Humanity’s first up-close look at Pluto was so intriguing that some researchers want to go back and spend a lot more time studying the icy world. Late last month, 35 scientists met for 7 hours in Houston to discuss the basic blueprint and science goals of a potential Pluto orbiter mission. Such an effort would build upon the knowledge gained during the epic Pluto flyby performed in July 2015 by NASA’s New Horizons probe....
In the middle of 2005 the W. M. Keck observatory on Mauna Kea in Hawaii completed an upgrade of one of its giant twin telescopes. By automatically correcting for atmospheric turbulence, the instrument could now produce images as sharp as those from the Hubble Space Telescope. Shrinivas Kulkarni of the California Institute of Technology urged young Caltech researchers—myself among them—to apply for observing time. Once the rest of the astronomy community realized how terrific the telescopes were, he warned us, securing a slot would become very competitive....
The residue of millions of tons of coal burning at Kingston Fossil power plant in the Watts Bar Reservoir in Tennessee burst the bounds of the pond in which it was contained, burying as many as 400 acres of land in up to six feet of sludge. The Tennessee Valley Authority (TVA), which owns the coal-fired power plant—first operated in 1955—announced that 15 homes were buried and no injuries were reported....
Astrobiologists and planetary scientists have a fairly good idea of which chemicals might indicate the presence of oxygen-breathing, water-based life—that is if it is like us. When it comes to worlds such as Saturn’s moon Titan, however, where temperatures are too cold for aqueous biochemistry, it’s much harder to know which chemicals could signal the existence of hydrocarbon-based life. A Cornell University team may have found a plausible candidate chemical that future missions to Titan could search for....
In the latest in a series of supernova firsts, scientists report in Science that they pinpointed a star that flared in the ultraviolet portion of the spectrum for several hours before blowing itself apart in a supernova. The researchers believe the finding represents the earliest visible sign of an imminent supernova—a surge in temperature as the expanding internal shock wave strains to break free of the star but has yet to shred it apart....
Scientific American presents Everyday Einstein by Quick & Dirty Tips. Scientific American and Quick & Dirty Tips are both Macmillan companies. Every so often, you might hear somebody mention that something or other has reached supersonic speeds. Obviously that must be pretty fast, but exactly how fast is it? Speed Vocabulary Let’s start with same basic terminology. Most people use the word “speed” to describe how fast something is moving. However, in physics, speed is just part of the story....
The high seas—the vast roiling ocean that reaches beyond a coastal states’ 320-kilometer exclusive economic zone, or EEZ—is Earth’s largest biosphere. It represents about 58 percent of our planet’s oceans and is mostly unexplored, exhaustively exploited and in rapid decline. That’s why there was cause for celebration a few weeks ago when, after a decade of hair-pulling discussions, national representatives at the United Nations finally agreed that the high seas need protection....
Did you like this article? Editorial Review This article has been reviewed for accuracy, reliability and adherence to academic standards prior to publication. The French exploration of New Zealand has been overshadowed by the achievements of British navigator Captain James Cook (1728-1779), but French navigators who visited Aotearoa’s (New Zealand) shores named over 100 geographical places and significantly contributed to European knowledge about New Zealand. The honour of sailing the first French vessel into New Zealand waters in 1769 goes to Jean-François Marie de Surville (1717-1770)....
By Mary Wisniewski CHICAGO (Reuters) - Five babies at a suburban Chicago daycare center have been diagnosed with measles, adding to a growing outbreak of the disease across the United States, Illinois health officials said on Thursday. Officials are investigating the cluster of measles cases at KinderCare Learning Center in suburban Palatine, said a joint statement from the Illinois and Cook County health departments. All the children are under 1 year old and therefore would not have been subject to routine measles vaccination, which begins at 12 months....
His finalist year: 1987 His finalist project: Building a lightweight balsa camera that could be lofted on a model rocket What led to the project: As a kid growing up in Newton, Mass., in the 1980s Andrew Heafitz was always interested in photography and model rockets. He had a darkroom in his house, and he liked to launch his rockets in local fields. In high school he got the idea of combining the two interests....
There’s a climate change conundrum centered on trees. The debate in scientific circles goes something like this: Plants need carbon dioxide for photosynthesis, and more CO2 in the air can give them a boost. But rising carbon dioxide levels are also driving global warming—and rising temperatures can cause water stress, limit plant growth and increase the risk of die-offs. As carbon dioxide levels keep climbing, and the Earth’s temperatures keep warming, which effect wins out?...
