Written by Ethan Siegel
“They say once you grow crops somewhere, you have officially ‘colonized’ it. So technically, I colonized Mars. In your face, Neil Armstrong!” –Andy Weir
In 1960, just three years after Sputnik 1, humans began launching missions to Mars.
Written by S Schirott
Open a standard textbook in astronomy and read the discussion of galaxies, stars, and planets. It will appear that gravity alone organized the cosmos and now keeps it running. We all know that electricity powers our lights runs our computers and, in an unleashed form, creates static shocks and awe-inspiring lightning bolts.
Written by Peter Hasson
A peer-reviewed academic journal published on Friday a hoax gender studies paper titled, “The Conceptual Penis As A Social Construct.”
Two academics, Peter Boghossian and James Lindsay, used pen names to successfully submit the hoax paper — which argued that “the penis vis-à-vis maleness is an incoherent construct” — to the peer-reviewed journal Cogent Social Sciences. Boghossian and Lindsay cited 20 sources, none of which they say they read, and five of which are fake papers that were “published” in journals that don’t actually exist.
Written by Massachusetts Institute of Technology
The environment on Titan, Saturn’s largest moon, may seem surprisingly familiar: Clouds condense and rain down on the surface, feeding rivers that flow into oceans and lakes. Outside of Earth, Titan is the only other planetary body in the solar system with actively flowing rivers, though they’re fed by liquid methane instead of water. Long ago, Mars also hosted rivers, which scoured valleys across its now-arid surface.
Now MIT scientists have found that despite these similarities, the origins of topography, or surface elevations, on Mars and Titan are very different from that on Earth.
Written by Michael Bastach
Scientists looking at forest cover in some of the world’s driest places found something astounding — “lost” forests covering an area nearly seven times the size of Texas.
“We found new dryland forest on all inhabited continents, but mainly in sub-Saharan Africa, around the Mediterranean, central India, coastal Australia, western South America, northeastern Brazil, northern Colombia and Venezuela, and northern parts of the boreal forests in Canada and Russia,” biologists Andrew Lowe and Ben Sparrow wrote of their study, which had 28 other co-authors.
Written by Brigham Young University
Despite their best efforts, no scientist has ever come close to stopping humans from aging. Even anti-aging creams can’t stop Old Father Time.
But new research from Brigham Young University reveals you may be able to slow one type of aging — the kind that happens inside your cells. As long as you’re willing to sweat.
Written by eLife
Humans treat ‘inferred’ visual objects generated by the brain as more reliable than external images from the real world, according to new research published in eLife.
The study, from the University of Osnabrück, Germany, reveals that when choosing between two identical visual objects — one generated internally based on information from the blind spot and an external one — we are surprisingly likely to show a bias towards the internal information.
Written by Dr Klaus L E Kaiser
Well, on the surface, the recently touted “solar roof tiles” sound like a great idea, a roof with photovoltaic cells embedded in the tiles, barely distinguishable from ordinary roof tiles.
So, for the moment, let’s forget about the cost of the tiles and their installation, neither of which is exactly “peanuts.” There are other problems as well, like:
Not Everyone Lives in Sunny CA
Written by Joseph E Postma
What happens if science is actually uncorrectable, or becomes uncorrectable? This is the response I get from other scientists who I ask to consider the skeptical arguments which debunk climate alarm:
“since we expect climate scientists to trust our own work and expertise in astrophysics, then why wouldn’t we return that trust to the experts in climate science?”
Written by PSI Staff
British Physicist and weatheraction.comeatheraction.com front man, Piers Corbyn, issues a stark rebuke to climate alarmists who claim the 18-year-old pause in global warming won’t last. “The mini ice age is here to stay!”
Illustrating his analysis of the data with deft graphwork Corbyn shows that in April 2017 temperatures in both the northern and southern hemispheres plunged dramatically last month. “The mini ice age is in a new phase and is here to stay for at least 20 years.”
Written by University of Bergen
Geochemical fingerprinting links microscopic ash found on the bottom of a Svalbard lake to volcanic event happening 7000 years ago and 5000 km away.
Written by Joseph E Postma
I was having an email discussion with an old professor of mine (from undergad) about the fraud of the radiative greenhouse effect who has himself implied doubt about the greenhouse effect. Actually the proff is Dr. Essex who wrote the book “Taken by Storm“. He suggested that I look at the “equations of transfer” in regard to the problem, which of course I have already done extensively and am quite familiar with. I will post the reply here since it may help some people:
Written by University of Minnesota College of Science and Engineering
Engineering researchers at the University of Minnesota have developed a revolutionary process for 3D printing stretchable electronic sensory devices that could give robots the ability to feel their environment. The discovery is also a major step forward in printing electronics on real human skin.
Written by Elsevier
Heavy rain on Mars reshaped the planet’s impact craters and carved out river-like channels in its surface billions of years ago, according to a new study published in Icarus. In the paper, researchers from the Smithsonian Institution and the Johns Hopkins University Applied Physics Laboratory show that changes in the atmosphere on Mars made it rain harder and harder, which had a similar effect on the planet’s surface as we see on Earth.
Written by NASA/Goddard Space Flight Center
Our Cold War history is now offering scientists a chance to better understand the complex space system that surrounds us. Space weather — which can include changes in Earth’s magnetic environment — are usually triggered by the sun’s activity, but recently declassified data on high-altitude nuclear explosion tests have provided a new look at the mechansisms that set off perturbations in that magnetic system. Such information can help support NASA’s efforts to protect satellites and astronauts from the natural radiation inherent in space.
Written by Northwestern University
The brave new world of 3-D printed organs now includes implanted ovary structures that, true to their design, actually ovulate, according to a study by Northwestern University Feinberg School of Medicine and McCormick School of Engineering.