Two ancient human fossils belonging to Australopithecus sediba and Homo naledi made a recent trip to suborbital space in a gesture that has roiled the scientific community.On Sept. 8, 2023, an A. sediba shoulder bone and a H. naledi finger bone soared into the heavens aboard a Virgin Galactic private spacecraft, alongside three commercial passengers, the third such crew in Virgin’s history. The fossils spent about 5 minutes in space while stowed inside a cigar-shaped, carbon fiber container in ...read more
In May 2023, a person caught malaria from a bug bite in Sarasota County, Florida. In response, the Florida Department of Public Health went to war with Anopheles, better known as the marsh mosquito.Ground teams poured insecticide into standing water. Airplanes sprayed down remote wetlands with larvae-killer. Finally, after two months, marsh mosquitoes — and new malaria cases — became scarce again.“It was a full-on assault on these mosquitoes,” says Florida Department of Public Health Pre ...read more
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
Author Vishay SinghPosted on Categories Discover Magazine