This could modernize the entire power grid with near-limitless energy.
Since scientists first demonstrated nuclear power 70 years ago, the second stage of nuclear power has remained just beyond our fingertips: nuclear fusion power. While promising, the ETA on the technology required to develop and build viable nuclear fusion has remained decades away.
Until now. Probably.
Scientists and philosophers have long debated what sets humans apart from animals. Now researchers at Yale have come one step closer to unlocking the mystery. In…
More people in the U.S. are now smoking marijuana than cigarettes, according to a Gallup poll.
Cigarette use has been trending downward during the past decades, with only 11% of Americans saying they smoke them in a poll conducted July 5 to 26, compared to 45% in the mid-1950s.
Sixteen percent of Americans say they smoke marijuana, with 48% saying they have tried it at some point in their lives. In 1969, only 4% of Americans said they smoked marijuana.
Some humans can detect the Earth’s magnetic field — via a neurological feature called magnetoreceptors — according to a recent study, reports Popular Mechanics.
First-year students have been left without accommodation at several universities as they prepare to start degrees next month.
Undergraduates at the University of Glasgow, Manchester Metropolitan University (MMU) and the University of the West of England in Bristol (UWE) were told this month that they would have to find their own accommodation owing to a lack of space in halls, according to the Financial Times.
At UWE, students were offered accommodation in Newport, Wales, nearly an hour away from the main campus in Bristol. It mirrored a situation last year at universities including York, which was forced to offer students accommodation in Hull.
Isaac arthur postscarcity civilizations.
A look into high-tech civilizations of the future who citizens seemingly lack for nothing.
This week, scientists announced that the James Webb Space Telescope, which among its many talents can analyze the atmospheres of exoplanets, just confirmed the presence of carbon dioxide on a world orbiting a sun some 700 light-years away. It’s the first observation of CO2 in a planetary atmosphere beyond our solar system.
But that discovery, made about a world very unlike our own, is just the first taste of what Webb’s instruments may soon reveal. Astronomers are eager to focus the telescope on planets like Earth, where liquid water, a crucial ingredient for life as we know it, is abundant. In the coming months and years, they will undoubtedly get their chance.
There are a number of promising Earth-like planets Webb could study in the near future, but in a paper published recently in The Astronomical Journal, scientists from the University of Montreal argue they’ve discovered one of the best such candidates yet.
He Great Drought and Deluge is upon much of the world. These are no longer once-in-a-thousand-year events.
In one video, she runs through a field of lavender and spins around in a lilac dress. It was the beloved family dog, a chubby pug named Ben, who showed her how to twirl in circles.
“Is it possible to fall in love again and again?” her mother wrote under a photo just weeks before Liza was killed. — Jennifer Hassan
Continue reading “The great drought and the great deluge, all at the same time” »
Whether you’re thinking about the future of Mars and how to send humans there, or trying to understand its past and see how the planet became the way it is today, one particular feature is crucially important: water. Scientists know that there was once abundant water on Mars, but over time this evaporated away and left the planet a dry husk, with little to no liquid water on its surface today. But that water has left indications in the geology of the planet, and now the European Space Agency (ESA) has shared a water map of Mars that traces the planet’s history and points to potential resources for future missions.
The map uses data collected by two different Mars orbiters, ESA’s Mars Express and NASA’s Mars Reconnaissance Orbiter. Spectrometers on each of the orbiters have been collecting information on the location of what is called aqueous minerals, meaning rocks that have interacted with water in the past and which have formed minerals such as clays.
The map shows not only the locations of these minerals but also how abundant they are. And one of the biggest findings is that these minerals aren’t rare — in fact, there are hundreds of thousands of patches of minerals across the planet.
