The Falcon 9 rocket taking off for the Starlink mission on November 11. (Credit: SpaceX/Flickr)
On November 11, SpaceX launched a Falcon 9 rocket carrying another 60 Starlink satellites, which will eventually provide internet service worldwide. The launch from Cape Canaveral Air Force Station made history by reusing a record number of rocket parts. But even with that feat in aerospace design, the launch wasn’t celebrated by everyone.
According to SpaceX’s plans, Starlink w ...read more
A new study outlined a possible method to search for a wormhole at the center of the Milky Way, where a supermassive black hole, like the one seen in this artist's concept, resides. (Credit: NASA/JPL-Caltech)
If there was a wormhole in the center of our galaxy, how could we tell? Two physicists propose that carefully watching the motions of a star orbiting the Milky Way's supermassive black hole might help scientists start to check. The researchers published the idea in a recent paper&nb ...read more
What happened to make plague able to cause devastating epidemics, as in this depiction from 1349? (Credit: Pierart dou Tielt/Wikimedia)
One of civilization’s most prolific killers shadowed humans for thousands of years without their knowledge.
The bacteria Yersinia pestis, which causes the plague, is thought to be responsible for up to 200 million deaths across human history — more than twice the casualties of World War II.
The Y. pestis death toll comes from three wide ...read more
The Nile River seen at sunrise. (Credit: Kirsty Bisset/Shutterstock)
Thousands of years ago, ancient Egyptians built their agricultural systems around the dependable movement of the Nile. Those rhythms date back much further than any human relative has been alive, scientists now find.
New research shows that the Nile has kept about the same course for its entire 30 million year existence. This is likely thanks to a reliable flow of rocky material just below the Earth's surface, which cont ...read more
On Twitter this week I joked that neuroscientists could save money on brain scanners by just asking people how active their brains are.
Why do we spend so much on neuroimaging and then rely on self-report measures of the other variables of interest? Why not self-report brain activity, how active is your amygdala 1-10? https://t.co/ph3A2Uc6zc— Neuroskeptic (@Neuro_Skeptic) November 6, 2019
However, it turns out that there has already been a study that actually asked people to do ...read more
Author Vishay SinghPosted on Categories Discover Magazine