An international team of astronomers has detected a colossal black hole that is 12 billion times more massive than the sun—so big that it is challenging accepted cosmological thinking. Scientists discovered the enormous celestial body, which is 12.8 billion light-years from Earth, at the center of a brilliantly glowing quasar, a cloud of gas that gets superheated and gives off […]
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Are the scientists working to save Antarctica’s fragile ecosystem inadvertently contributing to its destruction? Could they possibly be Destroying Antarctica? A new study has linked a chemical used in flame-retardants—called polybrominated diphenyl ethers (PBDEs)—that is contaminating the Antarctic environment to Australia’s Casey research station. Researchers found that dust and treated wastewater at the station contained PBDEs and another chemical that […]
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Earthquakes are the result shifting plates in the crust of Earth. When there is frictional stress building of the plates it causes failure at a fault line an earthquake happens. The shaking of the ground happens when the energy is released, and waves radiate. Research has found that they predict where major seismic activity may happen, but they cannot forecast […]
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Stare out upon the ocean at sunset and you can almost convince yourself that all is well beneath the surface. Sadly, the exact opposite is very true. Three new studies reveal just how sick the oceans are, as well as just how big a role humans are playing. Let’s begin with climate change: according to a report from NASA and […]
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Even in a world where extreme weather is becoming more common, said Sarah Lyall in The New York Times, the past week has been truly bizarre. In China, now suffering through its coldest, harshest winter in memory, the roofs of houses in Xinjiang collapsed under the weight of deep snow. It was so hot in Australia, meanwhile, that forecasters added […]
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Buried deep in the Antarctic ice, an observatory has spotted ghostly, nearly massless particles coming from inside our galaxy and points beyond the Milky Way. Finding these cosmic neutrinos not only confirms their existence but also sheds light on the origins of cosmic rays, the researchers said. The IceCube Neutrino Observatory is made up of 86 shafts dug 8,000 feet […]
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A new study has found the strongest link yet between air pollution and autism, which experts now say affects one in 50 U.S. schoolchildren. Pregnant women who lived in areas with high levels of diesel exhaust and airborne mercury were found to be twice as likely to have a child with autism as those living in places with the lowest […]
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When you’re angry, your face, head, and arms grow hot When you’re depressed, a cold numbness grips your head and arms. Love triggers a warm glow throughout your upper body, especially around your heart. Human emotions, a new study has found, are directly linked to sensations in specific body parts, and the map is largely the same across different cultures. […]
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Only 1 in 10,000 people have absolute or “perfect” pitch, the ability to hear a tone and tell what note it is. This unusual ability is acquired early in life, typically learned during training at about four to six years of age, and there are no records of adults acquiring the ability. But a new study shows that people who […]
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The VEST is the brainchild of Dr. David Eagleman, a neuroscientist at the Baylor College of Medicine in Houston, Texas. He designed the device based on the principles of sensory substitution, the theory that scientists can transmit data gathered by the brain using one sense, and transfer it to another sense. In this case, the VEST translates touch into sound. […]
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