A computer model of Earth's magnetic field. (Credit: U.S. Department of Energy)
North, I was once surprised to learn, is not always north. There’s geographic north, “up” on maps toward the North Pole, and then there’s magnetic north, which is where compass needles point. Right now the two kind of line up, but that isn’t always the case. Earth’s magnetic field — which guides compasses, animals and auroras — likes to wander, and it’s reverse ...read more
Photo by NASA/JPL-CalTech/SwRI/MSSS/Kevin Gill
Looking a bit like earthly thunderheads, a white band of high-altitude clouds emerge above the colorful, swirling patterns of Jupiter in a photo taken last summer by NASA’s Juno spacecraft. Jupiter, the solar system’s largest planet, has no Earth-like surface. Instead of an outer crust, the gas giant consists mainly of hydrogen and helium that condenses into liquid the deeper you go, all wrapped in an atmosphere of clouds made up of ...read more
The dense cores of past planets might survive a star’s expansion period into its white dwarf phase. (Credit: CfA/Mark A. Garlick)
In five or six billion years, our sun will expand into a red giant star hundreds of times larger than it is now. It will envelop Mercury and Venus, and possibly Earth as well, and then slowly puff away its outer layers. The hot, dense core left behind is called a white dwarf. And it will glow for billions of years.
It’s an open question what happens ...read more
Image by Alex Thornton
Despite a spirograph-like appearance, these loops and twists actually represent the flight paths and wingbeats of a flock of jackdaws, members of the wily crow family that mate for life. Researchers had thought that each member of a flock flew independently of their mates, allowing them to pay close attention to others and rapidly communicate to evade predators.
But new research in Cornwall, England, found that jackdaws stick with their mates as they fly, a sweet ...read more
A reconstruction of the newly-discovered giant parrot Heracles, dwarfing a
group of small New Zealand wrens on the forest floor. (Credit: Illustration by Dr Brian Choo, Flinders University)
If you tried to feed a cracker to this
polly you might lose a hand in the process. Paleontologists say they’ve
discovered the ancient fossil remains of the world’s only known giant parrot.
The bird stood roughly 3 feet high. And scientists
speculate it could’ve weighed as much as 15 ...read more
Author Vishay SinghPosted on Categories Discover Magazine