All good things must come to an end. For NASA’s Cassini orbiter—its fuel dwindling after 13 years exploring Saturn, along with the planet’s sprawling rings and dozens of icy moons—the end will come Friday at 7:55 A.M. Eastern time. That’s when mission planners project radio communications will be lost with the two-ton, bus-size spacecraft as it plunges into the giant planet’s turbulent atmosphere at more than 122,000 kilometers per hour. Within seconds the gas streaming around the plummeting probe will reach temperatures hot enough to melt its aluminum chassis, followed by the iridium cladding that shields its plutonium power source....
From Quanta Magazine (find original story here). When the physician and scientist Emil Lou was an oncology fellow at Memorial Sloan Kettering Cancer Center about a decade ago, he was regularly troubled by the sight of something small but unidentifiable in his cancer-cell cultures. Looking through the microscope, he said, he “kept finding these long, thin translucent lines,” about 50 nanometers wide and 150 to 200 microns long, extending between cells in the culture....
In the shadow of a boisterous debate about the safety of growing crops that have been genetically modified, otherwise known as GMOs, the potential of good old-fashioned crossbreeding has been making quite a stir in the agricultural community. A group of researchers recently took a closer look at the genome of sorghum, a drought-tolerant grass crop that feeds half a billion people in Asia and parts of sub-Saharan Africa. Unlike its super-cultivated cousins—corn, rice and soy—sorghum still grows in its original wild varieties, despite having been domesticated over 8,000 years ago....
Cyber attacks against government agencies, infrastructure providers and other high-profile targets are regularly in the news, stirring talk of digital warfare and international sanctions. The forensic investigations that follow these hacks can reveal the method and magnitude of an attack. Pinpointing the culprit, however, is frustratingly more difficult, resulting in little more than vague accusations that the guilty parties (might be) working for a particular foreign government or cyber gang. Case in point: the recent cyber attacks that shut off power to 80,000 Ukrainians and infiltrated computers at the country’s largest airport....
By Barbara LewisBRUSSELS (Reuters) - EU policymakers on Wednesday unveiled a draft law to tackle air pollution, which every year is linked to 400,000 premature deaths in Europe and costs of tens of billions of euros.The proposals include new limits on emissions from power plants and industry, as well as measures to make member states comply with existing rules on limiting pollutants associated with asthma, cardiovascular disease and cancer.So far, many member states are failing to enforce existing EU air quality standards, even though the rules are less rigorous than those set by the World Health Organization....
Her finalist year: 1950 Her finalist project: A breeding bird census of songbirds in a Long Island, N.Y. forest What led to the project: Patricia (Jackson) DeCoursey was always interested in nature growing up. Her parents both had a strong conservationist bent. When she was a student at Hunter College High School in New York City, she decided to undertake a census of all the songbirds in a tract of hardwood forest on Long Island....
High-school and college teachers always entreat their charges to forgo the cramming. Studying bit by bit over the course of a semester is the way to go. A study published online in Nature Neuroscience on December 25 not only appears to demonstrate the biological underpinnings of this pedagogical truism. It actually goes one step further to suggest a means of optimizing training intervals, an insight that could, in theory, translate into strategies for committing to memory the molecular structure of maitotoxin or a Chinese ideogram....
Samsung Galaxy Gear will be available in the coming weeks. (Credit:Josh Miller/CNET) With the launch of the Galaxy Gear smartwatch, Samsung has declared that it’s done being a follower. Whether the market will agree is unclear. Samsung has had a bit of an inferiority complex when it comes to mobile. It’s the world’s biggest handset vendor, but Samsung is forever compared to Apple and often found to be lacking in one way or the other....
A mere 60 light-years away, orbiting an orangish star called HD 189733, is a world an Earthling would not want to visit. The planet is a gas giant, like Jupiter or Saturn, but unlike those familiar worlds this one hugs tightly to its host star, orbiting at about one thirtieth the distance at which Earth circles the sun. The exoplanet, labeled HD 189733 b by astronomical convention, stays mighty toasty under its astronomical broiler, with temperatures upward of 900 degrees Celsius....
