Planets orbit their parent stars while separated by enormous distances – in our solar system, planets are like grains of sand in a region the size of a football field. The time that planets take to orbit their suns have no specific relationship to each other.But sometimes, their orbits display striking patterns. For example, astronomers studying six planets orbiting a star 100 light years away have just found that they orbit their star with an almost rhythmic beat, in perfect synchrony. Ea ...read more
Dietary supplements are a big business. The industry made almost US$39 billion in revenue in 2022, and with very little regulation and oversight, it stands to keep growing.The marketing of dietary supplements has been quite effective, with 77 percent of Americans reporting feeling that the supplement industry is trustworthy. The idea of taking your health into your own hands is appealing, and supplements are popular with athletes, parents, and people trying to recover more quickly from a col ...read more
Around 500 million years ago, a strange ancestor of the modern sea star, sea urchin, and sand dollar swam above the Paleozoic seafloor. Classified as a pleurocystitid, the animal resembled an armored stingray in its appearance, armed with what looked like a set of swooping antennae. One of the first of its phylum to move around autonomously, its segmented tail swept from side-to-side to swim forward. Robotics researcher Richard Desatnik and colleagues identified the creature’s method of movem ...read more
As the world gears up for an inevitable spike in temperatures over the coming decades, a newly found deposit of fossils might provide insight on the future actions of modern species. "The distant past gives us a glimpse of our possible near future," said Jonathan Antcliffe, researcher at the University of Lausanne and co-author of the study, in a press release.Two paleontology enthusiasts came across the fossil site in Montagne Noire, a mountain range in southern France, where they unearthed ove ...read more
While on Earth dust may mostly seem like a housecleaning nuisance, in the far reaches of space, it plays an exciting role in galaxy research. Although the existence of dust in space continues to be surrounded by intrigue, an international team of astronomers recently identified a type Ia supernova creating cosmic dust. A new study published in Nature Astronomy highlighted this previously unknown source of cosmic dust. Prior to the study, dust formation has been observed in supernovae, but only i ...read more
Author Vishay SinghPosted on Categories Discover Magazine