Imagine opening your front door wide and inviting the world to listen in on your most private conversations. Unthinkable, right? Yet, in the digital realm, people inadvertently leave doors ajar, potentially allowing hackers, tech companies, service providers and security agencies to peek into their private communications.Much depends on the applications you use and the encryption standards the apps uphold. End-to-end encryption is a digital safeguard for online interactions. It’s used by many ...read more
In both December 2023 and February 2024, NASA’s Juno spacecraft soared over Jupiter’s moon, Io. Shooting past at a distance of around 930 miles, the twin flybys — the two closest flybys of Io in over 20 years — produced images of the moon’s lava lakes and volcanic plumes, fleshing out our impression of our solar system’s most volcanic world.According to NASA scientists, the images could contribute to our understanding of Io’s volcanism, confirming the patterns and the origins of th ...read more
Words, like biological species, are engaged in what Charles Darwin called a “struggle for existence.” Some have what it takes, earning the right to roll off the next generation of tongues, while others get consigned to the pages of Merriam-Webster — or become forgotten entirely.What sets the survivors apart? A recent study in the journal PNAS, by a team of international researchers, found that many successful English words have three crucial traits: they’re acquired early in life, they r ...read more
For years, whale watching enthusiasts have flocked to West Coast shores to catch a glimpse of migrating gray whales. These gentle giants inhabit waters in the Pacific Ocean, while their numbers in the Atlantic Ocean gradually dwindled to the point of extirpation, or local extinction, centuries ago. It came as a colossal shock, then, when a single gray whale was spotted on the other side of the country near New England earlier this month. On March 1, aquarium scientists first noticed the whale d ...read more
Scientists very rarely get access to most sharks, the development of their young or the nursery grounds where they grow. So seeing a hammerhead shark(Sphyrna tiburo) embryo, halfway through its five-month development, is very unusual.Access to growing embryos is key for developmental biologists like me as we try to understand the diversity of animals on Earth. Usually the fishes I study, including other shark species, lay eggs, which allows us to easily watch development in real time.Hammerhead ...read more
Author Vishay SinghPosted on Categories Discover Magazine