Nina Lanza expected Antarctica to be cold. After all, she and her seven fellow meteorite hunters weren’t allowed to board their transport in New Zealand until they’d proved they’d packed all the necessary gear. And she’d been warned about the endless daylight at their location smack dab in between McMurdo Station and the South Pole. But, as she says, “People try to tell you what it’s ...read more
How many windows are there in New York City?
However you answer this classic interview day curveball, imagine if we devised a way to use each of those windows to convert the sun’s rays into electricity. Whoa.
William Rankine, a noted 19th century Scottish mechanical engineer, would call that an idea with a lot of potential.
Power From Glass
While we (most likely) will never turn every window in NYC into a solar cell, it won’t be because we never tried. Ca ...read more
Their skeletal remains curled into sleep-like positions familiar to any dog owner, the 10,000-year-old canines found at a site in Illinois are the earliest known dogs of the Americas. Ever since they were unearthed nearly a half-century ago, the animals have been at the heart of a debate: Were the dogs of the New World descended from Eurasian wolves and then brought here by humans, or were they locally domesticated from American wolves?
New genetic research answers that question â€&r ...read more
Scientists staged dogfights between moths and bats — and experimentally altered the moths' wings — to recreate evolution and shed light on the sonic illusions moths spin to evade bats.
For more than 60 million years, bats and moths have engaged in an evolutionary arms race across the night sky. Bats hunt their insect prey using ultrasonic sonar, while the insects counter these predators with numerous elaborate strategies, including aerial acrobatics, sonar ...read more
Spidey-senses tingling? It’s time to fly.
Though those of us without arachnid superpowers might not notice, we are constantly surrounded by electric fields. The ground carries a slight negative charge and the atmosphere is slightly positive, and, as a consequence, negatively charged particles can be borne up into the air. Some kinds of spiders may be taking advantage of the effect to hitch rides on the fields using negatively charged spide ...read more
Author Vishay SinghPosted on Categories Discover Magazine