When solving a crime, detectives don’t always have access to footage or photographs of their suspect. Instead, the detectives have to painstakingly search for small, easily overlooked clues — such as fingerprints.
Like detectives, astronomers don’t always have the option of simply examining an image when they want to solve a mystery. Instead, astronomers usually must meticulously piece together tiny bits of evidence, often by scouring the heavens to hunt for clues. And one of ...read more
Bro, what even is a species?
I've been writing about various species for a while now, and this latest Attenborough is really throwing me for a loop. It's a kind of small bird from the Amazon called a gnatcatcher. They're a kind of small songbird related to wrens, and they feast on insects with small, sharp beaks—in between warbling out their songs, I imagine.
And it's most likely a new species. But the researchers in charge of deciding weren't all that sure. Because we don't ha ...read more
A nor'easter with winds ranging up to hurricane strength is causing misery along much of the U.S. East Coast today. But from space, it's a strangely beautiful sight to behold.
The fierce storm is causing flooding, power outages, suspension of Amtrak rail service, and hundreds of delayed or cancelled flights in and out of area airports. New York's LaGuardia airport has closed down completely due to high winds.
The storm may even turn out to be more damaging than th ...read more
Supermassive black holes sit in the centers of all massive galaxies. Many of these giants are actively accreting material, earning them the name active galactic nuclei or AGN. As material falls in toward the black hole, it creates a disk that shines brightly and can even generate huge outbursts and jets. Compared with a galaxy hundreds of thousands of light-years across, the accretion disk around a supermassive black hole and the dusty structure that surrounds it are extremely small — on t ...read more
With the growing encroachment of Big Data and the Internet of Things and other digital buzzwords on our daily lives, it should be no shock that we’re now on the verge of literally eating the latest advance in electronics.
It’s actually pretty neat. According to a study this week in ACS Nano, chemists have learned how to imbue a laser-branded conductive pattern onto anything containing carbon, including your dinner.
Certified Organic Chemistry
It’s all thanks to graphene, a pre ...read more
Author Vishay SinghPosted on Categories Discover Magazine