As an Amazon Associate we earn from qualifying purchases.

science

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

by
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

by
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

Science Explains Fairy Circles

by
Flowe Fairy - Deposit Photos

Fairy circles might finally make sense. These regular barren patches that pop up in grasslands in Australia and Namibia have long created controversy, with some researchers arguing that they might be the result of underground termite activity. But now, the most detailed monitoring effort ever shows that fairy circles are engineered by the grasses themselves. The research, published Sept. 21 in the Journal of Ecology, reveals how harsh, dry conditions in Australia, punctuated by occasional heavy rainstorms, create a hostile crust of clay that makes up the barren part of the fairy circles. But water runs off this crust, creating … Read more

Building a Better Wormhole

by
Wormhole - Pixabay

Wormholes, or tunnels in the fabric of space-time, are ferociously unstable. As soon as even a single photon slips down the tunnel, the wormhole closes in a flash.  But what if the problem was that our imagined wormholes weren’t quite weird enough?  A new study suggests that the secret to a stable wormhole is making them funny looking. By shaping the wormhole so that it’s not a perfect sphere, we might be able to hold that tunnel open for long enough to travel through. The only catch is that said wormhole would have to be incomprehensibly tiny. Down the hatch Wormholes, … Read more

Some Tardigrades Have Light Shields!

by
Tardigrade Light Shield

Scientists have discovered yet another reason to be impressed with tardigrades; some of these microscopic, nearly indestructible creatures wear a glowing “shield” that protects them from ultraviolet radiation. Tubby tardigrades — also called moss piglets or water bears — are known for their toughness, able to withstand extreme heat, cold and pressure, as well as the vacuum of space. They can also survive exposure to levels of radiation that would kill many other life-forms. Now, scientists have uncovered new clues about tardigrades’ radiation resistance. Experiments with tardigrades in the Paramacrobiotus genus revealed that fluorescence protects them like a layer of … Read more

Meet the Zeptosecond

by
zeptosecond - University of Frankfurt

Scientists have measured the shortest unit of time ever: the time it takes a light particle to cross a hydrogen molecule. That time, for the record, is 247 zeptoseconds. A zeptosecond is a trillionth of a billionth of a second, or a decimal point followed by 21 zeroes and a 1. Previously, researchers had dipped into the realm of zeptoseconds; in 2016, researchers reporting in the journal Nature Physics used lasers to measure time in increments down to 850 zeptoseconds. This accuracy is a huge leap from the 1999 Nobel Prize-winning work that first measured time in femtoseconds, which are … Read more

Does Mars Have Hidden Underground Lakes?

by
Mars Lakes - NASA

Remnants of water once found on the surface of Mars may be hidden in a handful of small lakes below the Red Planet’s south pole, and more could exist, according to new research. For decades, researchers have suspected that water lurks below the polar icecaps of Mars, just as it does here on Earth. In 2018, scientists detected evidence for such a reservoir on the Red Planet — signs of a lake about 12 miles (19 kilometers) across and hidden below about a mile (1.5 km) of ice at the south pole of Mars. At the time, the researchers said … Read more

Scientists Can Now Insert Ideas Into Your Dreams

by
dream - pixabay

MIT scientists have figured out how to manipulate your dreams by combining an app with a sleep-tracking device called Dormio. In their new study, the researchers were able to insert certain topics into a person’s dreams, with some pretty bizarre outcomes. To do so, the researchers at MIT Media Lab’s Fluid Interfaces — a group that develops wearable systems and interfaces to enhance cognitive skills — used a technique called targeted dream incubation (TDI). Prior studies have shown that during a rare dream state known lucid dreaming, in which a sleeper is aware that a dream is taking place, dreamers … Read more

Scientists Just Discovered a 100 Million Year Old Sperm. I Kid You Not.

by
sperm - pixabay

The oldest known sperm in the world has been discovered, locked in a piece of amber that solidified when behemoths like Spinosaurus dominated the Earth. The giant sperm comes from a much more miniscule creature than the toothy Spinosaurus: an ostracod, a crustacean that looks like a shrimp dressing up as a clam for Halloween. Known colloquially as “seed shrimp,” ostracods typically grow just a few tenths of an inch long. Their bodies are protected by a bivalve shell, from which tiny, crab-like appendages sometimes protrude. There are thousands of ostracod species alive today, and many boast giant sperm cells, … Read more

Is Reality Real? new Paradox Throws It Into Question

by
reality - deposit photos

If a tree falls in a forest and no one is there to hear it, does it make a sound? Perhaps not, some say. And if someone is there to hear it? If you think that means it obviously did make a sound, you might need to revise that opinion. We have found a new paradox in quantum mechanics — one of our two most fundamental scientific theories, together with Einstein’s theory of relativity — that throws doubt on some common-sense ideas about physical reality. Quantum mechanics vs. common sense Take a look at these three statements: When someone observes … Read more