Humanity’s search for life on Mars has taken a significant step forward with the discovery of organic molecules that resemble key building blocks of life on Earth.Since landing in 2012, NASA’s Curiosity rover has made multiple discoveries suggesting that Mars may have once had habitable conditions. Now, scientists have identified the longest organic molecules ever found on the Red Planet — offering new insights into its potential to support life.A detailed report on these findings was rece ...read more
Neutrinos are the most ubiquitous particles — a hundred billion zip through your fingertip each second — yet they have no charge, almost no mass, and they barely interact with other matter. A century ago, when the Italian physicist Wolfgang Pauli predicted their existence, it wasn’t even clear how to look for them. "I have done a terrible thing,” he famously said. “I have postulated a particle that cannot be detected.” Fortunately, he spoke too soon. Neutrinos are in fact detectable, ...read more
A mouthful of chewing gum might also be a mouthful of microplastics, according to the results of a small pilot study. The research, presented at the spring meeting of the American Chemical Society, suggests that a single piece of chewing gum could introduce as many as 3,000 microplastic particles into the saliva, positioning them for potential ingestion.“Our goal is not to alarm anybody,” said Sanjay Mohanty, a study author and an engineering professor at the University of California, Los An ...read more
NASA’s James Webb Space Telescope (JWST) has caught yet another spectacle in a newly released image of a “cosmic tornado” forming billows of gas and dust that appear to be crowned with a spiral galaxy. This colorful display, known as Herbig-Haro 49/50, illustrates an outflow that was originally launched from a young star and is now zipping through space at breakneck speed. The galaxy sitting at the summit of the colorful arc is really much more distant than it seems and entirely unrelated ...read more
If you’re already on your second cup of coffee from the office coffee machine, you may want to take a moment to reconsider. While there is plenty of information out there on the benefits and concerns of drinking coffee, a new study published in Metabolism & Cardiovascular Diseases reports that specific coffee machines, typically found in the workplace, contain high amounts of a substance that can elevate the body's low-density lipoprotein (LDL) cholesterol. LDL cholesterol can lead to card ...read more
Author Vishay SinghPosted on Categories Discover Magazine