A Quarter of Japanese People in Their 20s and 30s Are Virgins, Study Finds

Posted on Categories Discover Magazine

Nearly a quarter of Japanese people under age 39 are virgins, according to a new analysis by a team of researchers at the University of Tokyo. The findings, published in BMC Public Health, show that Japanese young adults are having less sex today than their counterparts were decades ago. Both men and women are having their first sexual encounters later in life, and many are entering their 30s as virgins. While Japan’s sexless generation may seem shocking, people in other wealth ...read more

Falcon Heavy Launch Delayed Again. Launch Now Targeted for Thursday Evening

Posted on Categories Discover Magazine

SpaceX's Falcon Heavy launch was delayed again yesterday, this time due to high winds. SpaceX CEO Elon Musk said back on April 5 that because this is the first launch of Falcon Heavy's Block 5, the latest and most powerful version of its boosters, they are being "extra cautious." Mission managers are now targeting this evening, again at 6:35 p.m. EDT, with an approximately two-hour launch window. You can watch the livestream here or on SpaceX's website. [embed]https://www.youtube.com/w ...read more

Israeli Beresheet Mission Will Attempt to Land on the Moon Today

Posted on Categories Discover Magazine

After a nearly seven-week adventure since its launch, the Israeli Beresheet spacecraft will attempt make history today and touch down on the surface of the moon at 10:25 p.m. Israel time (2:25 p.m. Central). It’s a monumental undertaking and if it succeeds, Beresheet and its creators will join the select ranks of those who have safely landed on the moon - thus far only the United States, China, and the former Soviet Union. NASA and its Deep Space Network are aiding the mission i ...read more

The Denisovans May Have Been More Than a Single Species

Posted on Categories Discover Magazine

In anthropology, bones don't always tell the whole story. Ancient remains can be so rare that an entire species of hominids can be compressed into one single fragment of bone. Thousands of generations, millions of individuals, epic untold stories — and our only insight is a stray tooth, or a few curving shards of skull. That leaves us without a true view of who these people were, even when it comes to our most recent ancestors, like the Neanderthals or the Denisovans. But a new study ...read more

New Video Shows Mice Go Nuts In Space

Posted on Categories Discover Magazine

Space travel, you may have heard, is hard. Hard on the brain, to design ways to slip the surly bonds of Earth in the first place, but also hard on the body, which needs to withstand conditions it was never designed for. If NASA’s serious about sending humans back to the moon and on to Mars, we’ll need to get a much better grasp on how spaceflight affects the human body. And instead of simply flying more and more people to space to find out all the potential effects, scientists have t ...read more