Voyager (left) launched in 1977; New Horizons (right) launched in 2006. The two missions have a curiously interconnected past.(Credit: NASA/JPL; NASA)
While many people know about the Voyager missions launched in the 1970s and the New Horizons probe that visited Pluto in 2015, few are aware that the relationship between these two missions dates back to the 1960s. Had scientific goals been different at the time, Voyager might have taken the place of New Horizons, decades before the latter was e ...read more
SIMP J01365663+0933473, shown here in this artist’s concept, is a massive, nearby exoplanet with a powerful, aurora-generating magnetic field.(Credit: Caltech/Chuck Carter; NRAO/AUI/NSF)
A bizarre rogue planet without a star is roaming the Milky Way just 20 light-years from the Sun. And according to a recently published study in The Astrophysical Journal, this strange, nomadic world has an incredibly powerful magnetic field that is some 4 million times stronger than Earth’s. Furthe ...read more
According to the 1950s, we should have jet packs and flying cars by now. Another lost transportation method from yesteryear: jet shoes. In the 1960s, NASA engineers built jet shoes for astronauts, which, in the revised history of everyone’s dreams, could have eventually trickled down to a consumer version.
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Jet shoes emerged because engineers and mission planners really didn’t know what kinds of challenges astronauts would be facing in on spacewalks. They just knew ...read more
A soft robotic device powered by popcorn, constructed by researchers in Cornell’s Collective Embodied Intelligence Lab. (Credit: Cornell University)
Robots have always been cool and futuristic. Since we live in such ultra-modern times we’re seeing more and more of them, whether it’s to clean our floors, drive our cars or even give us extra limbs. But usually the focus is on what robots can now do, and less on what actually powers their abilities.
Not today: A team of Cornell ...read more
(Credit: Ivan Marjanovic/Shutterstock)
If the quintessential ecological battle cry of the seventies was “Save The Whales,” today it is “Save The Bees.” From news headlines to environmental campaigns to alarming documentaries, we’re warned that if the bees go extinct, we’ll go with them.
It makes sense — about 75 percent of crops are reliant on animal pollinators, which are often honeybees. Without them, the theory goes, we’d not only lose $212 bi ...read more
Author Vishay SinghPosted on Categories Discover Magazine
