On Aug. 23, 2023, India’s Chandrayaan-3 lander touched down close to the moon’s south pole, setting in motion an initial 14-day research mission during which a rover named Pragyan will explore our largest satellite.Slipping between the boulders of the rocky south pole was no small task, though most of the world’s major space agencies are trying to do it. Just a few days before India’s touchdown, a Russian probe crashed into the moon, not far from Chandrayaan-3’s landing spot.Meanwhile, ...read more
Lucid dreams — where people become aware that they're in a dream, and can actively alter or adapt it — are weird and wild, especially for the dreamer. Want to talk to animals? Go right ahead. Turn that recurring nightmare of falling in an endless void into a power fantasy of soaring through the air like Superman? No problem. In a lucid dream, in theory, if you can imagine it, you can do it. What's more, the phenomenon has recently become fertile ground for psychological research.Is Lucid Dre ...read more
When I heard the U.S. was having a blood shortage during the pandemic, I decided to roll up my sleeve and donate for the first time. As I watched the second donation bag fill, I chatted casually with the technician and thought I’d soon be on my way.And then, the sides of my vision began going dark, and the room in front of me faded. The technician immediately lowered the top half of my cot and raised my feet. He put cold compresses on my neck and tried to get me to stay alert with a conversati ...read more
Back in the late 1980s, a Canadian engineer called Tad McGeer built a remarkable pair of mechanical legs that were unpowered, had no actuators, no sensors and no computer control. But set them in motion down a slight incline and they started to walk with the lazy rolling gait of a gunslinging cowboy. By contrast, robotic legs are packed with sensors to monitor the position of each joint, computer processors to plan the trajectory of every movement and actuators to push the limbs into position. A ...read more
The extensive charcoal cave art at the Gura Sireh Cave on the island of Borneo appears to reflect decades of frontier violence, according to a new analysis.Cave art continued in Southeast Asia until the relatively recent past, the new paper says. Scientists carbon-dated some of Gura Sireh’s drawings to a period between 1670 and 1830. At the time, the indigenous hill tribes, the Bidayuh, suffered at the hands of the local Malay elites, who ruled the countryside.The cave art at Gura Sireh is onl ...read more
Author Vishay SinghPosted on Categories Discover Magazine