Monthly Archive: September 2019
“Bone was invented in part to escape danger.” By Sarah Sloat – Bones are more than just the scaffolding for our body lumps. Bones are rigid organs filled with a honeycomb-like matrix, and while they do protect our internal organs, they also secret …
No wonder the dinosaurs didn’t survive. By Passant Rabie – The day a massive asteroid hit our planet about 65 million years ago may have been the most chaotic day on Earth, and we’re not just talking about the mass extinction part. New …
By Michael Irving – A new battery cell design could help us tap into the vast stores of geothermal energy beneath our feet. OlgaSinenkoBO/Depositphotos. – One of the largest natural sources of renewable energy could be right under our feet – literally. The Earth …
By Michael Irving – The thermoelectric generator uses a black aluminum disk to radiate heat into the atmosphere, and a polystyrene enclosure to keep the air inside warm. Aaswath Raman. – As effective as solar panels are, one of their major downsides is that …
By Ben Coxworth – The majority of the environmental DNA found in the study came from eels – although not necessarily giant ones. mikelane45/Depositphotos. – Last year, we heard about a scientist who was headed to Loch Ness to search for the monster’s DNA. …
Not that they need another reason. By Peter Hess – Whether it’s a hassle with spiral notebooks or a struggle with scissors, left-handers don’t have it easy in this right-handed world. But new research suggests that their uniqueness shows up in more significant …
Woodhull sought to unite a coalition of African Americans, abolitionists, laborers, suffragists and 19th-century Spiritualists — groups that found themselves without a voice in government and relegated to the fringes of power. By Kayla Epstein – Five women are running for president of …
By Ben Coxworth – A diagram of the energy-harvesting device. Gao et al. – As compared to most other joints in the human body, the knee has quite a large range of motion … so why not put that motion to use, as a …
Meet Greater Adria. By Sarah Sloat – Around 180 million years ago, Earth fundamentally changed when Gondwana began to dismember. Today, present-day places, including South America and Australia, are visible chunks of this former ancient supercontinent, as well as not-so visible slices of …
The exoplanet K2-18b isn’t exactly Earth, but it’s as close as it gets. By Passant Rabie – Good news: We’re all moving 110 light-years away! Well, maybe not quite yet, but scientists just made a major breakthrough in the search for habitable worlds …