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science

SCIENCE: We’re Changing Near Earth Space Weather Too

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space weather

Our Cold War history is now offering scientists a chance to better understand the complex space system that surrounds us. Space weather — which can include changes in Earth’s magnetic environment — are usually triggered by the sun’s activity, but recently declassified data on high-altitude nuclear explosion tests have provided a new look at the mechanisms that set off perturbations in that magnetic system. Such information can help support NASA’s efforts to protect satellites and astronauts from the natural radiation inherent in space. From 1958 to 1962, the U.S. and U.S.S.R. ran high-altitude tests with exotic code names like Starfish, … Read more

STUDY: Plants Can Detect the Sound of Water

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roots - pixabay

Pseudoscientific claims that music helps plants grow have been made for decades, despite evidence that is shaky at best. Yet new research suggests some flora may be capable of sensing sounds, such as the gurgle of water through a pipe or the buzzing of insects. In a recent study, Monica Gagliano, an evolutionary biologist at the University of Western Australia, and her colleagues placed pea seedlings in pots shaped like an upside-down Y. One arm of each pot was placed in either a tray of water or a coiled plastic tube through which water flowed; the other arm had only … Read more

SCIENCE: What Will Humans Be Like in a Thousand Years?

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Humans in 1000 Years

TechInsider tackled the question, and found that humans will probably incorporate more bionic parts, be taller, and may finally crack the secret to immortality. And after all that time, we will likely be even closer to our machines, if we don’t destroy the planet and ourselves first. By Rob Ludacer and Jessica Orwig – Full Story at SOURCE

SCIENCE: Sheep Grown in Artificial Wombs

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Lamb Artificial Womb

Eight fetal lambs were successfully developed to term in artificial wombs at The Children’s Hospital of Philadelphia Research Institute, in a study whose results were published last week in the journal Nature Communications. They were equivalent in human terms to 22 to 24 weeks of gestation at the start of the experiment, providing a potential template for the care of extremely premature infants, who represent about 6 percent of premature births in the United States, which make up about 10 percent of all births. The remarkable feat was accomplished through the use of “Biobags” that mimic the natural conditions of … Read more

SCIENCE: Can This Worm Eat Us Out of Our Plastic Mess?

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wax worms

Each year, the world produces 300 million tons of plastic, much of which resists degradation and ends up polluting every corner of the globe. But a team of European scientists may have found a unique solution to the plastic problem. They discovered that a common insect can chew sizable holes in a plastic shopping bag within 40 minutes. “This study is another milestone discovery for the research on biodegradation of plastics,” says Wei-Min Wu, an environmental engineer at Stanford University. The discovery was led by Federica Bertocchini, a developmental biologist at the University of Cantabria in Spain. She first noticed … Read more

Where No Gay Has Gone Before: Fashionistas in Space!

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When many of us hear the word ‘fabrics’, we immediately think of avant-garde, haute couture dresses, the latest fashions from Paris, or ‘who-is-wearing-who’ on the Red Carpet.  In space exploration, however, fabrics have more applications than for just snazzy clothes, like antennas, spacesuits and shields for spacecraft. Raul Polit Casillas, a systems engineer at NASA’s Jet Propulsion Laboratory in Pasadena, California, is the son of a fashion designer from Spain, so he grew up familiar with fabrics.  Now he is applying his knowledge and skills to develop woven metal fabrics for applications in space. The fabrics that Polit Casillas and … Read more

SCIENCE: Climate Change and Extreme Weather Events

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Jet-Stream-NASA

The Polar jet stream carries weather systems around the northern hemisphere. New research finds that warming in the atmosphere due to carbon pollution is disrupting its flow and contributing to dangerous extreme weather events. Credit: NASA/Goddard Space Flight Center Scientific Visualization Studio President Donald Trump may be trying to scrub his predecessor’s initiatives to fight climate change from just about every corner of the federal government — Exhibit A being this week’s executive order aimed at undoing Barack Obama’s Clean Power Plan — but the reality of the climate crisis is not going away. And the dangers we’re facing may … Read more

SCIENCE: If Spiders Ate Humans…

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jumping spider - pixabay

Spiders ― those eight-legged, hairy, creepy-crawling, poison-fanged, silk-spinning arachnids ― are often the stuff that nightmares and horror movies are made of. Spiders primarily eat insects, with the exception of some larger spider species that have hearty appetites for a good lizard or bird or small mammal. But Washington Post reporter Christopher Ingrahamexplored a disturbingly intriguing dilemma this week ― if spiders ate human beings, how many would they eat? The matter came up because earlier this month, European biologists Martin Nyffeler and Klaus Birkhofer published a paper in the journal Science of Nature, estimating the total weight of prey … Read more

GEEK OUT: Aliens Traveling on Radio Beams

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Aliens Radio Beams

Two Harvard University scientists are suggesting that mysterious fast radio bursts, detected in faraway galaxies, may be evidence of aliens traveling through the cosmos. FRBs are extremely bright flashes of radio waves that last for only a thousandth of a second and are detected by earthbound telescopes. Since the first one was observed 10 years ago, 17 have actually been reported, although scientists think there are thousands of them a day. At first, Abraham “Avi” Loeb said, he took a conservative approach to explaining them. “It looked like the simplest explanation would be flares from stars in the Milky Way … Read more

SCIENCE: If An Asteroid Target’s Earth, We’re…

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asteroid - pixabay

It’s the stuff of science fiction: Scientists discover that an asteroid is heading for Earth, and we don’t have any measures in place to prevent the space rock from hitting us. But this scenario is actually more plausible than many people realize.= There are about 15,000 asteroids in our immediate galactic neighborhood. On March 2, astronomers at the Catalina Sky Survey in Arizona spotted a 10-foot-wide space rock that passed Earth, “diving in closer than many communications and weather satellites,” Space.com reports. The asteroid came within 9,000 miles of Earth, according to NASA’s Center for Near Earth Object Studies. The moon, by comparison, is about 239,000 miles … Read more