A technician scans for radiation with a Geiger counter. (Credit: PRESSLAB/Shutterstock)
For decades, studies have shown that even low doses of radiation are harmful to humans.
This week, the Associated Press reported that the Trump administration may be reconsidering that. The Environmental Protection Agency seemed to be looking at raising the levels of radiation considered dangerous to humans based on a controversial theory rejected by mainstream scientists. ...read more
A burial at Sungir covered in beads. (Credit: José-Manuel Benito Álvarez/Wikimedia Commons)
Some 34,000 years ago, two boys and a middle-aged man were buried in fantastic style. They were laid to rest wearing over 13,000 mammoth ivory beads, hundreds of perforated fox canine teeth and other adornments. Discovered in the 1960s, at the site of Sungir, Russia, the burials also contained spears, figurines and the hollowed out shaft of a woman’s femur, packed with red ochre. Arc ...read more
There are a number of theories about how life began on Earth, but one new study published October 3 in the journal ACS Nano suggests that the building blocks of life could have been created with liquid crystals.
Liquid crystals have properties of both conventional liquids and solids — they flow like a liquid, but their molecular structure is ordered and symmetric like a solid crystal. You’re likely familiar with them already — liquid crystal display (LCD) screens are used in ...read more
Before it plunged into the atmosphere of Saturn on its final death dive, the Cassini spacecraft made 22 orbits of the planet that followed a path no probe had taken before: It flew between the massive planet and its rings. During those final orbits, Cassini’s Ion and Neutral Mass Spectrometer (INMS) spotted water ice and complex organic molecules flowing from the rings to the atmosphere of the planet: ring rain. But it turns out, “ring rain is more like a ring downpour,” accord ...read more
Over its nearly 20 year mission, NASA's Cassini spacecraft redefined our understanding of Saturn. And while Cassini sent its final transmissions to Earth as it dove into the ringed planet last September, scientists have just published more than half a dozen papers using data collected during its "Grand Finale." The studies, published in both Science and the Geophysical Research Letters help refine our knowledge of the planet and its rings and how they evolved.
Planetary scientist Hunter ...read more
Author Vishay SinghPosted on Categories Discover Magazine
