Three New Exoplanets Have Been Discovered Around a Nearby Star

Posted on Categories Discover Magazine

The La Silla Observatory in Chile, where at least three new exoplanets have been discovered. (Credit: Iztok Boncina/ESO) There is a triplet of Earth-sized planet candidates orbiting a star just 12 light-years away, a new study has found. And one appears to be in the habitable zone. All three candidates are thought to be at least 1.4 to 1.8 times the mass of Earth, and orbit the star every three to 13 days, which would put the entire system well within Mercury’s 88 day orbit of the S ...read more

Scientists Tell Us How to Be Better Wine Tasters

Posted on Categories Discover Magazine

The world of wine is complex. But there are a few simple things you can do to up your skills. (Credit: nd3000/Shutterstock) Only 256 people in the world can call themselves Master Sommeliers: experts at tasting, describing and selling wine. They’re so rare because each sip of wine is a perceptual puzzle: Over 25 different taste and smell variables (sweetness, acidity, texture, finish, etc.) define each wine. But you don’t have to be a super-taster or super-smeller to become a ...read more

Why a Polish Village Hasn’t Seen a Baby Boy Born for Almost 10 Years

Posted on Categories Discover Magazine

One Polish town has seen an unlikely string of female births stretching for nearly a decade. (Credit: Omar Lopez/Unsplash) The tiny Polish village of Miejsce Odrzanskie has become the unlikely source of international media attention over the past fortnight as a result of what the New York Times called “a strange population anomaly”. It has now been almost a decade since the last boy was born in this place, with the most recent 12 babies all having been girls. The mayor of the r ...read more

SPONSORED: Launching the ‘Space & Beyond’ Subscription Box

Posted on Categories Discover Magazine

I was 14 years old when I first saw Saturn through a telescope, its rings glowing a vibrant yellow-orange. In that moment, the seemingly two-dimensional landscape of Earth’s surface was irreversibly transformed. From then on, I was hooked on the night sky. I was no longer just a kid from suburban Ohio, I was a resident of a vast cosmos waiting to be explored. Who knew that you could just walk into a backyard and look up, with a modest telescope, and unlock the secrets of the universe? ...read more

The Racism of Carl Jung

Posted on Categories Discover Magazine

The Swiss psychoanalyst Carl Jung (1875-1961) was one of the best-known psychologists of the 20th century. He introduced such famous concepts as introverted and extraverted personalities, and the idea of the psychological 'complex'. Today, Jungian or analytical psychology retains an active community. But a recently published Open Letter from a number of prominent Jungians points to troubles within the fold. The letter acknowledges that Jung's writings contained racism, and apologizes for ...read more