The Science Near Me blog is a partnership between Discover magazine and ScienceNearMe.org.In 2017, people across America turned out to watch one of the most stunning celestial events visible from Earth: a solar eclipse. An estimated 215 million Americans — 88% of the adult population, almost twice as many viewers as the Super Bowl — watched the eclipse either in person or virtually. Now, in just under a year, we’ll be seeing another eclipse cross the continental United States.On April 8, ...read more
Ireland and Britain should be, seismologically speaking, equally boring. The two islands lie thousands of kilometers from the nearest plate boundary and are not volcanic hot spots. But though the ground rarely rumbles in Ireland, neighboring Britain experiences plenty of weak and moderate earthquakes.The lithosphere—Earth’s outermost rocky veneer, which includes the crust and the solid upper mantle—is thicker and cooler beneath Ireland than it is beneath Britain, new research has suggeste ...read more
At first glance, the Earth’s orbit and oceans could not be more different. The former is located on the uppermost layers of the planet’s atmosphere and beyond, while the latter surrounds all the landmasses around the globe.But there is a glaring similarity between the two: Both are vast areas with no owner, making responsible and sustainable use of them incredibly challenging.Imogen Napper, a marine scientist at the University of Plymouth in England, says the high seas and the Earth’s orbi ...read more
Researchers have long used birdsong as a prime example when studying the complexities of speech. But a new study based on orangutans attempts to change that and shed some light on how humans acquired the ability to make more than one vocal sound at a time.The researchers spent a massive amount of time observing and recording the great apes in the wild – some 3,800 hours in Borneo and Sumatra within range of the animals. What they found connects present-day beatboxing sounds to early human lang ...read more
Back in October 2021, developers on the GitHub software development platform were given access to an exotic AI tool called Copilot. Created in association with OpenAI, the company behind ChatGPT, Copilot uses the same generative AI technology to produce computer code on request, rather than text. And it is pretty good at it. Github reckons that Copilot successfully autocompletes coding suggestions about 50 percent of the time, which should significantly increase the productivity of the millions ...read more
Author Vishay SinghPosted on Categories Discover Magazine
