For decades, scientists have been scanning Mars’ surface for signs of ancient life. But by digging a little bit deeper, they’ve come across historic habitable zones in unexpected places.
After expanding their search, a team of researchers found that the Red Planet’s ancient subsurface could have housed microbial life for hundreds of millions of years. By borrowing hydrogen electrons from water, microbes could’ve had enough energy to not only survive underground ...read more
Sunshine on a biting fall day can feel blissful. But too much time spent basking in the sun’s ultraviolet rays can lead to sunburn and increase the risk of developing skin cancer, cataracts and wrinkles. Now, researchers have made a cheap, wearable device that keeps tabs on UV exposure. The new tech could mean soaking up the sun without overdosing on radiation.
Vipul Bansal, an applied chemist and nanobiotechnologist at the Royal Melbourne Institute of Technology in Australia, wanted to m ...read more
A version of this article originally appeared on The Conversation.
On a crisp California afternoon in early December 1968, a square-jawed, mild-mannered Stanford researcher named Douglas Engelbart took the stage at San Francisco’s Civic Auditorium and proceeded to blow everyone’s mind about what computers could do. Sitting down at a keyboard, this computer-age Clark Kent calmly showed a rapt audience of computer engineers how the devices they built could be utterly different kinds o ...read more
After falling past the event horizon — the point of no return — nothing can escape a black hole. While the depths of black holes may forever remain a mystery, astronomers can observe the regions around them. In a paper published September 3 in the Monthly Notices of the Royal Astronomical Society, a team of researchers reported, for the first time, spotting a clump of matter falling directly into a distant black hole at nearly one-third the speed of light.
The observations, which co ...read more
Three paraplegic patients can walk again thanks to an intense rehabilitation program with a device that sent electricity down his spine, researchers report Monday in two separate studies.
A snowmobile accident nearly 4 years earlier had paralyzed the then 26-year-old Jered Chinnock from the middle of his back down. He couldn't move or feel anything below his sixth thoracic vertebrae — a spinal segment in the middle of the rib cage — where he had broken his back. Now, he can volunta ...read more
Put Artificial Intelligence to work for you in these five projects.
Need a little help identifying that mysterious bug you found? Artificial Intelligence (AI) can help! AI is transforming how citizen science gets done: from IDing species to crunching through massive amounts of data.
Still…AI is only part of the solution. Your help is needed to advance scientific research. Let’s get started with our editors’ picks of the week!
Cheers!
The SciStarter Team
iNaturalist
Sha ...read more
