The total solar eclipse as seen from McMinnville, Oregon. (Credit: Bud Ellison/Flickr)
As you may recall, we had a solar eclipse last month.
It was kind of a big deal.
After almost 40 years without a total solar eclipse, the United States got pretty lucky on Aug. 21, with the moon’s shadow crisscrossing the country and at least a partial eclipse visible in all 50 states. About 12 million people lived within that “path of totality,” and 47 million were within 100 miles.
But ho ...read more
(Credit: Shutterstock/Alexey Stiop)
The discovery of a biomarker for chronic traumatic encephalopathy (CTE) could lead to diagnosis of the disease in living individuals, something not currently possible.
CTE is a neurodegenerative brain disease thought to be caused by repeated blows to the head, resulting in brain damage that accumulates over time. A recent study of 111 NFL players who donated their brains after death found CTE in all but one of them.
Tests Possible
In new research p ...read more
A NASA image depicts what planet Earth may have looked like some 4 billion years ago when it was getting pummeled with space rocks. (Credit: NASA)
Earth’s first life evolved in hell.
The earliest lifeforms emerged at least 3.95 billion years ago, at a time when a near constant barrage of comets and asteroids were bombarding our still solidifying planet. That’s the implication of new research published in the journal Nature on Wednesday.
A group of Japanese scientists journeyed into ...read more
VRIGO (Credit: Wikimedia Commons)
Last year, physicists made history by observing the first-ever gravitational wave. Their discovery confirmed Albert Einstein’s century-old theory of gravity and capped decades of effort to build an instrument sensitive enough to catch these ripples in spacetime.
Since then, researchers working at the government-funded Laser Interferometer Gravitational Wave Observatory (LIGO) — twin detectors in Louisiana and Washington State — have caught se ...read more
Agung in Indonesia seen in 2009. Antoine Vasse Nicolas / CC by 2.0
This week, the focus is on the rumbling volcanoes in Indonesia and Vanuatu. Here are some updates (along with a tidbit at the end on Washington’s Rainier.)
Agung
The unrest at Indonesia’s Agung continues and now the total evacuated has reached almost 100,000 people. Now, this volcanic crisis has been going for almost a week with no eruption … and we begin to enter the long, dark teatime of volcano monitoring: h ...read more
Author Vishay SinghPosted on Categories Discover Magazine
