Lightning Still Largely a Mystery
Posted on September 19, 2022
| 4 minutes
| 812 words
| Arica Deslauriers
Some 44,000 thunderstorms rage worldwide each day, delivering as many as 100 lightning bolts to the ground every second. These dramatic, deafening flashes of electricity recharge the global battery by keeping the ground flush with negative electric charge and maintaining the ionosphere's positive charge. Lightning turns the Earth into an electric circuit, and it may have even delivered the spark that got life started in the primordial soup.
But for all we know, lightning might as well come from Zeus.
[Read More]New Stonehenge Mystery: Who Were These 10 'Outsiders' Buried at the Site?
Posted on September 19, 2022
| 4 minutes
| 769 words
| Patria Henriques
Stonehenge's famous pillars came from a place far, far away. That much was known. But now, archaeologists have found another well-traveled feature at the monument: 10 ancient people buried there who definitely weren't locals.
In other words, they weren't from Salisbury Plain, where Stonehenge sits today, according to the new analysis of the human remains.
Some of these outsiders may have helped move the monument's bluestones — named for the bluish tinge the stones turn when wet or broken — from western Wales to Salisbury Plain, the researchers said.
[Read More]Our galaxy is warped, and scientists have no idea why
Posted on September 19, 2022
| 4 minutes
| 669 words
| Patria Henriques
There's trouble brewing at the edge of the Milky Way: New measurements suggest that a peculiar distortion of the galactic disk is hardly moving, contradicting earlier reports.
As yet, nobody knows which finding will end up being correct. At stake are some key details in the structure and formation of spiral galaxies throughout the universe.
Astronomers describe the Milky Way as a flat disk-shaped, double-armed spiral galaxy twirling and twinkling with stars.
[Read More]Scientists find deep-sea bacteria that are invisible to the human immune system
Posted on September 19, 2022
| 4 minutes
| 758 words
| Arica Deslauriers
Bacteria collected from more than a mile below the surface of the Pacific Ocean may have just blown one of immunology's longest-held assumptions clean out of the water.
The bacteria are so alien to humans that our immune cells do not even register that they exist, making them completely invisible to our immune systems.
This totally contradicts one of the classic tenets of immunology — that the human immune system evolved to be able to sense every single microbe so it could catch the infectious ones.
[Read More]Scientists make yeast-free pizza dough that rises like the real thing
Posted on September 19, 2022
| 4 minutes
| 693 words
| Patria Henriques
A materials scientist with a yeast allergy set out to make a yeast-free pizza dough that still rises like a classic Neapolitan pie.
Now, in a new paper published March 22 in the journal Physics of Fluids(opens in new tab), he and his colleagues report that they've succeeded in their quest — although so far, the team has only baked disks of dough that measure about 0.4 inches (10 millimeters) in diameter and lack any sauce, cheese or other toppings.
[Read More]When Should Kids Start Eating Peanuts? New Guidelines Explain
Posted on September 19, 2022
| 3 minutes
| 596 words
| Mittie Cheatwood
Parents who are wondering when exactly they should start feeding peanut-containing foods to their infants to reduce the children's risk of peanut allergies can now turn to new guidelines.
The guidelines, which are sponsored by the National Institute of Allergy and Infectious Diseases (NIAID), outline when and how parents should introduce peanut-containing foods to their children, depending on the child's risk of developing a peanut allergy.
"We expect that widespread implementation of these guidelines by health care providers will prevent the development of peanut allergy in many susceptible children and ultimately reduce the prevalence of peanut allergy in the United States,"
[Read More]Wild Cat Mimics Monkey Sounds to Capture Prey
Posted on September 19, 2022
| 2 minutes
| 400 words
| Mittie Cheatwood
One wild cat species goes beyond physical camouflage to capture its prey — it disguises its voice, mimicking the calls of its victims, a new study finds.
Margays, wild cats native to the Amazon, have been observed imitating the calls of squirrel-sized monkeys known as pied tamarins. This is the first recorded instance of a wild cat species in the Americas copying the calls of its prey, the researchers say.
[Read More]10-Foot-Tall Stone Jars 'Made by Giants' Stored Human Bodies in Ancient Laos
Posted on September 18, 2022
| 4 minutes
| 788 words
| Patria Henriques
More than 100 giant stone jars, thought to have been used in burial rituals thousands of years ago, have been rediscovered at ancient sites in forests, on hillsides and along mountain ridges in remote central Laos.
The carved stone jars are scattered across miles of the rugged, tiger-haunted Xiangkhouang province, about 200 miles (320 kilometers) north of Laos' capital, Vientiane, in South Asia. They have been dubbed "jars of the dead"
[Read More]A.I. 'Nightmare Machine' Knows What Scares You
Posted on September 18, 2022
| 4 minutes
| 660 words
| Trudie Dory
The idea of artificial intelligence (AI) — autonomous computers that can learn independently — makes some people extremely uneasy, regardless of what the computers in question might be doing.
Those individuals probably wouldn't find it reassuring to hear that a group of researchers is deliberately training computers to get better at scaring people witless.
The project, appropriately enough, is named "Nightmare Machine." Digital innovators in the U.S. and Australia partnered to create an algorithm that would enable a computer to understand what makes certain images frightening, and then use that data to transform any photo, no matter how harmless-looking, into the stuff of nightmares.
[Read More]Amphibian 'death pit' filled with 8,000 bones unearthed in Iron Age village
Posted on September 18, 2022
| 3 minutes
| 566 words
| Mittie Cheatwood
A death pit of 8,000 frog and toad bones dating back at least 2,000 years has archaeologists in England stumped as to how the shattered amphibian corpses got there, with ideas ranging from death by cold to a nasty nosedive to a disease killer.
This is a puzzling and unexpected find, which we are still trying to fully understand," Vicki Ewens, senior archaeozoologist at the Museum of London Archaeology, said in a statement.
[Read More]