News about PaperPanda, Open Access, and Research
Scientists have for the first time confirmed the merger of two highly eccentric black holes. Egg-shaped eccentric orbits form when two black holes spiral towards each other and collide under each other’s strong gravitational influence. Therefore, highly eccentric orbits may suggest black holes repeatedly snack on other black holes in densely populated areas, like the … Read more
Earth travels around the sun in an orbit that is slightly oval-shaped, known as an ellipse. Therefore, the planet’s distance from the sun changes throughout the year. However, the average distance from Earth to the sun is about 93 million miles (150 million kilometers). Scientists also call this distance one astronomical unit (AU). The universe … Read more
It’s been more than two months since the House of Representatives passed the Build Back Better Act—a bill that would make desperately needed and decades-overdue strides toward the U.S. meeting its moral responsibility to combat the climate crisis. But instead of moving into a new year on the hope that would come with the Senate … Read more
On January 19, co-founders Rick Klausner and Hans Bishop publicly launched an aging research initiative called Altos Labs, with $3 billion in initial financing from backers including tech investor Yuri Milner and Amazon founder Jeff Bezos. This is the latest in a recent surge of investment in ventures seeking to build anti-aging interventions on the back … Read more
Light traveling through a vacuum moves at exactly 299,792,458 meters (983,571,056 feet) per second. That’s about 186,282 miles per second — a universal constant known in equations and in shorthand as “c,” or the speed of light. According to physicist Albert Einstein‘s theory of special relativity, on which much of modern physics is based, nothing … Read more
A huge energy- and light-producing sphere of glowing gases, the sun makes life on Earth possible. The temperature of our nearest star varies tremendously, and not in ways you might realize. So, how hot is the sun? Nuclear fusion in the core At the core of the sun, gravitational attraction produces immense pressure and temperature, … Read more
Two years into the COVID pandemic, as the highly contagious Omicron variant pushes infections to record highs, U.S. physicians have a growing arsenal of therapies to keep mild disease from worsening. At the same time, limited availability and challenging logistics are complicating decisions about which patients receive them. Here is a rundown of what is … Read more
Watch the sun set from a particularly dark patch of Earth and you may spot a triangle of what scientists call zodiacal light extending from where our star passed below the horizon. Zodiacal light in Earth’s skies is created when sunlight bounces off the dust that fills the solar system, the remains of pulverized asteroids … Read more
A powerful United Launch Alliance (ULA) Atlas V rocket will launch two “neighborhood watch” satellites for the United States Space Force on Friday (Jan. 21), and you can watch the action live. The Atlas V is scheduled to lift off from Florida’s Cape Canaveral Space Force Station on Friday at 2 p.m. EST (1900 GMT). … Read more
Paul M. Sutter is an astrophysicist at SUNY Stony Brook and the Flatiron Institute, host of “Ask a Spaceman” and “Space Radio,” and author of “How to Die in Space.” Sutter contributed this article to Space.com’s Expert Voices: Op-Ed & Insights. Is everything we know and experience, up to and including reality itself, a simulation … Read more