(Credit: NASA)
Our home galaxy, the Milky Way, has been a jumping-off point to our understanding of galaxies throughout the universe. And though our picture of that home galaxy has evolved over time as astronomers have developed better ways to catalog and map its contents, we’ve largely believed the Milky Way was a “typical” example of a spiral galaxy. Now, astronomers are taking steps to determine whether that’s really true.
New data from the Satellites Around Galactic ...read more
(Credit: Shutterstock)
A small dot on an old piece of birch bark marks one of the biggest events in the history of mathematics. The bark is actually part of an ancient Indian mathematical document known as the Bakhshali manuscript. And the dot is the first known recorded use of the number zero. What’s more, researchers from the University of Oxford recently discovered the document is 500 years older than was previously estimated, dating to the third or fourth century – a breakthroug ...read more
Is he one of the lucky ones? (Credit: Shutterstock/Herman Veenendaal
Dating is a tough game. No matter where you go, it seems like there’s always someone who’s more attractive, funnier or remembers to shower. Losing out sucks, but hey, at least you get to keep your penis.
Not so for ruddy ducks. They only grow penises during mating season, and when forced to compete for mates, the scrawnier ducks don’t even bother to put in much effort. Some ruddy ducks can grow pen ...read more
But despite claims to the contrary, one warmish summer in the Arctic does not repeal the long-term trend of human-caused warming
This visualization shows how the extent of Arctic sea ice has evolved through time. The animation begins when the ice reached its wintertime maximum extent on March 7, 2017, and it ends on September 13, 2017, when the ice shrank to its minimum extent for the year. (Source: NASA Scientific Visualization Studio/Helen-Nicole Kostis)
Arctic sea ice has sta ...read more
Photo: flickr/dixie wells
Dog owners, we have some “ruff” news for you: according to this study, it might not be the best idea to let Fido sleep in your bed. These researchers tracked the sleep of 40 humans and their dogs by having them both wear movement tracking devices to bed for a week. They found that the humans slept worse when the dog slept in the bed with them, as opposed to on the floor in the same room, likely due to the dog’s movement during sleep. Doggie cosl ...read more
You spoke, SciStarter listened. Check out the new SciStarter, your source for real science you can do, featuring more than 1600 current opportunities for you (yup, you!) to advance scientific research, locally or globally. Most of the awesome citizen science projects you learn about here (on this Citizen Science Salon blog and throughout the awesome DiscoverMagazine.com website), are sourced from SciStarter, through a long-standing partnership and commitment to bring you opportuni ...read more
Shake map of the September 19, 2017 earthquake in Mexico. USGS.
For the second time this month, a large earthquake has struck Mexico. Unlike the M8.1 earthquake that occurred off the Pacific coast and far from Mexico City, this one was located under central Mexico and only ~150 kilometers from the massive Mexican capitol. This new earthquake was a M7.1 that located ~51 kilometers beneath the surface. That will hopefully help dampen some of the potential damage as over 8.5 million people live wit ...read more
A gloomy octopus (Credit: Sylke Rohrlach/Wikimedia Commons)
Underneath the waves lies a lost city, home to untold riches and guarded jealously by the strange creatures who make their homes within its confines.
Well, the riches are all shellfish, but “Octlantis,” a newly discovered settlement inhabited by around a dozen common Sydney octopuses, does have some strange residents.
Tale of Two Cities
Octopuses were once considered solitary creatures, thought to roam the depths alon ...read more
That blood flew for three hours inside a climate-controlled container that was attached to a drone. But why would blood even travel that long via drone, anyways? (Credit: Medical Drones, Vimeo)
Drone delivery is sexy. We’ve seen Domino’s pizza and 7-11 Slurpees dropped by drone. And then there are drones delivering something every human needs to live: blood.
Timothy Amukele, a pathologist with Johns Hopkins University, and his team flew a drone for three hours with blood samples as ...read more
This artist’s impression shows the exoplanet WASP-12b — an alien world as black as fresh asphalt. (Credit: NASA, ESA, and G. Bacon (STScI))
An exoplanet twice the size of Jupiter is hot, egg-shaped and coal-black.
Wasp-12b orbits around a Sun-like star some 1,400 light-years away. It makes a complete orbit around its sun in just 24 hours because it lies so close to its star, and the proximity pushes the temperature to around 4,700 degrees Fahrenheit. It’s so hot that mol ...read more
