When Earth Became a 'Mote of Dust'

Posted on Categories Discover Magazine

Earth, seen as the faint dot in a sunbeam, is 4 billion miles away in this image from Voyager 1. (Credit: NASA/JPL) We first glimpsed Earth’s curvature in 1946, via a repurposed German V-2 rocket that flew 65 miles above the surface. Year-by-year, we climbed a little higher, engineering a means to comprehend the magnitude of our home. In 1968, Apollo 8 lunar module pilot William Anders captured the iconic Earthrise photo. We contemplated the beauty of our home. But on Valentine’s D ...read more

Mamma Mia! Fossil Is First Hint Of Live Birth In Ancient Reptile

Posted on Categories Discover Magazine

What do I love most about this artist rendering of a pregnant Dinocephalosaurus? Is it capturing the marine reptile’s epic neck-to-body proportion? Is it the tasteful allusion to the offspring in her belly? No, it’s the freshly chomped fish in her mouth, and the bloody cloud around it. Nom nom nom. Don’t mess with Mom when she’s hungry. Credit: Dinghua Yang & Jun Liu. Here’s some egg-citing news: for the first time in the fossil record, researchers have discove ...read more

Authorship Means Responsibility

Posted on Categories Discover Magazine

Last week Retraction Watch covered a case of a psychology paper that was retracted after it emerged that the graduate student who collected the data had faked the results. Here’s the retraction notice: The retraction follows an investigation by the University of Alabama’s Office for Research Compliance. That investigation found that a former graduate student in William Hart’s lab altered the data in strategic ways. The investigation found that William Hart was unaware wh ...read more

Scientists Narrow in on Landing Site for NASA's Next Mars Rover

Posted on Categories Discover Magazine

A crater at Northeast Syrtis, one of the shortlisted landing sites for the Mars 2020 rover. (Image: NASA/HiRISE/University of Arizona) The Curiosity Mars rover is in the prime of its robotic life, approaching dramatic layered deposits on the slopes of Mt. Sharp. But even as the four and a half year-old mission reaches the features it was initially sent to investigate, scientists and engineers are feverishly planning for the next rover mission, Mars 2020. 2020 is shaping up to be a busy year on ...read more

California rivers are so swollen from runoff that the impact is easily seen in these before and after satellite images

Posted on Categories Discover Magazine

An animation of satellite images taken about a year apart shows a huge difference in the amount of water flowing through waterways in California’s Sacramento River Delta. (Images: NASA Worldview. Animation: Tom Yulsman) This animation of satellite images shows in dramatic fashion just how far California has come following one of its most devastating droughts on record. To get the full effect, make sure to click on the animated GIF. On Feb. 9, 2016, California was still in the grips of th ...read more