A scholarly article once proposed that the griffin — a mythological beast with a raptor’s head, a lion’s body, and eagle’s wings — was created by ancient prospectors stumbling upon a dinosaur fossil while searching for gold in Central Asia.But something about the argument didn’t feel right to Mark Witton, a paleontologist at the University of Portsmouth in England, who with a colleague, now debunked the study over 30 years later in an Interdisciplinary Science Reviews article.The Pop ...read more
Jupiter’s Great Red Spot is one of the most famous and spectacular sights in the Solar Systems. Wider than the diameter of the Earth, the spot is a giant vortex of winds up to 400 kilometers per hour. Its reddish color probably comes from complex organic molecules that form in its upper atmosphere, although nobody is quite sure.The Spot may have first been seen by the Italian astronomer Giovanni Cassini in 1665 and then observed throughout his life until his death in 1712. But after that somet ...read more
The space environment is harsh and full of extreme radiation. Scientists designing spacecraft and satellites need materials that can withstand these conditions.In a paper published in January 2024, my team of materials researchers demonstrated that a next-generation semiconductor material called metal-halide perovskite can actually recover and heal itself from radiation damage.Metal-halide perovskites are a class of materials discovered in 1839 that are found abundantly in Earth’s crust. They ...read more
Every time we speak, our brains have to meticulously coordinate the movements of some 100 muscles in the face, mouth, tongue, lips, and vocal cords. Those muscles then have to fire almost instantaneously to produce the right sounds. Speech is complicated, to say the least — if something goes wrong at any point between the first neural signals and the last muscular contractions, it may result in difficulty speaking, or a disorder known as dysarthria.“When you have an interruption in that path ...read more
It takes a lot of fuel to conquer a large part of two continents by horseback. But the Mongolians had been developing a strong culinary tradition they could carry along with them for roughly 2,000 years before they swept across much of Eurasia.Now, new research gives us a closer look at what kinds of foods the nomadic pastoralists of the Mongolian steppe were eating around 700 B.C.E. by examining the protein residues left in ancient cauldrons — and the findings are a little bloody.“This prac ...read more
Author Vishay SinghPosted on Categories Discover Magazine