In 2010, Chelsea Wood was conducting a biological survey of the Line Islands, a chain of atolls and coral outcrops a thousand miles south of Hawaii. Some islands are heavily populated, home to a robust fishing trade, while others have never been permanently inhabited by humans. Seizing upon the opportunity afforded by such a stark contrast, Wood, then a budding parasitologist pursuing her Ph.D. in biology at Stanford University, decided to compare the worms living in the organs of fish from the ...read more
Love is confusing. People in the U.S. Google the word “love” about 1.2 million times a month. Roughly a quarter of those searches ask “what is love” or request a “definition of love.”What is all this confusion about?Neuroscience tells us that love is caused by certain chemicals in the brain. For example, when you meet someone special, the hormones dopamine and norepinephrine can trigger a reward response that makes you want to see this person again. Like tasting chocolate, you want m ...read more
To experience a volcanic eruption is to witness nature’s raw power. If you would like to see one for yourself, Iceland is a great location for it. Since 2021, seven eruptions have taken place along the Reykjanes Peninsula, close to Reykjavík.These recent Icelandic eruptions have garnered attention from Earth scientists like me. The eruptions help us understand how volcanoes work in incredible detail. My team has been taking samples from the erupting lava from the Reykjanes Peninsula and findi ...read more
In recent years, black holes have morphed from highly theoretical exotic possibilities to well-observed astrophysical objects. The observational evidence has come from sources such as the first observation of ripples in spacetime caused by black hole collisions and the first image of a black hole published in 2019.Black holes are predicted by Einstein’s theory of general relativity, which describes the universe on the largest scale. But these objects must also distort spacetime on the tiniest ...read more
Sometimes daydreams turn into reality. As an undergrad, Martin Smith remembers attending a lecture that stuck with him. The talk touched on the difficulty of showing how ancient wormlike creatures evolved into more complex organisms with arms and legs — like insects, spiders, crabs, and centipedes. Demonstrating that had so far proved daunting, since no Cambrian period larval fossil contained the details necessary to make any evolutionary inferences. Smith remembers thinking, "If they ever fin ...read more
Author Vishay SinghPosted on Categories Discover Magazine