Tropical cyclones are drifting northward thanks to climate change. (Credit: ESA/NASA-A.GERST)
Typhoons are becoming more destructive at northern latitudes, according to the first long-term study to document how the storms in East Asia are drifting toward the poles. As climate change expands the tropics and warms sea surface temperatures, those conditions are triggering cyclones to form further north, scientists say. That means devastating typhoons will increasingly threaten cities and towns on ...read more
The universe in its infancy wasn’t the bright place we know today. Credit: NASA/ESA
The Big Bang, as many cosmologists like to point out, was not very banging. Nothing exploded. But that doesn’t mean it wasn’t a busy and exciting event. The rush of inflation was a powerful outpouring of energy, which certainly included light. And yet, the energy contained in that early universe was such that light couldn’t even escape. For light to be seen, by telescopes or eyes of ...read more
(Credit: NASA)
In one Chinese city, costly streetlights could soon be a thing of the past.
By 2020, the Tian Fu New Area Science Society plans to launch an artificial moon to light up the night sky. If the plan goes through, the so-called “illumination satellite” would orbit above the Chinese city of Chengdu and glow in conjunction with the actual moon, but shine eight times brighter. The organization says it will launch three more satellites in 2022 — potentially replacing s ...read more
I just came across a strange but quite charming scientific study claiming that human thought alone can make wine taste better.
This miracle of vinomancy is reported in a paper in Explore, a unique if often credulity-stretching Elsevier academic journal dedicated to “healing arts, consciousness, spirituality, eco-environmental issues, and basic science as all these fields relate to health.”
In the article in question, author Stephan A. Schwartz describes how he carried out an experi ...read more
This composite image of Kes 75, the youngest known pulsar in the Milky Way, includes data from Chandra and the Sloan Digital Sky Survey. The blue region represents the high-energy X-rays surrounding the pulsar, showing an area called the pulsar wind nebula, and the purple region shows lower-energy X-rays, emitted by debris left over from the original supernova explosion. (Credit: NASA/CXC/NCSU/S. Reynolds; Optical: PanSTARRS)
Thanks to data from NASA’s Chandra X-ray Observatory, a team o ...read more
A rock was inserted into the mouth of a 10-year-old to keep the deceased child from rising from the grave and spreading malaria, researchers believe. (Credit: David Pickel/Stanford University)
Have you heard of the ‘Vampire of Lugano”? Apparently that’s what residents of the Italian commune of Lugano in Teverina are calling this strange archaeological find — the remains of a 10 year old child found in a 5th century cemetery originally thought to be reserved for tod ...read more
The Godzilla constellation in the gamma-ray sky — a new set of constellations based off of gamma-ray emissions observed with NASA’s Fermi Gamma-ray Space Telescope. (Credit: NASA)
Gamma-Ray Sky
For countless years, humans have gazed up at the sky and made sense of the stars by finding shapes in them — constellations of heroes, animals, and well-worn tales. Now, to celebrate the 10th mission year of NASA’s Fermi Gamma-ray Space Telescope, scientists have used the telesco ...read more
A visualization of the blazar being observed while emitting gamma rays. (Credit: Stefano Ciprini)
Blazar Brightness
After 10 years of observations, scientists have confirmed a two-year cycle in the gamma-ray brightness of a blazar, or a galaxy with supermassive black holes that consume mass and produce high-energy jets as a result. Blazars are the most energetic and luminous objects that we have identified so far in the known universe.
“This is the first time that a gamma-ray period has ...read more
