One of the most damaging meteor strikes in recorded history occurred earlier this year over the frigid Russian town of Chelyabinsk. The meteor injured as many as 1000 people when it entered the Earth’s atmosphere over the Russian city creating shockwaves that shattered windows and rained shards of debris on people in the city. Scientists […]
Ever wonder what the best time is to drink your coffee? You probably know it is not a good idea to drink part of your daily dose of caffeine in the afternoon. Especially for those who have problems sleeping. But, do you ever drink your coffee and feel like it just didn’t work?
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Kepler keeps finding more and more potentially habitable planets in our Universe
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It’s hard to imagine an environment where instant and clear communication is more critical than in biodefense labs dealing with the most lethal pathogens on Earth. And yet, these facilities, which are few in number and rich in potential nightmares, often require researchers to tap on each other’s shoulders and shout in order to be heard.
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You know how your mom used to yell that playing video games would turn your brain into mush? Turns out she was exactly wrong. A new study shows that playing Super Mario 64 for half an hour a day over the course of two months causes a "significant" increase in brain size.
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Not all Earth-sized planets are Earth-like. Take for instance the planet Kepler 78b, it’s Earth like in size but orbits too close to its parent star for any chances supporting life as we know it. That doesn’t mean there’s not a huge number of Earth-like planets orbiting in the right temperature zone around their stars in our solar system alone that are both Earth-like in size and orbit a parent star in the Goldilocks zone.
In fact, astronomers have issued a new study created using data NASA has collected to estimate that in the Milky Way galaxy alone there are 8.8 billion stars with Earth-size planets that orbit in a habitable temperature zone. That means scientists believe there at least 8.8 billion planets of the right size, in the right temperature for life to exist in our galaxy alone.
To put that into perspective, that’s more Earth-like planets orbiting stars in the correct temperature zone and there are people on the Earth. Scientists say that the next step in locating the most Earth-like worlds is to look for atmospheres on these planets using powerful space telescopes. The biggest problem facing this now is that these telescopes have yet to launch.
Scientists calculate that in the Milky Way galaxy where we live, about one in five stars are like our Sun in size, color, and age. Many of these suns are also thought to have planets orbiting in the habitable zone where water could be liquid according to calculations performed by scientists. This is important because this marks the first time scientists have actually calculated the number of stars that are believed to have planets like Earth rather than estimating. Though they did look at only 42,000 stars to extrapolate their figures. The scientists calculate that 22% of the stars in our galaxy have planets similar to Earth with a margin of error of plus or minus 8 percentage points.
[via Fox News]
The world’s most famous mummy, King Tutankhamun, may not have had quite the civilized send off that we thought: researchers are now suggesting that a botched mummification process led to his body spontaneously combusting inside its sarcophagus.
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Despite all the talk of the paperless office, for some reason most of us still seem to drown under piles of dead tree. But while we’re all intimately familiar with the stuff, understanding where those weird sizing conventions came from never seems to get any easier.
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You’re looking at the Upsala Glacier on the Argentine side of the North Patagonian Icefield—or at least, some of it. Because this photo shows that the glacier is rapidly retreating as a result of climate change.
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Finding a cure for Alzheimer’s disease has defied medical researchers for decades now
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