If you were transported to the moon this very instant, you would surely and rapidly die. That’s because there’s no atmosphere, the surface temperature varies from a roasting 130 degrees Celsius (266 F) to a bone-chilling minus 170 C (minus 274 F). If the lack of air or horrific heat or cold don’t kill you then micrometeorite bombardment or solar radiation will. By all accounts, the moon is not a hospitable place to be.
Yet if human beings are to explore the moon and, potential ...read more
Our solar system is a chaotic place – literally. Rewinding orbital possibilities quickly becomes too complex and too numerous for astronomers to calculate. That means we only know the orbital movements of Earth and the other planets over the past 60 million years or so. To look further back, scientists are pulling core samples from deep under Earth’s surface to examine long-ago climate change and learn about how the planets moved hundreds of millions of years ...read more
In today’s world, it might seem like people aren’t connected to nature at all, instead opting to spend their time with modern conveniences like the world wide web. But new research shows that across the globe, people are still paying attention to what’s outside their window — and we can tell by looking at patterns in their Wikipedia pageviews.
Scientists, led by conservation biologist-turned-data scientist John Mittermeier at the University of Oxford, looked at 2 billion ...read more
A patient who lived with human immunodeficiency virus (HIV) for more than a decade is now free of the disease, researchers report today in the journal Nature. The retreat of the infection is only the second time such a case has been reported. In both instances, the patients received a bone marrow transplant to treat cancer. The scientists say the treatment strategy is not practical as a standard approach for the millions currently living with the illness. They also caution that it is too ear ...read more
When you don't get enough sleep, you can feel drained, sluggish and lazy. So, we sip our coffee, attempting to make it through the day, until it’s time to slip back into bed. But besides the fact that we feel terrible if we don't get enough, researchers have struggled to figure out why humans and animals sleep.
A new study by scientists at Bar-Ilan University in Israel, though, may help us find out. While studying brain activity in live zebrafish, they found that ...read more
Author Vishay SinghPosted on Categories Discover Magazine