On my recent trip to Chile, our group got a chance to visit an astronomical observatory in the Atacama Desert. The sky is completely different in the Southern Hemisphere. The Big Dipper is upside down just above the horizon and (of course) Polaris can’t been seen. Other unusual features of the sky in that part
Never underestimate the adaptability of nature. I was reminded of this again by a Smithsonian Magazine article entitled “Five Shocking Animal Hybrids That Truly Exist in Nature, From Narlugas to Grolar Bears to Coywolves” by Carlyn Kranking (https://getpocket.com/explore/item/five-shocking-animal-hybrids-that-truly-exist-in-nature-from-narlugas-to-grolar-bears-to-coywolves?) Some of these are pretty predictable, like the liger, the result of a male lion and female tiger,
The rainbow-colored light is an artist’s concept of a galaxy without stars called J0613+52. The stars in this image are foreground stars, in our own Milky Way galaxy, from an actual starfield from the Palomar Sky Survey II. Illustration via NSF/ NRAO/ AUI/ P.Vosteen/ Green Bank Observatory. Just when scientists think they have seen it all,
One of the unforeseen hazards of the space age — what happens when an astronaut drops a tool? In this case it was letting go of an entire tool bag. To quote the story from the Earth Sky News (https://earthsky.org/human-world/orbital-oopsy-a-tool-bag-is-now-orbiting-earth/?) — “A tool bag is orbiting Earth, and night sky observers might catch a glimpse
If you have any interest in astronomy, you know there is a profusion of satellites being launched by both public and private entities. Lots of satellites make life miserable for Earth-bound astronomers. Worse, it leads to another problem — who takes out the trash? Satellites have a fixed lifespan and, like all things mechanical, they
If you were observing Earth from an alien planet, how would you know if life really existed here? The renowned astronomer Carl Sagan wondered the same thing. Then he got an opportunity to find out. In October 1989, NASA launched the Galileo spacecraft to orbit Jupiter. But because of the space shuttle Challenger disaster in 1986,
Does the moon experience earthquakes (or in this case, moonquakes)? That’s one thing NASA wanted to know when we first visited our celestial companion. So when the Apollo astronauts arriv ed, they installed seismometers on the moon’s surface. Sure enough, those instruments recorded seismic events just like here on Earth. In fact, scientists have since
Contact with alien civilizations from somewhere else in the universe has been a topic of fascination for most of human civilization. (Considering what happened to indigenous peoples in the Americas after European contact, whether or not this would be a good idea is a whole different topic, but let’s press on.) Theoretically, there could be
You’ve heard of “never smile at a crocodile”? You may not want to cry around one either. A new study of Nile crocodiles has found they respond to the sound of human babies crying, as well as infant chimpanzees and bonobos. Researchers played cries from human, chimpanzee and bonobo infants to a group of Nile
Our bodies are pretty complicated mechanisms, and they’re complex in ways we don’t fully understand. For example, why do some people have naturally curly hair? According to new research, there may have been a good evolutionary reason. A recently published research article by Tina Lasisi and her colleagues at Pennsylvania State University examined how hair regulates scalp