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Science

SCIENCE: How Would Zombies Decay

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zombie - pixabay

Like all living creatures, humans die and our bodies begin to decompose right away; indeed, there’s no stopping it, even for zombies. Of course, we know zombies aren’t real, but death and decay certainly are. In AMC’s “Fear the Walking Dead,” returning Sunday, June 2, at 9 p.m. EDT/8 p.m. CDT, reanimated human corpses roam the world, terrorizing the living. Here at Live Science, we have a soft spot for the macabre, and we wanted to know just how closely zombies represent a real human corpse. So, what happens to a human body when it dies? “First will be the … Read more

How to Find a Time Warp

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time warp

It may sound like the stuff of science fiction, but scientists have already detected a time warp. But what does this mean? Basically, a time warp is some phenomenon that changes the flow of time by speeding it up or making it run more slowly. Physicists have known about time warps for over 100 years: In fact, you’re standing on a kind of time warp right now. In 1905, Albert Einstein published his theory of special relativity, followed a decade later by his sequel on general relativity, which stated that gravity is a property of the curving of space and … Read more

New York Destroyed Again (In a Simulation)

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New York - Deposit Photos

New York City, home to 8.6 million people and one hot duck, has perished in an apocalyptic meteor strike … in a simulation. Over the past week, some 200 space experts from NASA, the European Space Agency (ESA) and other organizations have been melding their minds in order to face the crisis of a hypothetical asteroid barreling through space toward North America. The gathering, called the International Academy of Astronautics Planetary Defense Conference, convenes every year with the not-so-simple task of figuring out how to save Earth from a head-on asteroid impact — sort of like war games, but on … Read more

U=(N/T)M*G: Imminent

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As I read this article, I didn’t realize all the pieces had started coming together. That humanity was really on the brink of finding life outside of our little half-evolved mudball. A dream so many have and labored toward about to come to fruition. The real interesting information, the bit that sucked me down the biological rabbit hole, was the many many ways life might manifest. Yes, science fiction has explored a wide variety of alien lifeforms, but I think, when it’s all said and done, the life we do find won’t be anything like we imagined. As a science … Read more

SPACE: The Moon is Totally Cracked

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Is the moon all it’s cracked up to be? Yes — and then some. New analysis of the lunar surface reveals that it’s far more fractured than once thought. Since the moon formed 4.3 billion years ago, asteroid impacts have scarred its face with pits and craters. But the damage goes far deeper than that, with cracks extending to depths of 12 miles (20 kilometers), researchers recently reported. Though the moon’s craters have been well-documented, scientists previously knew little about the upper region of the moon’s crust, the megaregolith, which sustained the bulk of the damage from space rock bombardment. … Read more

“Steve” Has Finally Been Solved

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Steve - Live Science

Three years ago, a mysterious purplish glow arced across the Canadian skies. The light show was a completely unknown celestial phenomenon, so it was given a name befitting its beauty and grandeur: Steve. Now, scientists have finally pinpointed what causes the phenomenon’s glowing ribbons of reddish purple and green: magnetic waves, winds of hot plasma and showers of electrons in regions they normally never appear. While aurora glows occur when electrons and protons fall into Earth’s atmosphere, “the STEVE atmospheric glow comes from heating without particle precipitation,” study co-author Bea Gallardo-Lacourt, a space physicist at the University of Calgary in … Read more

SCIENCE: How Will the Universe End?

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How will the universe end? “Not with a bang but with a whimper,” wrote the American poet T.S. Eliot regarding the end of the world. But if you want a more definite response, you’ll find that physicists have spent countless hours turning this question over in their minds, and have neatly fit the most plausible hypotheses into a few categories. “In textbooks and cosmology class, we learn there are three basic futures for the universe,” said Robert Caldwell, a cosmologist at Dartmouth University in Hanover, New Hampshire. In one scenario, the cosmos could continue to expand forever, with all matter … Read more

U=(N/T)M*G: Zombie

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Know that strange tingle one gets when something bad is about to happen? Well, that happened to me when I was hunting down a nifty bit of science to feed my fellow authors’ Muses. A group of neuroscientists when and revived 32 pig brains 4 hours after death. These brains were harvested from a slaughterhouse, so no pigs were killed for this experiment, and the scientists had termination protocols ready, just in case there was any indication these brains showed awareness. Ethics for the win. But the scrupulous practices of the researchers in this experiment notwithstanding, there is something deeply … Read more

Quantum Computer Can See Sixteen Possible Futures

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quantum comouter - live science

When Mile Gu boots up his new computer, he can see the future. At least, 16 possible versions of it — all at the same time. Gu, an assistant professor of physics at Nanyang Technological University in Singapore, works in quantum computing. This branch of science uses the weird laws that govern the universe’s smallest particles to help computers calculate more efficiently. Unlike classical computers, which store information as bits (binary digits of either 0 or 1), quantum computers code information into quantum bits, or qubits. These subatomic particles, thanks to the weird laws of quantum mechanics, can exist in … Read more

SCIENCE: What Happened Before the Big Bang?

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The Big Bang is commonly thought of as the start of it all: About 13.8 billion years ago, the observable universe went boom and expanded into being. But what were things like before the Big Bang?Short answer: We don’t know. Long answer: It could have been a lot of things, each mind-bending in its own way. The first thing to understand is what the Big Bang actually was. “The Big Bang is a moment in time, not a point in space,” said Sean Carroll, a theoretical physicist at the California Institute of Technology and author of “The Big Picture: On … Read more