All the stars in our galaxy are moving relative to one another, usually at speeds no more than about 100 kilometers per second. Some stars move much faster, and a few have huge velocities, of the order of 1000 kilometers per second. These hypervelocity stars have an interesting history. Astronomers believe these stars probably started life as one half of a binary system with one star then being captured by the powerful gravitational field of the supermassive black hole at the center of our galax ...read more
Old Billy was a draft horse, probably a Shire, who lived and worked in England in the late eighteenth and early nineteenth centuries. He was 62 years old when he died. In those days, that was a pretty advanced age for a human; for a horse, it was remarkable. It's thought that Old Billy is the longest-lived horse on record.How Long Do Horses Live?On average, domesticated horses live 25 to 30 years. Ponies tend to live even longer. (Horses in the wild typically make it only to about 15 years old ...read more
Did you know? Your camera (or smartphone) is a fantastic tool you can use to help scientists better understand the world and answer big questions affecting us and our planet.Next time you’re taking a walk, visiting a local park, heading out on an outdoor adventure or even just exploring your own basement, you can aid REAL scientific research by photographing plants, animals, fungi and more!Need help getting started? Watch the recording of our June 20 SciStarter LIVE! event: Photography 101: H ...read more
A raccoon-sized bear that lived a short and painful life some 32 million years ago has suddenly risen to prominence thanks to a new paper that has declared it a new species, Eoarctos vorax. The so-called “dawn bear the voracious eater” helps to establish North America as an important venue for the evolution of early bears, a process scientists have largely relegated to Europe.Paleontologists first unearthed the skeleton in 1982 from the Fitterer Ranch site in southwestern North Dakota, but p ...read more
Imagine a future in which humans have built advanced spacecraft, capable of traveling at a significant percentage of the speed of light. Scientists have also become aware of a large black hole in our galactic neighborhood — now well within our reach.When a team of researchers assemble to travel to the black hole, one curious question might rise above all others: “What would happen if we flew straight into it?”For now, this hypothetical scenario is still a long way off. Yet for as long as w ...read more
Author Vishay SinghPosted on Categories Discover Magazine
