By Caroline Nickerson
Over the past few months, members of the SciStarter team have been working around the country to share new citizen science projects at science festivals. It’s been so much fun to join others excited about science and get a chance to meet some of you!
Organizing a science festival is a labor of love, fueled by the passion of the coordinators, exhibitors, and participants.
The Cambridge Science Festival was one of the first of its kind in the United S ...read more
A composite image of over 500 U.S. Christian’s perceptions of what God looks like. (Credit: Joshua Jackson Et Al)
What would you say if you saw this stranger on a bus? Well, if you’re Christian, you might say he’s God.
Psychologists from the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill surveyed 511 Christians in the U.S. and, based on the participants’ combined perceptions, this is roughly what they thought Go ...read more
An urban fox scavenges on the edge of a park. (Credit: Shutterstock)
For their first 100 million years on planet Earth, our mammal ancestors relied on the cover of darkness to escape their dinosaur predators and competitors. Only after the meteor-induced mass extinction of dinosaurs 66 million years ago could these nocturnal mammals explore the many wondrous opportunities available in the light of day.
Fast forward to the present, and the honeymoon in the sun may be over for mammals. Theyâ ...read more
(Credit: Shutterstock)
It seems impossible, right? We have been taught from the time we were young that babies are made when a sperm and an egg come together, and the DNA from these two cells combine to make a unique individual with half the DNA from the mother and half from the father. So how can there be a third person involved in this process?
To understand the idea of three-parent babies, we have to talk about DNA. Most people are familiar with the double helix-style DNA which make up the 2 ...read more
Yesterday, we started the 2018 Geology World Cup with voting for Group A, so let’s move to the next group!
Group B
Atlas Mountains of Morocco. Wikimedia Commons.
Morocco: Much of Morocco’s geology is linked with the slow collision of Africa and Europe. The Atlas Mountains rise up on the western side of Africa and represent the the stresses put on the two plates by Africa plowing into Europe over the last 65 million years. The mountain range that pre-da ...read more
2018 Geology World Cup
The 2018 World Cup starts today! One of the world’s largest events of any kind will capture the planet’s attention yet again and Rocky Planet will be hosting the first Geology World Cup. Back in 2014, I ran the Volcano World Cup, where I pit each country that qualified for the real World Cup against each other based on their volcanic features and history. You, the reader, got to vote on which country moved on each round until we crown ...read more
An annotated map showing the Milky Way’s structure, based on measurements to distant stars and other objects. (Credit: NASA)
Despite residing in it, it’s hard for us to know exactly how big the Milky Way is. But new research has found that our galaxy is bigger than previously thought. Using a large survey of stars instead of just models (as previous researchers did), astronomers have now determined the disk of our galaxy to be 200,000 light-years across &ac ...read more
One of four frogs preserved in amber for nearly 100 million years and formally described today in Scientific Reports. (Credit Lida Xing)
Frogs in a rainforest? Sure, rainforests are home to tons of them. Nothing new there — except that researchers just found four, preserved in amber and nearly 100 million years old, that suggest frogs have been hanging out in that environment much longer than previously shown.
Anura, the amphibian order that includes frogs and toads ...read more
