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Science

Is Earth Headed for Another Supercontinent?

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Pangea - Deposit Photos

Supercontinents — giant landmasses made up of multiple continents — could emerge again on Earth 200 million years from now, and where they form on the globe could drastically affect our planet’s climate. Scientists recently modeled this “deep future” view of Earth with a supercontinent makeover, presenting their findings Dec. 8 at the annual meeting of the American Geophysical Union (AGU), held online this year. They explored two scenarios: In the first, around 200 million years in the future, nearly all continents push into the Northern Hemisphere, with Antarctica left all alone in the Southern Hemisphere; in the second scenario, … Read more

What We Learned About Black Holes in 2020

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black holes - deposit photos

Physicists are currently in a golden age of new knowledge about black holes. Since 2015, researchers have been able to get signals directly from merging black holes using the Laser Interferometer Gravitational-Wave Observatory (LIGO), while observatories like the Event Horizon Telescope (EHT) have produced the first image of a black hole’s shadow. This year was no exception, with a fresh crop of exciting and unique results expanding our black hole horizons. Here, we take a look at some of the most spectacular black hole findings of 2020.  Nobel Prize in physics goes to black holes As if to certify that this … Read more

The Science Behind the Star of Bethlehem

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star of Bethlehem - pixabay

As the well-known story in the Gospel of Matthew goes, three Magi, or wise men, followed the Star of Bethlehem to Jerusalem some 2,000 years ago. And after consulting with King Herod of Judea, the men found newborn baby Jesus in the little town of Bethlehem. Whether such an event really happened in history is difficult to prove, but if it did, what was the Star of Bethlehem? This is a question scholars have long pondered, not just from a religious or historical perspective, but from a scientific one, too. Plenty of theories have been proposed, from an astronomical event … Read more

The Science of the Winter Solstice

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icehenge - ice stonehenge - winter solstice - deposit photos

For many of us on Earth this year, celebrating the first day of winter, astronomically speaking, is more than a yearning for snow-covered landscapes and sips of hot chocolate — It also means we’re closer than ever to the end of the year … and the beginning of a new one! But the winter solstice is an astronomical marvel in its own right. Today, the Northern Hemisphere experiences the fewest hours of daylight for the year all because of our blue marble’s tilt as it treks around the sun. This year’s winter solstice is doubly special, as it’s the day … Read more

There Are Zombie Flies?

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zombie fly - pixabay

Two newly discovered fungi species have a similarly macabre mode of action: They eat flies alive while using them to drop spores on new victims.  The related species, Strongwellsea tigrinae and Strongwellsea acerosa, attack the fly species Coenosia tigrina and Coenosia testacea, which look like ordinary house flies but undergo a horrific change once they’re invaded by the fungi. The fungi eat one or more holes in the abdomens of the flies and then produce clumps of orange spores, which spread by dropping out of the holes.  The infected, now-zombie flies remain alive for days during this process, meaning they inadvertently spread the spores far and … Read more

FOR READERS AND WRITERS: Animal Tech

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robot frog - deposit photos

FOR READERS & WRITERS Today’s writer topic comes from QSFer Paula Wyant: Scientists in Vermont are making tiny robots using living frog cells. What are the posisbilities with this technology? What are the downsides and ethical challenges? Article Link: https://www.discovermagazine.com/technology/part-robot-part-frog-xenobots-are-the-first-robots-made-from-living-cells Writers: This is a reader/writer chat – you are welcome to share your own book/link, as long as it fits the chat, but please do so as part of a discussion about the topic. Join the chat: FB: http://bit.ly/1MvPABVMeWe: http://bit.ly/2mjg8lf

PHYSICS: Schrodinger’s Cat Gets a Cheshire Grin

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Cheshire Cat - Pixabay

“I’ve often seen a cat without a grin,” thought Alice. “But a grin without a cat! It’s the most curious thing I ever saw in all my life!” It’s an experience eminent physicist Yakir Aharonov can relate to. Together with fellow Israeli physicist Daniel Rohrlich, he’s shown theoretically how a particle might show its face in a corner of an experiment without needing its body anywhere in sight. To be more precise, their analysis argues information could be transferred between two points without an exchange of particles. The theory dates back to 2013 when researchers based in the US and … Read more

FOR READERS: There’s Science in my Sci-Fi!

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science - pixabay

FOR READERS Today’s reader topic comes from QSFers Sydney Blackburn and Naomi Tajedler: How much science do you like in your sci-fi? Does it matter to you if orbital mechanics are or are not taken into account, or if the source of food on a closed system like a space station is not mentioned as an aside? Writers: This is a reader chat – you are welcome to join it, but please do not reference your own works directly. Thanks! Join the chat: FB: http://bit.ly/1MvPABVMeWe: http://bit.ly/2mjg8lf

recreating the Smells of 16th Century Europe

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nose smell - pixabay

History is written, read, told — but rarely ever is it smelled. Historians and scientists across Europe have now gotten together with perfumers and museums for a unique project: to capture what Europe smelled like between the 16th and early 20th centuries. A European street today may smell like coffee, fresh-baked bread and cigarettes. But what did it smell like hundreds of years ago? As part of this three-year-long project called “Odeuropa,” the researchers want to find all the old scents of Europe — and even recreate some of this ancient smellscape: from the dry tobacco scents and the earthy … Read more

This One’s for Frank

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Platypus Glow

Duck-billed, egg-laying platypuses just got a little weirder: It turns out their fur glows green and blue under ultraviolet (UV) light. Under visible light a platypus’s extremely dense fur — which insulates and protects them in cold water — is a drab brown, so the trippy glow revealed under UV light on a stuffed museum specimen was a big surprise. Biofluorescence — absorbing and re-emitting light as a different color — is widespread in fish, amphibians, birds and reptiles. But the trait is much rarer in mammals, and this is the first evidence of biofluorescence in egg-laying mammals, also known … Read more