Hubble Sheds New Light on Lives of Star Clusters

Posted on Categories Discover Magazine

A new look at the Large Magellanic Cloud is helping astronomers better understand how groups of stars evolve. (Credit: ESA/NASA) NASA’s Hubble Space Telescope has taken new observations of the Large Magellanic Cloud, a small, neighboring galaxy to our Milky Way and found new insights into the star clusters that live there. Star clusters are quite common in the universe. If a galaxy is a cosmic metropolis, star clusters would be like a small town. They form as huge clouds of gas and ...read more

Insecticides May Be Giving Songbirds Anorexia and Delaying Their Migrations

Posted on Categories Discover Magazine

An experiment with white-crowned sparrows shows that insecticides may be impacting songbirds. (Credit: Phil Lowe/Shutterstock) Some migrating songbirds may be starving thanks to agricultural pesticides. Neonicotinoids are popular insecticides used in industrial agriculture across the U.S. But the chemicals' are controversial because of their detrimental impact on bees and other pollinators. Now, a group of researchers has added heat to the debate, showing that even small amounts of one pa ...read more

Adrenaline Doesn’t Actually Cause the Fight-or-Flight Response, New Study Says

Posted on Categories Discover Magazine

When you're overcome with fear, it's not adrenaline making you want to fight or flee. (Credit: Master1305/Shutterstock) A thrilling high when you’re faced with danger, a boost of energy when you’re going for an intense run – we tend to associate these rushes with adrenaline, a hormone synonymous with our fight-or-flight response. But it turns out adrenaline might not be what activates our brains' stress reaction after all. In fact, our bones might be doing more work than ...read more

Astronomers May Have Just Discovered an Interstellar Comet Visiting Our Solar System

Posted on Categories Discover Magazine

Astronomers first found Comet C/2019 Q4 on August 30. The past week of observations, including this image taken by the Canada-France-Hawaii Telescope on Hawaii's Big Island, have increased astronomers confidence that the comet started life in another solar system. (Credit: Canada-France-Hawaii Telescope) A newly discovered comet has astronomers excited. Formally named C/2019 Q4 (Borisov), the object appears to have come from outside our solar system. If confirmed, that would make it the seco ...read more

The dreaded “blob” may be back in the Pacific Ocean

Posted on Categories Discover Magazine

A gigantic area of super-warm water has formed again off the U.S. West Coast, threatening impacts on weather and wildlife A map of sea surface temperature anomalies shows a blob of very warm water off the West Coast of the North America. (Source: Climate Reanalyzer, University of Maine) Five years ago, a gigantic cauldron of abnormally warm water in the Pacific Ocean wreaked havoc on marine ecosystems and contributed to drought along the western coast of North America. Dubbed "The Blob ...read more