NASA needs a new telescope, ASAP, to find Earth's twin

 Posted on December 4, 2022  |  3 minutes  |  540 words  |  Patria Henriques

If Earth has a twin somewhere out there, NASA should find it. That's the takeaway from a once-in-a-decade report that sets the priorities for astronomy over the next decade. In order to find such Earth-like exoplanets, NASA should build a big, fancy new space telescope, the report states. Every 10 years, the National Academies of Sciences, Engineering, and Medicine advise government agencies, such as NASA and the National Science Foundation, as to what research objectives astronomers should prioritize in the coming decade, Space. [Read More]

Odd Cause of Gaping Siberian Holes Possibly Found

 Posted on December 4, 2022  |  4 minutes  |  738 words  |  Patria Henriques

A trio of mysterious gaping holes in northern Siberia has spawned many theories about the craters' origin, but scientists have suggested some concrete explanations. In mid-July, reindeer herders stumbled across a crater that was approximately 260 feet (80 meters) wide, on the Yamal Peninsula, whose name means "end of the world," The Siberian Times reported. Since then, two new chasms — a 50-foot (15 m) crater in the Taz district and a 200- to 330-foot (60 to 100 m) crater in the Taymyr Peninsula — have also been reported. [Read More]

Photos: The World's Largest Atom Smasher (LHC)

 Posted on December 4, 2022  |  2 minutes  |  250 words  |  Arica Deslauriers

LHC Students at CERNStudents working on the LHC sit outside of Geneva's CERN Physics Laboratory, home of the particle collider. LHC TunnelThis photo shows the tunnel of the Large Hadron Collider, where beams of particles pass through the central pipes before colliding with each other. LHC DetectorDetectors like this are placed at the spots where particles collide inside the LHC ring. They include sensitive equipment to detect the presence of exotic particles and their decay products that are created in the collisions. [Read More]

Spy Device? One-Way Sound Machine Created

 Posted on December 4, 2022  |  3 minutes  |  530 words  |  Fernande Dalal

Scientists have created a one-way sound machine. The device, called an acoustic circulator, breaks the fundamental principle that sound, and other types of waves, are a two-way street. The findings, published today (Jan. 30) in the journal Science, could lead to the sound equivalent of a one-way mirror. With such a device, people can hear someone talking, but they themselves cannot be heard. [The 9 Biggest Unsolved Mysteries in Physics] [Read More]

Tables Turn as Beetles Kill Toads & Frogs

 Posted on December 4, 2022  |  2 minutes  |  286 words  |  Mittie Cheatwood

A type of ground beetle has a strange snacking habit. New research finds the Epomis beetle opportunistically kills and eats amphibians many times its size — animals that usually prey upon the insect. The beetle's normal diet consists of other invertebrates, such as insects, worms and dead vertebrates, but every time they were put in an enclosure with an amphibian, they attacked and consumed it, the researchers said. "Amphibians are typical insect predators, and their diet may include adult beetles, ground beetles in particular," [Read More]

The Dark Side of the Nobel Prizes

 Posted on December 4, 2022  |  4 minutes  |  692 words  |  Fernande Dalal

For more than 100 years, the Nobel Prizes have recognized the finest in human achievements, from literature and science to the Nobel Peace Prize, which is given "to the person who shall have done the most or the best work for fraternity between nations, the abolition or reduction of standing armies and for the holding and promotion of peace congresses," according to the last will and testament of founder Alfred Nobel. [Read More]

These birds have been singing the same songs for literally a million years

 Posted on December 4, 2022  |  3 minutes  |  574 words  |  Trudie Dory

A million years ago, the soundtrack of the "sky island" mountains of East Africa may have been very similar to what it is today. That's because a group of tiny, colorful birds has been singing the exact same tunes for more than 500,000 years — and maybe as long as 1 million years, according to a new study. Sunbirds in the family Nectariniidae are colorful, tiny, nectar-feeding birds that resemble hummingbirds and are common throughout Africa and Asia. [Read More]

Turning Light into Matter May Soon Be Possible

 Posted on December 4, 2022  |  4 minutes  |  761 words  |  Mittie Cheatwood

Scientists may soon create matter entirely from light, using technology that is already available to complete a quest 80 years in the making. The experiment would re-create events that were critical in the first 100 seconds of the universe and that are also expected to happen in gamma-ray bursts, the most powerful explosions in the cosmos and one of the greatest unsolved mysteries in physics, researchers added. As Einstein's famous equation E=mc2 proved, mass can get converted into energy and vice versa. [Read More]

World's Largest Sand Mass Discovered Under Seafloor

 Posted on December 4, 2022  |  2 minutes  |  420 words  |  Fernande Dalal

A giant mass of sand large enough to bury all of Manhattan under dunes more than 50 stories tall apparently erupted from the floor of the North Sea hundreds of thousands of years ago, the largest such body of sand ever found in the world, researchers say. Scientists used 3D seismic data and samples drilled from the ocean bottom during fossil fuel exploration to analyze a huge body of sand that lies over an oil field in the North Sea. [Read More]

'Cosmic wildfires' burn bright in new photo of the Flame Nebula

 Posted on December 3, 2022  |  2 minutes  |  349 words  |  Arica Deslauriers

(opens in new tab)A fiery new photograph of the Flame Nebula depicts the emissions from brand-new stars, burning through space like cosmic wildfires.  These wildfires don't actually burn hot — the orange and yellow regions captured in this image are actually only a few tens of degrees warmer than absolute zero, the point at which the movement of atoms and other fundamental particles freezes, according to the European Southern Observatory (ESO). [Read More]