News about PaperPanda, Open Access, and Research
Rocketing back onto the airwaves, Variety announced this week that the cult sci-fi animated series “Futurama” will be resurrected once more on the Hulu streaming platform. Along with the joyful news comes word from 20th Television Animation and Hulu Originals that the 20-episode revival will be headed up by the original series creators Matt Groening … Read more
The Bernardinelli-Bernstein comet, identified in 2021, is officially the biggest comet ever observed. The new record, reported on the preprint website arXiv and now accepted for publication in the journal Astronomy and Astrophysics Letters, bumps the Hale-Bopp comet from the top spot. Hale-Bopp was discovered in 1995 and became visible to the naked eye in … Read more
At its heart, physics is the study of symmetries. In the 1950s Chien-Shiung Wu made a fundamental discovery about how under certain circumstances a fundamental symmetry of the particle world, known as parity symmetry, could be broken – but she never got full recognition for the achievement. Symmetry is important because by observing how, under … Read more
We love it when a rocket comes together. In October 2021, NASA finished stacking the huge Space Launch System (SLS) rocket for its Artemis 1 moon mission inside the cavernous Vehicle Assembly Building at Kennedy Space Center (KSC) in Florida. That was a big milestone for the agency and its moon-exploration plans, and a newly … Read more
US astronaut, doctor and engineer Mae Jemison became the first Black woman to go into space in 1992. She was one of seven crew aboard the Space Shuttle Endeavour, on a mission named STS-47. The youngest of three children, Jemison was born in Decatur, Alabama, but moved to Chicago, Illinois, at the age of three. … Read more
Hedy Lamarr, born Hedwig Eva Maria Kiesler, was a Hollywood movie star who acted in dozens of films, most notably Algiers, released in 1938 and Samson and Delilah, in 1949. Alongside her acting career, she was also an inventor, working on everything from the shape of aircraft wings to dissolvable drink flavourings. Most of her … Read more
In Edward Ashton’s novel Mickey7, Mickey gets a shot at immortality by uploading his consciousness, but at what cost, asks Sally Adee Humans 9 February 2022 By Sally Adee Died at work? Just load your mind into a new body and finish the job Shutterstock / Photobank.kiev.ua Mickey7 Edward Ashton St Martin’s Press (out in … Read more
These highlights of the International Garden Photographer of the Year competition feature a beautiful ant rendezvous and a “melancholy” butterfly Life 9 February 2022 By Gege Li Pepe Badia Marrero/IGPOTY THIS vibrant selection of images showcasing curiosities and beauties of nature features some of the top entries in this year’s International Garden Photographer of the … Read more
Precision measurements have long suggested that particles called muons, closely related to the electron, are misbehaving. Now, it seems their shenanigans might be pointing to the presence of new particles Physics 9 February 2022 By New Scientist Jennie Edwards FOR decades, physicists have been aware of a gnawing anomaly in the behaviour of a mysterious … Read more
Astronomers say a “hyperburst” nuclear explosion within a neutron star could explain its strange behaviour – but the conditions required to create the explosion are so rare that we will probably never see one again Space 11 February 2022 By Jonathan O’Callaghan An artist’s illustration of an explosion in space Shutterstock/mik ulyannikov Astronomers think they … Read more