The Great Lakes were a massive graveyard for ships lost at sea for centuries. Sailboats have slipped into storms, never to be seen again. Steamers have rocked in the waves. Even massive freighters have sunk to the sea floor.Although shipwrecks may seem like part of the Great Lakes’ past, advancing technology is helping researchers understand the weather patterns that have made so many voyages fatal. Technology is also helping scientists find sunken vessels that were once thought to be lost for ...read more
To the untrained eye, cicadas may look extremely similar to each other, characterized by their hard exoskeleton and distinctive drone. But, as millions of residents of the southeastern and midwestern United States will soon discover in the spring of 2024, the different species of cicadas can vary widely in everything from their sound to their appearance to their behavior. Two broods of cicadas — Broods XIX and XIII — are expected to emerge from the ground, culminating their life cycle by ...read more
Spring is go time for climbers who hope to summit Mount Everest, Earth’s highest peak above sea level. Hundreds of mountaineers from around the world travel to Asia in April and May, headed for base camps in Nepal and Tibet.But jagged peaks won’t be the only thing they see. Especially on Everest’s more heavily traversed Nepal side, they’ll find fields of garbage – including cans, bottles, plastic and human and animal excrement.Each year, more than 60,000 trekkers and climbers visit the ...read more
In the seven decades since the Soviet Union launched Sputnik 1, humankind has sent a whole lot of material over the Kármán line. Not all of it came back.Like spacefaring litterbugs, we’ve scattered refuse far and wide across the cosmos. Our probes and their contents sail out of the solar system on one-way rides, or take up permanent residence in the orbit of distant planets. Miscellaneous items get dropped during spacewalks, released as symbolic gestures, or deliberately dumped for logistica ...read more
Imagine you’re a police officer. You spot a car that’s swerving all over the road. You pull the driver over and they’re clearly intoxicated. With slurred speech, they swear that they haven’t had a drop of alcohol all day. Would you believe them?In 2024, a Belgian man was acquitted after he was cited three times for DUI within four years. Though his job at a brewery likely raised suspicions, he insisted that he hadn’t been drinking. Three doctors confirmed that he suffered from a condit ...read more
Author Vishay SinghPosted on Categories Discover Magazine