A landfill in Italy with a methane capture system. (Credit: newphotoservice/Shutterstock)
A new analysis finds that .2 percent of all California methane emitters — individual pipes emitting or leaking the greenhouse gas — account for more than a third of the state’s methane production.
Nearly half of these methane sources, dubbed “super-emitters,” come from landfills. Dairies and the oil and gas industry account for a quarter of discharge sites each. Ideally, ...read more
More rural residences have less bacteria and fungi than their urban counterparts. (Credit: Elise Lefran/Shutterstock)
Moving to the city might mean gaining some unexpected roommates. New research finds that urban dwellings host more fungi and bacteria than their rural counterparts. This is despite the fact that city homes use more cleaning and antifungal products.
The finding, published yesterday in Nature Microbiology, could provide clues about why urban residents have higher rates of he ...read more
Your houseplants look nice, and they might even make you happier, but they're unlikely to clean the air. (Credit: Anatolii Mikhailov/Shutterstock)
If you go for a walk in the forest, the air feels fresh. People often attribute that to trees' and plants' air-purifying abilities. They suck up C02 and exhale oxygen, removing pollutants from the air. So it seems the same should go for the air inside our houses as well.
Humans have tried to bring the forest to their homes for decades, installi ...read more
Kitt Peak National Observatory, home to the new Dark Energy Spectroscopic Instrument. (Credit: NOAOAURA/NSF)
A powerful new astronomical instrument got its first view of the sky from an Arizona mountaintop two weeks ago. Once the device officially gets to work in early 2020, it will capture the light from thousands of galaxies each night — up to 5,000 galaxies every 20 minutes, in ideal conditions. With this instrument, researchers will make a deep-space map of where galaxies lie to stu ...read more
(Credit: ESA/Hubble & NASA, A. Bellini et al.)
The universe is vast, with galaxies containing gas, dust, stars, and planets sprinkled throughout. But this sprinkling isn’t random; although some galaxies are indeed truly alone, most are not congregating through gravity.
NGC 1706, captured in this stunning Hubble Space Telescope image, is one of about 50 galaxies bound together in a group that lies in the direction of the southern constellation Dorado the Swordfish. The brilliant, ...read more
Author Vishay SinghPosted on Categories Discover Magazine