On Friday, Virgin Galactic’s SpaceShipTwo will fly in space for the second time, taking off from Mojave, California after days of weather delay. Their launch time is set for 8 a.m. PST.
Unlike most spaceflights that fire rockets from the ground, SpaceShipTwo is carried on the back of a plane named WhiteKnightTwo before being released to propel itself into the upper atmosphere. It’s a suborbital flight, meaning it does not reach orbit, and attains weightlessness for only a few m ...read more
A team of scientists at the University of Alberta used an image spectrometer — essentially a specialized camera that captures light waves invisible to the naked eye — to create this technicolor shot of plants in the Cedar Creek Ecosystem Science Reserve in Minnesota.
The different colors show differences in plants’ functions, which, the team suggests in a paper published last year in Nature Ecology & Evolution, could be a way to illustrate and track biodiversity. ...read more
The adage that “the older you are, the wiser you get” doesn’t always apply to our immune systems. Despite being exposed to a lifetime’s worth of illnesses, immune systems in the elderly are worse at fighting stealthy, shape-shifting viruses like the flu.
Why aging decreases our immune system’s abilities has been a mystery to researchers. But a new study published in Cell Host & Microbe finds that our infection-battling B-cells become blunted ...read more
Scientists have discovered a new species of tiny tyrannosaur that lived some 95 million years ago in what’s now Utah. The find helps fill a frustrating gap in the fossil record at a critical time when tyrannosaurs were evolving from small, speedy hunters, into the bone-crushing apex predators we know so well.
The new dinosaur has been dubbed Moros intrepidus, and its name means “harbinger of doom.” The creature, known only from a leg bone and some various teeth, weighed u ...read more
Nearly 66 million years ago, most living things on Earth died. Most researchers agree that the prime culprit was an asteroid that struck Mexico’s Yucatan Peninsula, leading to the mass extinction that took out most of the dinosaurs. But in a new research published Thursday, two independent research groups are making the case that enormous volcanic eruptions in India likely contributed to the demise of life, too.
The findings shed light on not only one of the most famou ...read more
Author Vishay SinghPosted on Categories Discover Magazine