By Alex Acks I’ve been reading science fiction and fantasy almost as long as I’ve been able to read, and I’m normally very good at suspending my disbelief. Unfortunately, seven years of university schooling and two degrees have now placed some suspension limits on certain areas—namely geology, landforms, and maps. I tend to notice little things like […]
Read More The Science of Desert PlanetsBy Mara Johnson-Groh The space high above Earth may seem empty, but it’s a carnival packed with magnetic field lines and high-energy particles. This region is known as the magnetosphere and, every day, charged particles put on a show as they dart and dive through it. Like tiny tightrope walkers, the high-energy electrons follow the […]
Read More NASA Studies the MagnetosphereRoads of the future could be lit by glowing trees instead of streetlamps, thanks to a breakthrough in creating bioluminescent plants. Experts injected specialized nanoparticles into the leaves of a watercress plant, which caused it to give off a dim light for nearly four hours. This could solve lots of problems. The chemical involved, which […]
Read More Living Plant LightsBy Nancy Jane Moore At a recent meeting of my writers’ group, we discussed fight scenes while critiquing an early draft of my novel in progress. The discussion went something like this: “Women fight differently from men,” one of the guys said in pointing out that the sword fight scenes didn’t vary much. I didn’t […]
Read More Fighting and GenderBy David Plotz Being an astronaut is not all zero-gravity gymnastics and big blue marble flyovers. There’s also all the time spent repairing the urine collector and hunting for lost screws. Scott Kelly’s delightful new memoir, Endurance: A Year in Space, A Lifetime of Discovery, chronicles the mundane, frustrating, and surprisingly funny reality of life on the […]
Read More Scott Kelly: An Astronaut’s Exit InterviewBy Josh Gabbatiss An international team of physicists has “stumbled upon” an entirely new material, which they have called “Weyl-Kondo semimetal”. The “semimetal” belongs to a category of substances known as “quantum materials”. Quantum materials have various quirky properties, some of which could contribute to future technological innovations like quantum computing – regarded by many […]
Read More Scientists Have Accidentally Discovered a New MaterialBy Nicole Mortillaro When we think of Mars, we think of a dry, desolate planet. But beneath the dust of Mars lies frozen water, and a new study has found that erosion is exposing that water ice. Researchers using several satellites, including the Mars Reconnaissance Orbiter (MRO) and the High Resolution Imaging Science Experiment (HiRISE), have […]
Read More Erosion on Mars Reveals Water Ice: LOTS of It!By Anastasia Stepanova (translated from Russian) … And here we are flying over the uninhabited island of Devon and we observe a strange picture: in the distance below, a few white points swish. Common sense suggests: these are the most dangerous inhabitants of the Arctic – polar bears. But the closer the plane to the middle of the […]
Read More The Mars 160 ProgramBy Doris Elin Salazar If you’ve ever wondered what kind of weather Jon Snow faces as he fights against White Walkers in the hit television fantasy series “Game of Thrones,” the conditions are about the same as they are in Fairbanks, Alaska, according to a new climate simulation of the fictitious realm. Plus, dragons scorching up Westeros […]
Read More ‘Game of Thrones’ Climate Simulator Explains Crazy Weather of Westeros
