Greenland is a giant ice sheet covered in snow. Its snowline — the border where snow cover and bare ice abut — migrates with the seasons, sliding to lower elevations in the winter and shifting up in the summer. Now researchers find that not only does the snowline move much more dramatically than they thought, but it also accelerates melting of the ice sheet.
That’s a problem because the Greenland ice sheet is melting into the ocean and contributing to global sea level rise. Th ...read more
SpaceX’s Crew Dragon capsule will depart the International Space Station and splash down in the Atlantic Ocean early tomorrow morning. It has been paired with the space station since Sunday, when it made its first docking under its own power after a successful Saturday launch atop a Falcon 9 rocket.
This final phase of the Demo-1 mission will continue studying Crew Dragon’s new build. That includes testing an upgraded parachute system to land the craft more gently than its carg ...read more
The remains of nearly 140 children dating to the year 1450 have been unearthed along the northern coast of Peru. Archaeologists say the burial is the site of the largest known mass child sacrifice in the world.
The children — as well as the remains of more than 200 young llamas — were found in a mass grave located on a cliff just a thousand feet from the Pacific Ocean in the small, present-day fishing community of La Libertad near Trujillo. Archaeologists say the children ...read more
In the elusive hunt for dark matter, some researchers are looking underground. The mysterious, unseen substance makes up more than 85 percent of the material in our universe. And since dark matter doesn’t interact much with normal matter (that's what makes it “dark”), scientists usually rely on extremely large detectors to maximize their chances of observing a signal. But the physical hunt for dark matter is relatively new, so these experiments have only been running for a few ...read more
“How about breasts?” The question came from a jock-y guy in one of my graduate school classes on human evolution.
Far from offensive, the query was appropriate and astute. My classmates and I nodded approval, and the professor added it to a growing list on the board.
We were brainstorming features that distinguish our species, Homo sapiens, from other primates. That list includes human peculiarities like big brains, upright walking, language, furless bodies ... and permanently ...read more
Author Vishay SinghPosted on Categories Discover Magazine