An artist's illustration of a neutron star, a proposed source for fast radio bursts. (Credit: Casey Reed - Penn State University/Wikimedia Commons)
Fast radio bursts are one of the most puzzling phenomena in
astrophysics. But a new discovery of eight new sources for them might help
scientists figure out what’s causing these intense outbursts of energy coming
from distant galaxies.
The newly discovered bursts are from repeating sources,
meaning they were observed to burst multiple tim ...read more
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
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
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
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
Author Vishay SinghPosted on Categories Discover Magazine