The Crab Nebula Just Sent Earth the Highest-energy Photons Ever Recorded

Posted on Categories Discover Magazine

This image of the Crab Nebula in x-rays shows the pulsar clearly spinning at the nebula's center. (Credit: NASA/CXC/ASU/J. Hester et al.) Astronomers using the Tibet AS-gamma Experiment have discovered the highest-energy light ever measured from an astrophysical source. Photons streaming from the Crab Nebula were recently measured at energies well over 100 tera-electronvolts (TeV). That's a trillion electron volts, or some 10 times the maximum energy that the Large Hadron Collider sees when ...read more

Scientists Uncover Genetic Links to Post Traumatic Stress Disorder

Posted on Categories Discover Magazine

(Credit: Master1305/Shutterstock) Military missions can expose service members to horrible and life-threatening situations. As a result, 20 to 30 percent of combat veterans experience post-traumatic stress disorder (PTSD) – ongoing feelings of guilt, anger, and shame that surface as outbursts, reckless behavior and intense flashbacks. But despite PTSD's prevalence among vets and other survivors of traumatic experiences, scientists know little about the condition’s biological roots ...read more

To Save the Internet, Silicon Valley is Sending it to Space

Posted on Categories Discover Magazine

The internet could one day reach every corner of the Earth courtesy of satellite constellations. (Credit: sdecoret/Shutterstock) For decades, the basic principles governing how the Internet works have remained pretty much unchanged. But with massive growth on the horizon — thanks to everything from AI to blockchain, and from the 5G rollout to the ubiquitous Internet of Things — the amount of data we produce could eventually outpace physical storage capacity. The solution? Look ...read more

Screen Time Might Not Be As Bad For Mental Health As We Thought

Posted on Categories Discover Magazine

Reports of screen time's harms may have been greatly exaggerated. (Credit: aslysun/Shutterstock) Today, our phones can seem less like friends and more like the other half of a toxic relationship. We rely on them for our daily activities, even as concerns over the effects of screen time on well-being mount. The phobia has even prompted the development of a new consulting gig: screen-free parenting coaches. But now researchers argue the terror surrounding screens lacks evidence and they sa ...read more

A whale of a tail: humpback Morse code, and a phytoplankton bloom so intense it’s visible from space

Posted on Categories Discover Magazine

https://youtu.be/ML1fQ5I38Tk While I was on a whale-watching trip out of Akureyri, Iceland in late June, a humpback whale approached our boat and began vigorously slapping its tail and pectoral fins on the water. The humpback was breathtakingly close to us, and the dramatic behavior lasted for more than five minutes. Check it out in the video I shot above. (Please accept my apologies for the distracting wind noise — I was not equipped at the time with an external mic and windscreen ...read more