What Mars could have looked like during an ice age 400,000 years ago. (Credit: NASA/JPL)
Given that there are ambitious plans to colonize Mars in the near future, it is surprising how much we still have to learn about what it would be like to actually live on the planet. Take the weather, for instance. We know there are wild fluctuations in Mars’s climate – and that it is very windy and at times cloudy (though too cold and dry for rainfall). But does it snow? Might settlers on Mars ...read more
USS Indianapolis (CA 35) is shown off the Mare Island Navy Yard, in Northern California, July 10, 1945, after her final overhaul and repair of combat damage. The photo was taken before the ship delivered atomic bomb components to Tinian and just 20 days before she was sunk by a Japanese submarine. Credit: U.S. Navy
The sinking of the USS Indianapolis by an Japanese submarine in the closing days of World War II marked one of the U.S. Navy’s greatest maritime tragedies. But the recent redi ...read more
A new tool called the R-factor could help ensure that science is reproducible and valid, according to a preprint posted on biorxiv: Science with no fiction. The authors, led by Peter Grabitz, are so confident in their idea that they’ve created a company called Verum Analytics to promote it. But how useful is this new metric going to be?
Not very useful, in my view. The R-factor (which stands for “reproducibility, reputation, responsibility, and robustness”) strikes me as a flaw ...read more
A total solar eclipse on March 9, 2016, as seen by NASA’s DSCOVR spacecraft.
Millions of people across the United States will cast their gaze upward to watch tomorrow’s total solar eclipse as it passes across the breadth of the nation. But what would it look like if you could gaze down on it from a million miles away in space?
For an answer, check out the animation above. It consists of 13 images acquired by the EPIC camera aboard NASA’s DSCOVR spacecraft ...read more
An image of the sun’s corona taken during a 2008 solar eclipse in Mongolia. (Credit: Miloslav Druckmüller (Brno U. of Tech.), Martin Dietzel, Peter Aniol, Vojtech Rušin)
When the moon slides in front of the sun Monday, millions of viewers will catch a glimpse of the sun’s corona, which will appear as a hazy glow outlining the solid shadow in front of our star.
Scientists will be watching closely as well, because eclipses are one of the few times they can easily gather d ...read more
The TIKAD drone can carry marksman rifles, assault rifles and even grenade launchers. Credit: Duke Robotics
In 2015, Israeli Special Forces likely made history by using a sniper rifle mounted on a commercial drone to take out a target. The robotic solution that achieved such pinpoint accuracy came from Duke Robotics, a startup founded by veterans of the Israel Defense Forces. That startup has since developed a multi-rotor sniper drone capable of accurately firing a wide arr ...read more
We’re now counting down the time until the Great American eclipse in hours, not days. Are you ready?
If you aren’t, don’t worry, we have you covered with the Eclipse 2017 Widget from our partners at Astronomy magazine. Powered by SkySafari 5, this interactive widget well let you know exactly when the show will begin, and when you’ll reach maximum eclipse in your area. If you click “view” on the time readouts in the event column, you can al ...read more
