The full Moon may be behind us, but there is still plenty of lunar activity to look forward to as October comes to a close. What is the moon phase today? As of Thursday, October 29, NASA’s Daily Moon Guide tracker tells us that the Moon is in the waning phase, with 87% of its … Read more
POND INLET, Nunavut — A shrinking ice sheet in Canada’s Arctic tells a surprising story of how humans may have stopped the planet’s next ice age by burning fossil fuels, according to new research. About 20,000 years ago, the once-vast Laurentide Ice Sheet stretched from the Arctic Circle to southern Illinois and was up to … Read more
Seabirds returning from foraging trips can veer hundreds of miles off course due to a form of jet lag that arises when their biological clocks are out of sync with local time, researchers say. Tracking data from Manx shearwaters off the west coast of the United Kingdom revealed that when the birds returned to their … Read more
Manx shearwaters race back to their nests after spending weeks hunting at sea. New research suggests they suffer from jet lag on the journey home. Birdsonline/Getty Images hide title toggle title i birdsonline/Getty Images New research shows that humans are not the only species that suffers from jet lag: some birds seem to experience it … Read more
As a teenager in Sri Lanka, Ray Jayawardhana wrote to NASA’s Jet Propulsion Laboratory asking about its Voyager and Viking missions. In response, he received a brochure with photographs of Jupiter and Saturn. On Thursday, the astrophysicist who studies distant planets and writes about extraterrestrial life was installed as Caltech’s 10th president. He runs an … Read more
Zombies have taken many forms in popular culture. In Michael Jackson’s “Thriller” music video, corpses emerge from their graves and perform an impressively coordinated dance. In HBO’s “The Last of Us,” a fungus infects humans, taking over their bodies and turning them into hosts that help spread the infection. Even Plankton tried to take control … Read more
The shrinking ice sheet in Canada’s Arctic tells a surprising story of how humans may have stopped the planet’s next ice age by burning fossil fuels, according to new research. About 20,000 years ago, the once-vast Laurentide Ice Sheet stretched from the Arctic Circle to southern Illinois and was in places up to two miles … Read more
As NASA says, comets are “cosmic snowballs” of frozen gases, rocks and dust that include a good amount of organic materials. So scientists have long suggested that a comet brought these molecules to Earth and that they became the building blocks of life here. But a new study explains how that scenario might actually be … Read more
The senior partner didn’t waste any time. ‘I’m sorry, Zahaan,’ he said, ‘your services are no longer required at the firm.’ We sometimes called him the Burger King behind his back, because he ate a Whopper Meal at his desk every day. I’d never spoken to him before, and now I never would again. It … Read more
Sample collection and culturingThe biofilm samples were collected from a gas production well, KTG3, in the Southern Kanto gas field (Chiba Prefecture, Japan). The biofilm was located on a wall of the separator discharge outlet at a depth of 20–40 cm below the water surface. Samples were taken after eruption of brine on 29 August 2019, … Read more