A household scene as viewed by various pets and pests. Human eyesight is roughly seven times sharper than a cat, 40 to 60 times sharper than a rat or a goldfish, and hundreds of times sharper than a fly or a mosquito. (Image courtesy of Eleanor Caves)
Animals have us beat in basically every test of sensory perception. Bats bounce ultrasonic waves to locate prey, and bears can smell a carcass from miles away.
But our abilities are respectable in one category: visual acuity. A study pub ...read more
Lava entering the Pacific Ocean where Kapoho Bay used to be. Seen on June 5, 2018. USGS/HVO.
It almost sounds like the plot to a monster movie, but over the last few days, the lava flows from the Leilani Estates fissure eruption have eaten an entire bay (see above). What was known as Kapoho Bay is no more as lava from Fissure 8 poured into the bay, covered tide pools and has now converted the whole area into a peninsula jutting out over a kilometer into the Pacific Ocean. In the process, t ...read more
Researchers have found evidence of pneumonia and a tuberculosis-like infection in a marine reptile, similar to the nothosaur shown here, that lived 245 million years ago. (Credit: Nobu Tamura/Wikimedia Commons)
One of the oldest diseases to haunt our species — the lung infection known as pneumonia — is actually a lot older. Evidence of pneumonia, and possible tuberculosis, has turned up in a marine reptile that’s 245 million years old.
Researchers analyzed a fragmentary s ...read more
Flour and eggs (Photo Credit: Steven Du)
Guest post by Steven Du
Paste, the Latin Late antiquity translation for the word Pasta. [3] Eating spaghetti and meatballs today typically involves boiling some dried spaghetti pasta and pouring on some pasta sauce from a jar. But have you ever wondered how to make these golden silky strands of noodles? To start off, we have to sail to China with Marco Polo and learn about the origins of Bing.
Bing is Chinese for wheat products and dumplings. [3] The rea ...read more
Pluto is a beautiful world, with ice mountains, nitrogen glaciers, a haze-layered atmosphere, and methane dunes. But all that complexity does not necessarily make it a “planet.” (Credit: NASA/JHUAPL/SwRI)
I love Pluto. I grew up entranced by this strange little world: What could you be, you rebel that doesn’t seem to follow any of the rules? I even wrote a childhood letter to a local astronomer, offering my homespun hypothesis that Pluto might be a captured fragment of an exp ...read more
Author Vishay SinghPosted on Categories Discover Magazine
