Category: Science
Bacteria Eats Heavy Metals, Excretes Gold Nuggets
By Michael Irving If the goose that laid the golden egg had a real-life counterpart, it would be C. metallidurans. This hardy little bacterium consumes toxic metals and excretes tiny gold nuggets, but how and why it does so has never been fully understood. Now, German and Australian researchers have peered inside the microorganism and figured […]
Read More Bacteria Eats Heavy Metals, Excretes Gold NuggetsWe Can Navigate Using Pulsars: Where to Now?
By Robbie Gonzales HALF A CENTURY ago, astronomers observed their first pulsar: a dead, distant, ludicrously dense star that emitted pulses of radiation with remarkable regularity. So consistent was the object’s signal that astronomers jokingly nicknamed it LGM-1, short for “little green men.” It wasn’t long before scientists detected more signals like LGM-1. That decreased the […]
Read More We Can Navigate Using Pulsars: Where to Now?TRAPPIST-1 Planetary Atmospheres May Be Habitable
Seven Earth-sized planets orbit the ultracool dwarf star TRAPPIST-1, 40 light-years away from the Earth [1]. This makes TRAPPIST-1 the planetary system with the largest number of Earth-sized planets discovered so far. These planets are also relatively temperate, making them a tantalizing place to search for signs of life beyond our Solar System. Now, an international team […]
Read More TRAPPIST-1 Planetary Atmospheres May Be HabitableOrbital Infrastructure
Photo of a Single Atom with an Ordinary Camera
A student at the University of Oxford is being celebrated in the world of science photography for capturing a single, floating atom with an ordinary camera. Using long exposure, PhD candidate David Nadlinger took a photo of a glowing atom in an intricate web of laboratory machinery. In it, the single strontium atom is illuminated […]
Read More Photo of a Single Atom with an Ordinary CameraSURPRISE! A Viruslike Protein is Important for Cognition and Memory
Holy actual sh*t! This changes everything! A protein involved in cognition and storing long-term memories looks and acts like a protein from viruses. The protein, called Arc, has properties similar to those that viruses use for infecting host cells, and originated from a chance evolutionary event that occurred hundreds of millions of years ago. The […]
Read More SURPRISE! A Viruslike Protein is Important for Cognition and MemoryMan Spots Dangerous ‘Square Waves’ In Ocean
By Kristi Shinfuku The Earth can be a truly magnificent place. It’s power and its strength draw our attention and it’s power is always a reminder that this planet is not just ours. Despite all of that, sometimes, its beauty can mean something downright dangerous ahead. In the popular tourist destination of Isle of Rhe in […]
Read More Man Spots Dangerous ‘Square Waves’ In Ocean31 Essential Science Fiction Terms And Where They Came From
By Lauren Davis There are so many words and phrases that we use in science fiction—and even science—without giving it much thought. But where did we get terms like “death ray,” “terraforming,” “hive mind,” “telepathy,” and “parallel universe”? Read the full article at io9.com.
Read More 31 Essential Science Fiction Terms And Where They Came FromPutting Down Roots in Space
By Michael Johnson Plants grow just about everywhere on Earth, and are able to adapt to extreme conditions ranging from drought to disease. Spaceflight, however, exposes plants to stresses not found anywhere on their home planet. Growing plants aboard the International Space Station provides a unique opportunity to study how plants adapt to microgravity, and a team […]
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