Hearing the name Tiffany in a historical film or reading it in a historical book may distract the audience from the story momentarily since, surely, people were not named Tiffany centuries ago. It's a modern name, right? But the name Tiffany indeed came from the historical name Theophania, which originated in the 12th century.The Tiffany Effect, or the Tiffany Problem, refers to terms that seem modern but, in fact, have much older roots. The name Tiffany inspired the term because most people thi ...read more
For the first time, researchers have spotted a binary star — a system of two stars that orbit each other — near the Sagittarius A* (Sgr A*) supermassive black hole at the center of our galaxy. Binary stars have been observed elsewhere in the universe as a common occurrence, but never in the vicinity of a supermassive black hole. The pair of stars, dubbed D9, was revealed from data collected by the European Southern Observatory’s Very Large Telescope (VLT) in Chile. Presented in a new Natu ...read more
The oldest known saber-toothed predator, dating back over 270 million years ago, appears to have been an animal caught in the evolutionary middle, according to a report in Nature Communications.The gorgonopsian excavated in Mallorca laid eggs, unlike most mammals. But it was warm-blooded, unlike reptiles. Its leg shape and position were halfway between mammal and reptile. And its saber teeth were more commonly associated with mammals like Smilodon, which emerged in North America about 2.5 millio ...read more
NASA is still arguably the biggest player in space, but they don’t accomplish this alone. The agency makes use of various rockets built by companies like Northrop Grumman, the United Launch Alliance, SpaceX and Rocket Lab.Here is a breakdown of the aerospace launch vehicles NASA currently uses — not including retired rockets such as Saturn V.1. Atlas VAtlas V rockets currently come in two series — the 400 and 500. These rockets were developed by the United Launch Alliance — a spacecraft ...read more
One critical challenge for engineers is to measure distances with ever greater accuracy. In recent years, this has become possible with nanometer resolution over distances of a few meters. That means to an accuracy equivalent to about the width of a human DNA strand. Although impressive, engineers would dearly love to have that kind of accuracy over much longer distances. Now Yan-Wei Chen at the University of Science and Technology of China in Hefei, and colleagues, have found a way to do just t ...read more
Author Vishay SinghPosted on Categories Discover Magazine