Kepler won’t look for them directly—Earth-like planets are too small to see even with the best telescopes. Instead it will hunt for them based on how they affect the stars they orbit. The Kepler telescope will focus on one small slice of our galaxy, the wing of the swan-shaped constellation Cygnus, observing how the region’s 170,000-odd stars change over time. If a star dims once, it could be because a planet is crossing in front of it, or it could just be a sunspot....
Meg mythology often posits that the 50-foot predator has been hiding for epochs somewhere at the bottom of the ocean. It’s a notion that’s launched more than a few books and pseudo-docs, all hinging on the fact that most of the planet’s nether waters are unexplored—and therefore rife with primo dens for enigmatic beasts. But based on what we know of the biological adaptations required for life down below, not many animals could pull off a deep-sea disappearing act....
The only downside is that tablets can be pricey. Luckily, there are some great Cyber Monday deals on the Fire HD 10 Plus and more tablets. Here are the best sales we found. With a 12-hour battery life, 4 GB RAM, and 32 GB of storage (with the option to get up to 64 GB), the Fire HD 10 Plus has staying power. The 10.1-inch screen has a 1080p HD display for great clarity, and a split-screen feature allows you to multitask....
This week, researchers proposed that the hapless seabirds are starving to death during storms. The team compared the locations of winter cyclones with the wintering grounds of more than 1,500 seabirds, then calculated how much energy the birds must burn to keep warm during stormy weather. “What was really surprising for us was the fact that we didn’t observe any expenditure increase according to the cyclonic conditions, meaning that in fact seabirds do not die from hypothermia,” says Manon Clairbaux, a postdoctoral researcher at University College Cork in Ireland and coauthor of the study....
But a new study suggests that the sexual revolution began long before birth control gained popularity in the 1960s and 1970s. Instead, modern sexual mores may have arisen from another kind of prevention — a cure for syphilis. As World War II raged, the U.S. population, including soldiers, were dying of syphilis at an alarming rate. At the disease’s peak in 1939, syphilis killed 20,000 people. An estimated 600,000 Americans were infected by the mid-1940s....
But just on the heels of Rosin’s piece, researchers based at Australia’s Prince Henry’s Institute this month released the results of the largest ever study of transsexual genetics, which compared the length of the androgen receptor (AR) gene in 112 male-to-female transsexuals and a control group of 250 “normal” men. The gene—which is known to make circulating testosterone less effective at signaling, circulating, and just generally doing its thing—turned out to be longer in transsexuals....
If you’re sick of ugly metal or wood folding racks, this combination mat and rack is available in a cheerful bright red. It’s modest footprint is 2 feet by 1.5 feet, and the microfiber mat absorbs moisture to keep water from dripping all over the place. The slatted rack takes up about a third of the mat and slides over it to stay in position. If you have a dishwasher but like to wash a few things by hand every now and then, roll out the mat when needed and store it when dry to save space....
Yesterday, Otto skateboarded through a human tunnel 30 people long, setting the “longest human tunnel travelled through by a skateboarding dog” record, a very important feat. The event was part of Guinness World Record Day 2015, when a bunch of people (and animals, I guess) do weird unique things more so than other people (or animals) have ever done them before. We live in a strange and beautiful world that encourages and praises this behavior....
Alien life, however, could still find a way. Inspired by species of coral that take in dangerous ultraviolet light and reflect it away as harmless green and blue hues, a team of astronomers recently proposed that entire marine ecosystems on exoplanets such as the one orbiting our second nearest star (after the sun) could do the same. If so, the entire planet might respond to flares from its parent star with a fluorescent glow that future telescopes could pick up....
A new paper examines the metabolic restrictions of a raw diet, and suggests that our primate cousins are limited by their inability to heat their dinners. It bolsters the cooking hypothesis of Richard Wrangham, a primatologist and professor of biological anthropology at Harvard who believes cooking is our legacy. Brazilian biomedical scientists Karina Fonseca-Azevedo and Suzana Herculano-Houzel note that the largest primates do not have the largest brains, a perplexing question....
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Many seem to be under the impression that learning begins and ends inside a classroom, but education goes beyond those four walls. You can learn new things from experiences, or you can acquire new skills from experts in the subject you’re hoping to understand better. The Unlimited Lifetime Learning Subscription Bundle ft. Rosetta Stone nets you access to lectures taught by subject experts, with a subscription to an award-winning language learning app as a bonus....
Why is it easy to rack up credit card purchases, while it hurts to pay cash? Blame (or thank) a part of the brain called the insula.Has your insula not stood you well? Well, at some point the world might end, clearing the slate of all your debts. Here’s a list of how we might all go, such as bumping into a black hole or stumbling into the sun (based on the premise that there’s no way global warming could do us in — it’s just a bit pesky for people who live on some coasts!...
Moving forward, the company will be “metaverse first,” CEO Mark Zuckerberg said today, which means that over time, you won’t need to use a Facebook account to access other products under the Meta umbrella. It also means that the company will report on their business as two different operating segments: one for their family of apps, and one for their work on future platforms (Reality Labs will be the name for that segment)....
Riders get their first Uber free when ordering via Messenger (up to $20), for new Uber users and existing. Uber newbies can register within Messenger. Many apps in 2015 continue to look for ways to prevent users from leaving the app, in hopes of being the one-stop-shop for any and all needs. Snapchat’s Discover section, for example, offers news and video clips so users remain updated on the world while staying within Snapchat’s borders....
The simple answer is that driving in a relatively fuel efficient car (25-30 miles per gallon) usually generates fewer greenhouse gas emissions than flying. In assessing the global warming impact of a trip from Philadelphia to Boston (about 300 miles), the environmental news website Grist.org calculates that driving would generate about 104 kilograms of carbon dioxide (CO2) — the leading greenhouse gas — per typical medium-sized car, regardless of the number of passengers, while flying on a commercial jet would produce some 184 kilograms of CO2 per passenger....
Gledhill first discovered these beautiful crystal structures in the course of his day job while staining biological samples for microscopy. After developing some methods for producing the exact crystal shapes that he wanted he placed the dyes in microscope slides and let them dry out and crystalize from anywhere from a few hours to a few days. Gledhill then used a Canon EOS 5D Mark II mashed up with an Olympus BH-2 trinocular microscope, differential interference contrast optics, and special LED and high-speed flash systems to turn it all into art....
Gas-Electric Powertrain The C-Max Energi combines a pair of electric motors and a 2.0-liter four-cylinder Atkinson-cycle gasoline engine (the same ultraefficient design used in the Toyota Prius). Together, they can push the car to a top speed of 102 mph; the C-Max can hit 85 mph on electricity alone. Affordable, Compact Battery Engineers gave the C-Max a relatively small 7.6-kilowatt-hour lithium-ion battery pack, which Ford assembles in Michigan. The Chevrolet Volt, by comparison, runs on a 16-kilowatt-hour battery....
A scattering of fossilized 90-million-year-old crabs shows how an animal might turn from bottom feeder to dragonfly-like predator. Callichimaera perplexa, first identified from fossils in Colombia in 2019, lived in the warm oceans of the mid-Cretaceous. And they had truly enormous eyes: An entire adult crab was about the size of a quarter, and the eyes set in its head took up about 16 percent of that. A human with a proportionate anatomy would have dinner plate-sized peepers....
