News about PaperPanda, Open Access, and Research
The ongoing interaction between two galaxies 320 million light-years away has been captured in a gorgeous Hubble image. They’re collectively known as Arp 282 in Halton Arp’s Atlas of Peculiar Galaxies, and they consist of a large barred spiral galaxy named NGC 169, about 140,000 light-years across, and a much smaller polar-ring galaxy named IC … Read more
Astronomers have just found an absolute monster of a galaxy. Lurking some 3 billion light-years away, Alcyoneus is a giant radio galaxy reaching 5 megaparsecs into space. That’s 16.3 million light-years long, and constitutes the largest known structure of galactic origin. The discovery highlights our poor understanding of these colossi, and what drives their … Read more
An elongated, cone-shaped skull with a possible metal implant could represent some of the earliest evidence from Peru of an ancient surgical implant. Or it could be a modern-day fake. The fact that the skull, which was donated to the Museum of Osteology in Oklahoma City, has a cone shape is nothing too unusual, … Read more
Sony’s Gran Turismo is one of the biggest racing game series of all time, having sold over 80 million copies globally. But none of those millions of players is the fastest. In a new breakthrough, a team led by Sony AI – the company’s artificial intelligence (AI) research division – developed an entirely artificial player … Read more
The megadrought that has parched the southwestern United States and parts of Mexico over the last two decades is the worst to hit the region in at least 1,200 years, researchers said Monday. Human-caused global heating accounts for more than 40 percent of the dry spell’s intensity, they reported in the journal Nature Climate … Read more
Soaring 250 miles (400 kilometers) over Earth, astronauts aboard the International Space Station (ISS) looked down on our planet last May and saw a heart-shaped oasis blooming in the Egyptian desert. Today (Feb. 14), our friends in space are sharing the striking image as a special Valentine for the whole planet, courtesy of NASA’s Earth … Read more
Six mummified children thought to have been sacrificed hundreds of years ago, apparently to accompany a dead nobleman to the afterlife, have been unearthed in a tomb near Lima, archaeologists reported. The tiny skeletons, wrapped tightly in cloth, were found in the grave of an important man, possibly a political figure, discovered last November … Read more
Decaying isotopes of hydrogen have just given us the smallest measurement yet of the mass of a neutrino. By measuring the energy distribution of electrons released during the beta decay of tritium, physicists have determined that the upper limit for the mass of the electron antineutrino is just 0.8 electronvolts. That’s 1.6 × 10–36 kilograms … Read more
SpaceX aims to make progress in space and on Earth with its new venture, the Polaris Program. And the team behind it couldn’t be more excited. The Polaris Program is a joint effort involving SpaceX and Jared Isaacman, the tech entrepreneur and billionaire who funded and commanded the Inspiration4 orbital crewed mission to benefit St. … Read more
The first orbital launch of SpaceX’s Starship Mars rocket has been pushed back by at least another month. SpaceX aims to launch that milestone test mission shortly after the U.S. Federal Aviation Administration (FAA) wraps up an environmental assessment of Starbase, the South Texas site where the company builds, tests and launches Starship vehicles. That … Read more