Feast Your Eyes on The Annual Family Portraits Hubble Took of Our Solar System Giants

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Every year, Hubble takes a little time to turn its electronic eyes closer to home. Rather than staring into vast distances across space and time, it focuses on our very own Solar System; specifically, the heavyweight planets that lurk out past the asteroid belt – Jupiter, Saturn, Uranus, and Neptune.   That’s not because they’re … Read more

How COVID Is Changing the Study of Human Behavior

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During the early months of the COVID-19 pandemic, Jay Van Bavel, a psychologist at New York University, wanted to identify the social factors that best predict a person’s support for public-health measures, such as physical distancing or closing restaurants. He had a handful of collaborators ready to collect survey data. But because the pandemic was … Read more

Scientists Have Identified The Driving Force Behind Your Darkest Impulses

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Psychologists call it the dark triad: an intersection of three of the most malevolent tendencies of human nature – psychopathy, narcissism, and Machiavellianism. But the truth goes deeper, and darker. There’s also egoism, sadism, spitefulness, and more. And behind this rogues gallery of all our worst inclinations on the surface, a central, common core of … Read more

Rachel Carson’s Explorations of the Sea, the Human Relationship with Elephants, and More

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NONFICTION Rachel Carson: The Sea Trilogy Sandra Steingraber Library of America, 2021 ($40) Before Rachel Carson wrote Silent Spring in 1962—a literary masterpiece and foundation of the modern environmental movement—she was a marine biologist and a prolific writer on the subject of the ocean. Carson first made her name with a trilogy of best-selling books … Read more

James Webb Space Telescope notches crucial maneuver to set its path

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The James Webb Space Telescope is truly on its way. The massive observatory launched today (Dec. 25) from Europe’s Spaceport in Kourou, French Guiana, at 7:20 a.m. EST (1220 GMT). Just 12.5 hours later, the spacecraft began a vital maneuver on its month-long journey to its future outpost as the observatory executed a 65-minute-long thruster … Read more

’29 days on the edge:’ What’s next for NASA’s newly launched James Webb Space Telescope

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NASA’s next big space observatory is finally aloft, but it’ll be a while before it starts its highly anticipated science mission. The $10 billion James Webb Space Telescope launched atop an Ariane 5 rocket from French Guiana yesterday (Dec. 25), kicking off a long-delayed, potentially transformative mission to study the early universe, nearby exoplanets and … Read more

Rare wispy ice formations streak across the sea near Antarctica in beautiful satellite images

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Strong winds and unusual ocean currents helped paint a breathtaking icescape on the surface of the ocean near Antarctica, and the rare phenomenon was recently captured in a stunning satellite image.  The incredible image was taken on Nov. 20 by the Operational Land Imager onboard Landsat 8, a collaboration between NASA and the U.S. Geological … Read more

‘Wind’ from Earth’s middle layer blows through a secret passage beneath Panama

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A geological secret passage beneath Panama may explain why rocks from Earth’s mantle are found more than 1,000 miles (1,609 kilometers) from where they originated.  This opening, located some 62 miles (100 km) below Earth‘s surface, may allow a flow of mantle materials to travel all the way from beneath the Galápagos Islands to beneath … Read more

Do Auroras Make Sounds We Can Hear? The True Answer Is Surprisingly Complicated

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It’s a question that has puzzled observers for centuries: do the fantastic green and crimson light displays of the aurora borealis produce any discernible sound? Conjured by the interaction of solar particles with gas molecules in Earth’s atmosphere, the aurora generally occurs near Earth’s poles, where the magnetic field is strongest. Reports of the aurora … Read more