Three-tailed Comet Q1 PanSTARRS lights up Southern skies
C/2014 Q1 peaked at about 3rd magnitude at perihelion on July 6, when it missed the Sun by just 28 million miles (45 million km). Australian observers Michael Mattiazzo and Paul Cami...
The new SLENDR technique: Protein labeling in the developing brain by genome editing
When this damage is done, there are two methods that the cell uses to repair its DNA. If a cell uses HDR to repair itself, scientists can include a desired gene in the CRISPR system ...
The mathematics of weather prediction
Every day, the supercomputers collect and organize billions of earth observations, such as temperature, air pressure, moisture, wind speed and water levels, which are critical to ini...
Spacecraft fly through explosive magnetic phenomenon to understand space weather
For the first time, spacecraft have flown through the heart of a magnetic process that controls Earth’s space weather and geomagnetic storms. When these lines come up against field l...
Miniature brains made from patient skin cells reveal insights into autism
Understanding diseases like autism and schizophrenia that affect development of the brain has been challenging due to both the complexity of the diseases and the difficulty of studyi...
Magnetospheric Multiscale (MMS) mission puts magnetic reconnection under the microscope
In this boundary between the solar wind and Earth’s magnetosphere, the scientists are searching for locations where the solar wind magnetic field and the terrestrial magnetic field r...
In Praise of the Tamed Metaphysicist: Einstein on Reality, Rationality, and the Human Passion for Comprehension
For fifteen years, it has remained free and ad-free and alive thanks to patronage from readers. If this labor has made your own life more livable in the past year (or the past decade...
Image: STEREO-A spacecraft returns data from the far side of the sun
Credit: NASA/STEREO This image of the sun was taken on July 15, 2015, with the Extreme Ultraviolet Imager onboard NASA’s Solar TErrestrial RElations Observatory Ahead (STEREO-A) spa...
How light is detected affects the atom that emits it
All that a photon detector can tell you about spontaneous emission is whether an atom is in its excited state or its ground state. You’d never see that if you were detecting photons,...
How birds learn foreign languages: Biologists have succeeded in teaching wild birds to understand a new language
Biologists have succeeded in teaching wild birds to understand a new language. After only two days of training, fairy wrens learnt to flee when they heard an alarm call that was fore...
Endangered dragonflies, raised in captivity, being released
In this 2015 photo provided by Daniel Soluk, an adult Hine’s emerald dragonfly hangs from the skin of the last larval stage from which it just emerged at the Mud Lake Wildlife Area i...
Born an addict: Clues from umbilical cords
Because umbilical cord tissue can be sent for testing immediately after birth, this specimen type offers logistical advantages over meconium, the traditional specimen for detecting d...
ARIEL mission to reveal ‘Brave New Worlds’ among exoplanets
Concept view of the ARIEL spacecraft. Credit ESA An ambitious European mission is being planned to answer fundamental questions about how planetary systems form and evolve. ARIEL wi...
Agriculture’s next frontier? Growing plants in space
Paul explained how all this research helps us on planet Earth. During the experiments, NASA scientists sent plants to the International Space Station to test Paul and Ferl’s ideas ab...
What causes lightning?
Credit: noaanews.noaa.gov Thunder and lightning. For example, there is intra-cloud lighting (IC), which takes place between electrically charged regions of a cloud; cloud-to-cloud (...
Transit of Mercury seen by Proba-2
As the smallest planet in the Solar System crossed the face of the Sun on Monday 9 May, one of ESA’s smallest satellites was watching. Proba-2, smaller than a cubic metre, monitors t...
This is your brain on communication
Neuroscientist Uri Hasson researches the basis of human communication, and experiments from his lab reveal that even across different languages, our brains show similar activity, or ...
Syracuse physicists confirm existence of rare pentaquarks discovery
The statistical evidence of these new pentatquark states is beyond question, says Sheldon Stone, Distinguished Professor of Physics, who helped engineer the discovery. In addition to...
New State of Water: Strange 6-Sided Molecule Found
[The Surprisingly Strange Physics of Water] The ring shape is caused by the quantum tunneling of the molecules, a phenomenon that lets subatomic particles pass or “tunnel” through s...
More than 1,200 new planets confirmed using new technique for verifying Kepler data
In addition, the researchers identified 428 candidates as likely false positives, or signals generated by something other than a planet. However, some scenarios can mimic the signatu...
Making sense of our evolution
Human eyes are unique among primates for their range of iris colours and unpigmented sclera. Trichromatic vision allows humans and many other primates to perceive perhaps 10 million ...
Lunar ice drill
A drill designed to penetrate 1–2 m into the lunar surface is envisaged by ESA to fly to the Moon’s south pole on Russia’s Luna-27 lander in 2020. “This region is of great interest t...
LHCb claims discovery of two pentaquarks – Physics World
Pentaquark molecule: a meson and baryon bound together The best evidence yet for the existence of a new type of particle called a pentaquark has been unveiled by physicists working ...
Gene associated with thinking skills: Gene underlying healthy information processing identified
It is well known that genetic variation plays an important role in explaining individual differences in thinking skills such as memory and information processing speed, said Dr. Tom ...
Flies that pollinized Cretaceous plants 105 million years ago
However, in the Cretaceous – about 105 million years ago – bees and butterflies did not exist, and most terrestrial ecosystems were dominated by non-flowering plants (gymnosperms). A...