In the savannah woodlands of Mozambique’s Gorongosa National Park stalks an animal that resembles a cross between a goat and a deer. The antelopes known as bushbuck sport the white speckles, russet coats, and large eyes and ears of deer, but stand just two to three feet tall with a pair of dark, twisting horns that grow straight out of males’ heads. These secretive, forest-dwelling ungulates take cover from leopards, hyenas and wild dogs in the protection of trees and a network of es ...read more
Measuring the total mass of our home galaxy is a tough puzzle. It’s difficult to see it all at once, buried as we are within one of its spiral arms. And there’s a huge portion of the Milky Way we can never see, since it’s made up of dark matter, which doesn’t emit light at all. So to get an accurate number, researchers need to weigh both the visible and invisible material that makes up the galaxy.
Now scientists have done just that, using new data from the Hubble Space T ...read more
You’ve likely heard by now that the movie Armageddon got it all wrong — it’s just not feasible to blow up an asteroid heading toward Earth with a bomb or few. But how unrealistic is it, really? New research set for publication March 15 in the planetary science journal Icarus is sending any hope humanity might have had to nuke an incoming asteroid threat even further into the realm of impossibility. Breaking up asteroids, it turns out, is really, really hard to do.
The new ...read more
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
Author Vishay SinghPosted on Categories Discover Magazine