Hana Raza has never seen a Persian leopard. But thanks to her, we know the big cats still roam the Zagros Mountains of Kurdistan. After four decades of war in Iraq, the species was thought to have followed the Asiatic lion and cheetah into local extinction. But Raza says she never lost hope. “It’s a very adaptive creature,” she says. “And I just thought, it’s too strong. It can survive the wars.” With a freshly minted bachelor’s degree in biology, she jo ...read more
Dark matter research is unsettling. Scientists were unnerved when they first noticed that galaxies don't rotate by the same physics as a spinning plate. The stars at a galaxy's edge rotate faster than expected. And their motion can only be explained by a lot of invisible matter that we can't see.
That was exciting more than unsettling when the field was new and ideas were plentiful and had yet to be proven wrong. Researchers consolidated the possibilities into two main camps, complete wit ...read more
NASA’s Transiting Exoplanet Survey Satellite (TESS) launched April 18, headed for an orbit that takes it out to about the distance of the Moon at its apogee. Just a few weeks later, it began science operations and a list of 50 exoplanet candidates rolled in, with researchers now expecting at least six of those first candidates to be eventually confirmed as bona-fide planets.
The above image represents TESS’ “first light” science image, starting in the first of 26 sectors ...read more
Neutron stars, the end-stage remnants of massive stars, are high-energy objects. They’re usually studied in X-rays, some of the most energetic light in the universe. Neutron stars also give off radio emissions, most famously as pulsars. But now, infrared emission around a neutron star detected with the Hubble Space Telescope has sparked curiosity, indicating that astronomers may want to add infrared light to their neutron star-studying toolkit.
Heat Sensor
Infrared detectors are the n ...read more
Author Vishay SinghPosted on Categories Discover Magazine