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science

First There Was Dark Matter. Now We Have Dark Fluid – Live Science

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dark fluid - pixabay

d It’s embarrassing, but astrophysicists are the first to admit it. Our best theoretical model can only explain 5 percent of the universe. The remaining 95 percent is famously made up almost entirely of invisible, unknown material dubbed dark energy and dark matter. So even though there are a billion trillion stars in the observable universe, they are actually extremely rare. The two mysterious dark substances can only be inferred from gravitational effects. Dark matter may be an invisible material, but it exerts a gravitational force on surrounding matter that we can measure. Dark energy is a repulsive force that … Read more

Time Travel Might Be Possible, But Probably Not – Live Science

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Time Travel - Pixabay

The concept of time travel has always captured the imagination of physicists and laypersons alike. But is it really possible? Of course it is. We’re doing it right now, aren’t we? We are all traveling into the future one second at a time. But that was not what you were thinking. Can we travel much further into the future? Absolutely. If we could travel close to the speed of light, or in the proximity of a black hole, time would slow down enabling us to travel arbitrarily far into the future. The really interesting question is whether we can travel … Read more

Have Aliens Already Visited Earth? – Live Science

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Fox News published a startling article Monday (Dec. 3) with the headline “NASA scientist says Earth may have been visited by aliens.” Unsurprisingly, that news rocketed around the web, with similar articles soon turning up in the New York Post, Russia Today and The Daily Wire. (Fox appears to have been the first major U.S. news source to run with the story.) These articles are based on a document on NASA’s website by Silvano Colombano, a researcher at NASA’s Ames Research Center in Mountain View, California. It really does argue that scientists should at least take seriously the notion that … Read more

What’s Beneath the Transylvanian Castle That Imprisoned ‘Dracula’? – Live Science

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Corvin Castle - Pixabay

A historic Transylvanian castle that may have once imprisoned Vlad the Impaler — likely inspiration for Bram Stoker’s Dracula — still stands today. But what lies beneath it? Because of centuries of rebuilding and additions, archaeologists weren’t sure where the castle’s original foundation lay. [24 Amazing Archaeological Discoveries] However, new research using radar scans of the ground beneath the structure is revealing what’s going on below the building’s imposing facade. The findings were presented on Wednesday (Dec. 12) here at the annual meeting of the American Geophysical Union. Castelul Corvinilor — also known as Corvin Castle, Hunedoara Castle or Hunyadi … Read more

SCIENCE: What Is Dark Matter?

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dark matter - pixabay

In the 1930s, a Swiss astronomer named Fritz Zwicky noticed that galaxies in a distant cluster were orbiting one another much faster than they should have been given the amount of visible mass they had. He proposed than an unseen substance, which he called dark matter, might be tugging gravitationally on these galaxies. Since then, researchers have confirmed that this mysterious material can be found throughout the cosmos, and that it is six times more abundant than the normal matter that makes up ordinary things like stars and people. Yet despite seeing dark matter throughout the universe, scientists are mostly … Read more

SCIENCE: Midnight Sun Zombie Skin

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zombie skin

A midnight sun can evoke many images, including those of an endless night and a beautiful, soft light — but a really awful sunburn probably isn’t one of them. A man, a 29-year-old tourist from Australia, learned just that while hiking in Greenland for several weeks. He didn’t think much of it when he squeezed two limes into his water bottle during the trip, according to a report of the man’s case. But, two days later, he was surprised to find “small, purple marks on the top side of my fingers and hands,” he wrote in the report, published online … Read more

SCIENCE: Using Lasers to Guide Aliens to Earth – What Could Possibly Go Wrong?

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Earth Laser - MIT News

We could build a laser that could send signals to extraterrestrial intelligence. Not we as in the staff of Live Science. (That’s probably beyond our skill set.) But we as in humanity. A new paper published yesterday (Nov. 5) in The Astrophysical Journal has found that humanity could feasibly build an infrared laser hot and bright enough that — if we shined it directly at nearby exoplanets — alien astronomers should be able to detect it using sky-watching technology not too much more advanced than our own. (Presuming they’re out there, of course.) [9 Strange, Scientific Excuses for Why We … Read more

SCIENCE: What Is the Fibonacci Sequence?

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fibonacci - pixabay

The Fibonacci sequence is one of the most famous formulas in mathematics. Each number in the sequence is the sum of the two numbers that precede it. So, the sequence goes: 0, 1, 1, 2, 3, 5, 8, 13, 21, 34, and so on. The mathematical equation describing it is Xn+2= Xn+1 + Xn A mainstay of high-school and undergraduate classes, it’s been called “nature’s secret code,” and “nature’s universal rule.” It is said to govern the dimensions of everything from the Great Pyramid at Giza, to the iconic seashell that likely graced the cover of your school math textbook. … Read more

SPACE: Scientists Create Rare Fifth Form of Matter

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matter - pixabay

For a few minutes on Jan. 23, 2017, the coldest spot in the known universe was a tiny microchip hovering 150 miles over Kiruna, Sweden. The chip was small — about the size of a postage stamp — and loaded with thousands of tightly-packed rubidium-87 atoms. Scientists launched that chip into space aboard an unpiloted, 40-foot-long (12 meters) rocket, then bombarded it with lasers until the atoms inside it cooled to minus 459.67 degrees Fahrenheit (minus 273.15 degrees Celsius) — a fraction of a fraction of a degree above absolute zero, the coldest possible temperature in nature. While the rocket … Read more

SCIENCE: Space Shrinks Your Brain

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astronaut brains - pixabay

Going to space does more than change the way you look at the world — it also changes your brain. In a new small study, published today (Oct. 24) as a Letter to the Editor in The New England Journal of Medicine, a team of researchers from Germany, Belgium and Russia detailed changes in the brains of 10 cosmonauts before and after long-term missions to space, finding “extensive” changes to the brain’s white and gray matter. What these changes mean for the cosmonauts is still an open question. “However, whether or not the extensive alterations shown in the gray and … Read more