Science fiction is a genre committed to the concept of "run before you can walk." Long before anyone knew whether heavier-than-air flight was possible, writers were imagining travel to other planets. By the time interplanetary space probes were a reality in the 1960s, the storytellers had long since moved on to thinking interstellar.
Today, two or three generations of happy nerds have grown up in a world saturated with science fiction TV shows and movies featuring the word "star" in their tit ...read more
"Any man's death diminishes me, because I am involved in mankind, and therefore never send to know for whom the bell tolls; it tolls for thee." The quote is so familiar that most people have no idea where it originally comes from (I'll admit, I had to look it up myself to be sure: It is Mediation XVII from John Donne's Devotions upon Emergent Occasions.) In recent years, though, the words have taken on new meaning, at least for those of us who are devoted to astronomical exploration. Any spa ...read more
You may have heard that dogs and their owners really do look alike. Now, new research has shown that owners and their pups often share personality traits, too.
A paper, published in the Journal of Research in Personality, says a dog's personality reflects the personality of its owner. It also explains that dogs experience personality changes similar to how humans do over the course of their lives.
Two researchers from Michigan State University surveyed the owners of 1,600 d ...read more
Susanne Hecker, Muki Haklay, Anne Bowser, Zen Makuch, Johannes Vogel & Aletta Bonn. (2018). Citizen Science: Innovation in Open Science, Society and Policy. University College London Press.
Scientific progress is intertwined with the triad of the state, the scientist, and the citizen, all of which are emphasized in the field of citizen science. Taking a largely European perspective, Citizen Science: Innovation in Open Science, Society and Policy by Hecker at al., is in ...read more
When New Horizons flew past Pluto and its moon Charon in 2015, it took a lot of pictures. From studying those images, scientists have recently realized that while both bodies are covered in craters, almost none of those craters are small, meaning there may not be many small bodies around to smash into them. This changes astronomers’ views of the Kuiper Belt, the region of small – but apparently not too small – rocky and icy bodies of which Pluto is a part.
No Tiny Crater ...read more
Author Vishay SinghPosted on Categories Discover Magazine