News about PaperPanda, Open Access, and Research
An impaired sense of smell affects from about 30 to 75 percent of people infected with the novel coronavirus, according to a recent estimate, suggesting that millions of people worldwide have suffered this condition at some point in the past two years. Called anosmia, the olfactory system dysfunction is typically temporary, but it can take months … Read more
Whether via West Coast wildfires that shrouded New York City’s skyline in smoke or historic floods in Germany, in 2021, signs of the climate crisis were everywhere. A group of the world’s leading ecologists summarized humanity’s predicament when they recently argued that our main goal now as a species is to “avoid a ghastly future.” … Read more
Oregon endured the third-largest wildfire in its recorded history last summer. The Bootleg Fire tore through the Upper Klamath Basin, an ecologically sensitive area that is home to multiple threatened and endangered species including the northern spotted owl and two fish—the koptu and c’waam (shortnose sucker and Lost River sucker)—that are culturally vital to the … Read more
Astronomers may have for the first time detected and measured the mass of an isolated stellar-mass black hole, a new study finds. Previous research suggested that when giant stars more than 20 times the mass reach the end of their lives, they usually die in catastrophic explosions known as supernovas, and their dense cores are … Read more
See the SpaceX booster? If you spot SpaceX’s Falcon 9 booster in a telescope before it hits the moon, let us know! Send images and comments in to [email protected]. A SpaceX Falcon 9 booster will crash into the lunar surface in March, and you can track the rogue rocket as it nears the moon. The … Read more
The International Astronomical Union (IAU) has launched a new center to fight the threat of satellite megaconstellations, which it now describes as worse than urban light pollution. The Center for the Protection of the Dark and Quiet Sky from Satellite Constellation Interference will be run jointly by the U.K.-headquartered Square Kilometer Array Observatory organization and … Read more
The Arctic is warming faster than anywhere else on the planet, and the toll on Greenland‘s massive ice sheet is becoming achingly clear. According to new satellite data compiled by Polar Portal, a collection of four Danish government research institutions, Greenland has lost more than 5,100 billion tons (4,700 billion metric tons) of ice in … Read more
A pair of asteroids orbiting the Sun formed less than 300 years ago, a new study has revealed. This makes them the youngest pair of asteroids ever discovered in the Solar System, by a factor of 10. The discovery could tell us more about how asteroids crumble, while raising some intriguing new questions. “It’s … Read more
Earth’s oceans were once home to an absolutely fearsome predator. We know it only from teeth and vertebrae in the fossil record, but these tell us that megalodon (Otodus megalodon) was absolutely colossal. Many of those teeth are as big as your hand. Megalodon, we can only conclude, was the largest shark ever to swim … Read more