Impending Galactic Crash Could Rip Open the Black Hole at the Milky Way’s Center

 Posted on October 8, 2022  |  3 minutes  |  533 words  |  Fernande Dalal

The end of the Milky Way as we know it may come a few billion years ahead of schedule. According to a new paper published Jan. 4 in the journal Monthly Notices of the Royal Astronomical Society, our home galaxy appears to be on a crash course with one of its nearest satellites, the spiral of stars known as the Large Magellanic Cloud (LMC). This cosmic crash, modeled in lovely and terrifying detail by a team of astrophysicists at Durham University in the U. [Read More]

Irish Potato Blight Originated in South America

 Posted on October 8, 2022  |  4 minutes  |  671 words  |  Mittie Cheatwood

The potato blight that killed about a million people in Ireland in the 1840s originated in South America, a new genetic analysis finds. Until now, the origin of the fungus-like blight that devastated potato crops in Ireland and throughout Europe had not been pinned down. Now researchers at North Carolina State University and the Norwegian University of Science and Technology Museum say the blight was caused by a pathogen with a particular genetic lineage, dubbed FAM-1. [Read More]

Mystery of Alligator Movement Solved

 Posted on October 8, 2022  |  3 minutes  |  625 words  |  Patria Henriques

Instead of swishing fins, feet or flippers, alligators surprisingly move their lungs around inside their body to dive, surface and roll in water. This newly discovered strategy may be one that many animals have been employing for millennia to maneuver and avoid creating ripples in the water — helping them sneak toward prey or away from predators. Up until now, it was a mystery as to how gators "manage to maneuver so gracefully without the fins and flippers used by fish, seals and other adept swimmers," [Read More]

Newly Discovered Warrior Wasp Has Giant Jaws

 Posted on October 8, 2022  |  2 minutes  |  330 words  |  Arica Deslauriers

A giant male wasp with jaws that, when open, are longer than its front legs was discovered on the Indonesian island of Sulawesi, researchers announced last week. Researchers called the shiny black wasp, which is about 2.5 inches (6.4 centimeters) long, the "Komodo dragon" of the wasp family. "Its jaws are so large that they wrap up either side of the head when closed. When the jaws are open they are actually longer than the male's front legs," [Read More]

Pregnant at Age 40, 50 and Even 60? Here Are the Risks

 Posted on October 8, 2022  |  4 minutes  |  714 words  |  Fernande Dalal

This article was originally published at The Conversation. The publication contributed the article to Live Science's Expert Voices: Op-Ed & Insights. This week, an Australian woman delivered a baby at the age of 62 after having in vitro fertilisation (IVF) abroad. Few women can naturally conceive a baby later in life without the help of IVF – and these are rarely first pregnancies. These women go through menopause later, and have lower risks of heart disease, osteoporosis and dementia. [Read More]

Scatterbrained? You Need a Thought Bouncer

 Posted on October 8, 2022  |  3 minutes  |  450 words  |  Fernande Dalal

When you forget a face or can't find your car keys, it's not because your brain is out of storage space. You just aren't filtering out other thoughts well enough, a new study finds. The research contradicts a popular notion that memory capacity is solely dependent on how much information you can cram into your noggin. Rather, it shows that if you can disregard some of what you see, you'll do a better job remembering the visual input you deem important. [Read More]

Treasure Hunters Find Mysterious Shipwreck in Lake Michigan

 Posted on October 8, 2022  |  5 minutes  |  956 words  |  Patria Henriques

Beneath the cold waves of Lake Michigan rests an aging shipwreck, its wooden planks encrusted with brown-and-gray zebra mussels, that may be the remnants of a 17th-century ship called the Griffin, two Michigan-based treasure hunters say. French explorer René-Robert Cavelier, Sieur de La Salle built the Griffin in 1679, but it was lost in Lake Michigan the same year. In 2011, Michigan-based treasure hunters Kevin Dykstra and Frederick Monroe found a shipwreck as they were searching for the $2 million in gold that, according to local legend, fell from a ferry crossing Lake Michigan in the 1800s, they told WZZM, a western Michigan news station. [Read More]

Why Creative Geniuses Are Often Neurotic

 Posted on October 8, 2022  |  5 minutes  |  935 words  |  Patria Henriques

Sir Isaac Newton formulated the laws of gravity, built telescopes and delved into mathematical theories. He was also prone to bouts of depression and once suffered a mental breakdown. In this sense, Newton was like many other creative, driven individuals. Charles Darwin, for example, struggled with nausea and gastrointestinal distress in response to stress, so much so that modern psychologists have suggested that he may have had a panic disorder. Winston Churchill referred to his dark moods as his " [Read More]

Achoo! Respiratory illness gave young 'Dolly' the dinosaur flu-like symptoms

 Posted on October 7, 2022  |  5 minutes  |  923 words  |  Mittie Cheatwood

Hacking coughs, uncontrollable sneezing, high fevers and pounding headaches can make anyone miserable — even a dinosaur.  Recently, researchers identified the first evidence of respiratory illness in a long-necked, herbivorous type of dinosaur known as a sauropod, which lived about 150 million years ago during the Jurassic period (201.3 million to 145 million years ago) in what is now Montana. The fossil, nicknamed "Dolly," contained misshapen structures in the neck bones. [Read More]

Alexander the Great's Father Found — Maybe

 Posted on October 7, 2022  |  9 minutes  |  1714 words  |  Patria Henriques

A decades-old mystery about the body of Alexander the Great's father has been solved, anthropologists claim. A new analysis of bones from a Macedonian tomb complex reveals a skeleton with a knee injury so severe that it would have caused a noticeable limp in life. This injury matches some historical records of one sustained by Philip II, whose nascent empire Alexander the Great would expand all the way to India. [Read More]