I still remember the nightmares I had as a kid — sometimes with vivid clarity. In one recurring dream, for example, my parent’s German Shepherd transformed into a monstrous beast with glistening fangs and glowing eyes. Yet the older I got, the more mundane my dreams became, mostly populated by normal social interactions with friends and acquaintances.It's no secret that dreams vary wildly in tone and content. What’s more, scientists have found that the different types of dream states — f ...read more
Here on Earth, we take from the moon countless myths, legends and mysteries. We give it, in return, a bunch of high-energy electrons from our magnetosphere’s plasma sheet. But this is not such a piddling gift, according to a new paper, which proposes that these electrons react with the moon’s surface to create water.Scientists have long presumed that the solar wind – an outpouring of particles from the sun – creates water on the moon. In doing so, it has joined impacts from icy comets an ...read more
Humans are meant to be around one another. It’s been that way for millennia. We needed each other to hunt, construct homes, procreate, care for our offspring and protect one another against the saber-toothed tigers and dire wolves that meant to harm us. We also need each other to be happy and to take up the burdens that sometimes weigh us down. All told, being a human is exceedingly difficult when life is lived alone.Research shows that socialization is so engrained in our survival that when ...read more
If you've been hoping for a reprieve from extreme weather, I've got disappointing news: While there are no guarantees of what it will bring, El Niño is growing and the odds that it will peak as a strong event are stronger now than scientists believed just one month ago.According to the latest forecast, the climate phenomenon almost certainly will stick around through March of 2024. And there's now a greater than 70 percent chance that it will peak this winter as a strong episode. That's up from ...read more
In 2022, Richard D. Hansen led a team in Guatemala’s Mirador-Calakmul Karst Basin and found Mayan structures consistently spread over a 650-square-mile area (slightly larger than modern London). They identified 964 previously unknown sites aged 1000 B.C. to A.D. 150 and 110 miles of raised causeways connecting them. While it was already known that Mayan civilization was spread throughout Central America, many assumed tropical forest settlements were an obstacle to creating complex societies. â ...read more
Author Vishay SinghPosted on Categories Discover Magazine