Fast radio bursts (FRBs) are one of the few truly mysterious phenomena in the universe. Astronomers first noticed the milliseconds-long intense pulses of radio waves in 2006, and we’ve slowly but steadily been learning more about the extragalactic signals ever since.
We still don’t really know exactly what they are, but thanks to a study published Wednesday in Nature (in fact it’s the cover story), we’re finally starting to understand these strange signals.
Do the Twist
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This is a living representative of a primitive Glossata, moths that have a proboscid that suck up fluids like nectar. (Credit: Hossein Rajaei)
Think of some scaly animals.
Odds are butterflies didn’t come to mind. But butterflies and moths have scales on their wings, legs and bodies. Thanks to those scales, researchers have found the oldest known fossils of butterflies and moths, both in the order Lepidoptera, according to a paper published Wednesday in Science Advances.
While the Le ...read more
(Credit: David Stuart Productions/Shutterstock)
On a freezing morning in January, my boyfriend had just emerged from the icy waters of Lake Michigan along with hundreds of others who had just participated in the annual Polar Plunge. He was frozen to the bone, but so was everyone else. There was, however, something distinct about my boyfriend’s experience — the extreme cold triggered a new, mysterious allergy that would linger for years.
That summer, he took a dive into a cool lake ...read more
Research shows slow but steady increases in astronauts’ core body temperatures during their time at the ISS. (Credit: NASA/STS-130 Crew)
A great amount of time and effort is spent ensuring the mental and physical well-being of astronauts aboard the International Space Station (ISS), and new research shows that increased body temperature is another factor to consider when evaluating astronauts’ health.
In the study, published January 5 in the journal Scientific R ...read more
A bird of paradise spreads it feathers as it engages in a mating dance. (Credit: BBC/Youtube)
Vantablack has been called the world’s darkest substance. When it was unveiled in 2014, the material made headlines for the way it seemed to leach objects of their three-dimensionality; it was so black that every feature merged into a black hole.
Darker than a black bear in a cave on a starless night, Vantablack looks downright otherworldly. But, humans are hardly alone when it comes to ink ...read more
Author Vishay SinghPosted on Categories Discover Magazine
