With the U.N.'s COP29 climate conference underway in Baku, Azerbaijan, a flurry of unsettling news about global heating has emerged. The summit — attended by diplomats from nearly 200 nations, and nearly 60,000 people in total — is intended to be a forum for discussion and adoption of solutions. But this year it's being roiled by even more controversy than usual. Meanwhile, with recent findings showing no easing of our climatic plight, U.S. President-elect Donald Trump is preparing to take p ...read more
More than three decades ago, amphibian researchers from around the globe converged on Canterbury, England, for the first World Congress of Herpetology — and, over drinks, shared the same frightening tale.Frogs were disappearing in the wild, and no one could explain why.It was “a scary time,” recalls Australian veterinary scientist Lee Berger, who in the 1990s was one of the first to identify the culprit: a water-borne chytrid fungus known as Batrachochytrium dendrobatidis, or Bd.Scientists ...read more
Comets are among the most exciting celestial objects to watch. These visitors from the outer reaches of the solar system are basically debris — dust, bits of rock, and frozen gases — left over from its formation. There are a bunch of them out there, too. According to NASA, there are probably billions of comets orbiting the Sun in the Kuiper Belt and the Oort Cloud. And sometimes, one passes close enough to Earth for us to see it. Comet C/2023 A3 peaked in October 2024 and is already startin ...read more
Ever since the ancient Greeks first made observations of the circular Moon and the skies, scientists have known that the Earth is a sphere. We’ve all seen beautiful images of the Earth from space, some photographed by astronauts and others collected remotely by orbiting satellites. So why doesn’t our planet look round when we’re standing in a park or looking out a window?The answer is all about perspective. Humans are pretty tiny creatures living on a really large sphere.An average adult i ...read more
“Aren’t they a little young for that?”This is a question I used to hear regularly from parents when I’d recommend strength training for the kids I worked with, whose ages ranged from 6 to 18 years old, in youth sports. During my four years as a strength and conditioning coach, I often received questions from parents about the pros and cons of strength training– that is, training that involves weight-bearing exercises – for children.Some of the most common questions: Is strength train ...read more
Author Vishay SinghPosted on Categories Discover Magazine