Ryan Mandelbaum, Gizmodo
You're probably aware that stuff is made from particles. But the second most abundant particle in the universe, the neutrino, refuses to be fully understood. This tiny and elusive speck only barely interacts with the other particles that make up us humans and our galaxy. Its mysteries continue to confound the public and get scientists talking, to this day.
Samia Bouzid, PBS NOVA
If you've ever driven into the sunset with a dirty windshield or taken a drive after a snowstorm, your windshield caked with salt, you can probably relate to one of astronomers' ongoing frustrations: seeing through dust.Cosmic dust, which collects in galaxies in loose fogs or thick clouds, has often plagued astronomers. The tiny grains, each 10,000 times smaller than the eye of a needle, absorb light, scatter it, or change its wavelength so it's invisible to the eye.
Amorina Kingdon, Hakai Magazine
When eight endangered North Atlantic right whales turned up dead in the ocean off Nova Scotia this past June, scientists scrambled to find out why. Early data shows several of the whales had blunt force trauma consistent with a ship strike, with data still pending on others.Ship strikes are a major cause of injury or death for whales. But why do they happen at all? The ocean is vast, and huge ships don't exactly travel at freeway speedsthere should be enough noise... Читать дальше...
Shannon Hall, Nature News
Some of the brightest objects in the Universe quasars are vanishing rapidly. Astronomers now think that they understand this mysterious behaviour, and the answer could help them to explain how galaxies such as the Milky Way evolve.Quasars are supermassive black holes at the centres of galaxies fed by huge quantities of gas that shine across the visible Universe. Astronomers have long thought that quasars persist for millions of years before dimming slowly over tens of thousands of years.
James Temple, MIT Review
Harvard professor David Keith has done as much as any single researcher to push the touchy topic of geoengineering toward the scientific mainstream (see A Cheap and Easy Plan to Stop Global Warming).He was among the first to seriously assess potential ways of altering the climate to ease global warming, and he has undertaken some of the most detailed research on a promising approach known as stratospheric injection. He also wrote a book on the subject, A Case for Climate Engineering... Читать дальше...
Elizabeth Howell, Seeker
Would it be easy to determine if the source of a mysterious radio signal was aliens? Probably not. A new paper argues that contact with extraterrestrials will likely be discovered through a prolonged, incremental process rather than an instantaneous eureka-like moment. Eureka what the ancient Greek mathematician Archimedes allegedly said when he cracked a tough science problem about water displacement tends to be the exception in science rather than the rule.
Geoff Manaugh, The New Yorker
In March, 1934, Modern Mechanix reported on an unusually ambitious plan to solve Manhattan's traffic and housing woes. Norman Sper, a noted publicist and engineering scholar, proposed to plug up the Hudson River with a pair of dams at either end of the island. This would reroute the water around Harlem and the East Side, exposing the riverbed between New York and New Jersey. The resulting dry land, once filled in, would nearly double the city's size and create a gold mine in future real estate. Читать дальше...
Sabine Hossenfelder, Forbes
It's tough to wrap your head around four dimensions. Scientists have known that the universe expands since the 1930s, but whether we expand along with it is still one of the questions I am asked most frequently. The less self-conscious simply inform me that the universe doesn't expand but everything in it shrinks because how could we tell the difference?The best answer to these questions is, as usual, a lot of math. But it's hard to find a decent answer online that is not a pile of equations... Читать дальше...
Louise Matsakis, Mboard
The Environmental Working Group (EWG), an environmentally focused nonprofit, released a new database on Thursday that lets any US resident check what kinds of contaminants are present in their drinking water. The tool aggregates and analyzes publicly available data from nearly 50,000 public water systems across the country. Using the database is an easy way to learn more about what's in your water, and it was quickly picked up by the media. But the way in which the EWG presents its data could cause unnecessary fear.
Ryan Mandelbaum, Gizmodo
You're probably aware that stuff is made from particles. But the second most abundant particle in the universe, the neutrino, refuses to be fully understood. This tiny and elusive speck only barely interacts with the other particles that make up us humans and our galaxy. Its mysteries continue to confound the public and get scientists talking, to this day.
Samia Bouzid, PBS NOVA
If you've ever driven into the sunset with a dirty windshield or taken a drive after a snowstorm, your windshield caked with salt, you can probably relate to one of astronomers' ongoing frustrations: seeing through dust.Cosmic dust, which collects in galaxies in loose fogs or thick clouds, has often plagued astronomers. The tiny grains, each 10,000 times smaller than the eye of a needle, absorb light, scatter it, or change its wavelength so it's invisible to the eye.
Amorina Kingdon, Hakai Magazine
When eight endangered North Atlantic right whales turned up dead in the ocean off Nova Scotia this past June, scientists scrambled to find out why. Early data shows several of the whales had blunt force trauma consistent with a ship strike, with data still pending on others.Ship strikes are a major cause of injury or death for whales. But why do they happen at all? The ocean is vast, and huge ships don't exactly travel at freeway speedsthere should be enough noise... Читать дальше...
Joshua Sokol, Quanta Magazine
If you cast an observational lasso into the center of the Milky Way galaxy and pull it closed, you will find a dense, dark lump: a mass totaling some four million suns, crammed into a space no wider than twice Pluto's orbit in our solar system.In recent years, astronomers have come to agree that inside this region is a supermassive black hole, and that similar black holes lurk at the cores of nearly all other galaxies as well. And for those revelations, they give a lot of credit to Andrea Ghez.
Shannon Hall, Nature News
Some of the brightest objects in the Universe quasars are vanishing rapidly. Astronomers now think that they understand this mysterious behaviour1, 2, and the answer could help them to explain how galaxies such as the Milky Way evolve.Quasars are supermassive black holes at the centres of galaxies fed by huge quantities of gas that shine across the visible Universe. Astronomers have long thought that quasars persist for millions of years before dimming slowly over tens of thousands of years.
James Temple, MIT Review
Harvard professor David Keith has done as much as any single researcher to push the touchy topic of geoengineering toward the scientific mainstream (see A Cheap and Easy Plan to Stop Global Warming).He was among the first to seriously assess potential ways of altering the climate to ease global warming, and he has undertaken some of the most detailed research on a promising approach known as stratospheric injection. He also wrote a book on the subject, A Case for Climate Engineering... Читать дальше...
Elizabeth Howell, Seeker
Would it be easy to determine if the source of a mysterious radio signal was aliens? Probably not. A new paper argues that contact with extraterrestrials will likely be discovered through a prolonged, incremental process rather than an instantaneous eureka-like moment. Eureka what the ancient Greek mathematician Archimedes allegedly said when he cracked a tough science problem about water displacement tends to be the exception in science rather than the rule.
Geoff Manaugh, The New Yorker
In March, 1934, Modern Mechanix reported on an unusually ambitious plan to solve Manhattan's traffic and housing woes. Norman Sper, a noted publicist and engineering scholar, proposed to plug up the Hudson River with a pair of dams at either end of the island. This would reroute the water around Harlem and the East Side, exposing the riverbed between New York and New Jersey. The resulting dry land, once filled in, would nearly double the city's size and create a gold mine in future real estate. Читать дальше...
