Food expiration labels use many different wordings — but for the most part, they don’t really tell you when items are truly no good. (Credit: Knowable Magazine)
In August 2011, a can of Great Value peas joined the nonperishables in my pantry, one of several panic purchases as Hurricane Irene barreled toward my home on the northeast US coast. But the emergency passed, and the can, with its unassuming blue-on-white outline font, remains on my shelf seven years later.
Its continued p ...read more
Scientists think that these dark, narrow slopes on Mars could have been created by flowing water. One new study suggests that, if briny water exists on Mars, it could contain enough oxygen to support life. (Credit: NASA/JPL/University of Arizona)
Just below the surface of Mars, scientists suspect that there might be briny waters that, according to a new study, could hold enough molecular oxygen to support certain types of life.
As light breaks down carbon dioxide on Mars, a little bit of oxyge ...read more
This artist’s illustration shows what plumes shooting out of Europa’s surface might look like. However, in one new study, scientists found a lack of hotspots on Europa that might signal the existence of plumes. (NASA/ESA/K. Retherford/SWRI)
Io, Enceladus, Earth — our solar system holds a number of locations where plumes of gas erupt. And for years, scientists have suspected that such plumes also exist on Jupiter’s moon Europa. However, according to one new study done us ...read more
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
