’re one step closer to exploring some of the most mysterious asteroids in the solar system.
On October 30, NASA announced that they’ve been given the green light to start building Lucy, a spacecraft that will probe Jupiter’s trojan asteroids and is set to launch in October of 2021. On top of giving the g ...read more
Source: NASA Earth Observatory.
Seriously, this gargantuan coffin-like object really was photographed by an astronaut aboard the International Space Station on September 23, 2018.
If you guessed that it is an iceberg, you are right.
A broader view of B-15T, from NASA’s Terra Satellite. (Source: NASA Earth Observatory)
Known rather unimaginatively as B-15T, the spooky, Brobdingnagian berg is seen here adrift in the South Atlantic Ocean between South Georgia ...read more
David Mzee, 28, a patient in the study, learns to walk again thanks to electrical stimulation. (Credit: École polytechnique fédérale de Lausanne)
A spinal cord injury used to mean life bound to a wheelchair. Now, three spinal cord injury patients are able to walk and even ride a modified bicycle, new research shows. The trio got on their feet again thanks to well-timed and precise electrical stimulation in the spinal cord combined with rehabilitation. The results are just ...read more
The Andromeda galaxy, which researchers think will collide with the Milky Way in billions of years. One new study shows how our galaxy was shaped by a merger with a dwarf galaxy 10 billion years ago. (Credit: NASA JPL)
Our galaxy, perhaps like many in the universe, is a bit of a Frankenstein’s monster. A new study makes a compelling case that a central structure in the Milky Way is actually composed mostly of stars born in another galaxy, brought to us by a long-ago galactic smash-u ...read more
A plate from Morton’s 1939 Crania Americana. (Credit: archive.org)
Samuel Morton collected and studied hundreds of human skulls in the early 19th century. By objectively measuring differences in brain size between people from various societies, Morton believed he had used science to prove that white people were intellectually superior to other races.
Modern science has long since shown that brain size isn’t necessarily related to intelligence. Many researchers suspect brain size is ...read more
Photomicrograph of a region of the substantia nigra in a Parkinson’s patient showing Lewy bodies. (Credit: Suraj Rajan/Wkimedia Commons)
Having your appendix removed could lower the risk of getting Parkinson’s disease by 20 percent, says a team of researchers in a new study.
Using medical data from a large-scale Swedish database, a team led by scientists from the Van Andel Research Institute in Grand Rapids, Michigan, were able to tease out a connection between a conditio ...read more
Authai using the touch screen to demonstrate her counting abilities. (Credit: Ethological Society and Springer Japan KK, part of Springer Nature 2018)
Asian elephants seem to know their numbers, according to a study published yesterday in the Journal of Ethology. Lead author Naoko Irie and colleagues at SOKENDAI (The Graduate University for Advanced Studies and the Japan Society for the Promotion of Science) trained a 14-year old elephant named Authai to use a touch panel in order to test ...read more
(Credit: Saroj Khuendee/Shutterstock)
(Inside Science) — Soil bacteria respond dramatically to changes in climate, but the full impacts aren’t felt for at least half a century, according to new research. The findings suggest that today’s climate conditions will continue to cause upheaval in the soil for decades.
A team of Chinese and American researchers analyzed data from soil samples collected in recent years from 144 sites in Tibet, the U.S. and Canada. Next, they use ...read more
Madagascar’s recently extinct elephant birds, once thought to be active during the day, were actually nocturnal, according to new research. (Credit: John Maisano for the University of Texas at Austin Jackson School of Geosciences)
They were enormous, the biggest of the big, and, say authors of a new study reconstructing bird brains, the elephant birds of Madagascar were also nocturnal. The new research reveals surprising details about the animals, their habitats and their closes ...read more
