News about PaperPanda, Open Access, and Research
The Fermi Paradox seeks to answer the question of where the aliens are. Given that our solar system is quite young compared to the rest of the universe — roughly 4.5 billion years old, compared to 13.8 billion — and that interstellar travel might be fairly easy to achieve given enough time, Earth should have been … Read more
Sometimes the introduction of a news report will stop you in your tracks, forcing you to reread in fear you didn’t quite grasp its point the first time. That was certainly the case when Mail Online published a story on Mar. 21, 2017: “An alien satellite set up more than 12,000 years ago to spy … Read more
Rather than engineering robotic solutions from scratch, some of our most impressive advances have come from copying what nature has already come up with. New research shows how we can extend that approach to robot ‘minds’, in this case by getting a robot to learn the best route out of a maze all by itself – even … Read more
To date, astronomers have discovered nearly 5,000 exoplanets, or planets beyond our solar system. But many people still have a soft spot for one particular planet, Earth. That might be biased, but still: Given what scientists have learned about exoplanets so far, a combination of several different factors seems to make Earth unique, no many … Read more
It has been less than four weeks since the announcement that a mutation-laden coronavirus variant had been discovered in southern Africa. Since then, dozens of countries around the world have reported Omicron cases—including a worrying number of infections in people who have either been vaccinated or experienced previous SARS-CoV-2 infections. But as political leaders and public-health officials try to … Read more
NASA’s Mars helicopter Ingenuity has soared through alien skies yet again. “The #MarsHelicopter keeps going, going, going! Ingenuity successfully completed its 18th flight, adding 124.3 seconds to its overall time aloft on the Red Planet,” officials with NASA’s Jet Propulsion Laboratory (JPL) in Southern California, which manages Ingenuity’s pioneering mission, said via Twitter today (Dec. … Read more
The human brain has been called the most complex object in the known universe. And with good reason: It has around 86 billion neurons and several hundred thousand miles of axon fibers connecting them. Unsurprisingly, the process of brain folding that results in the brain’s characteristic bumps and grooves is also highly complex. Despite … Read more
Comet Leonard spent the first couple of weeks of December visible as a target for observers with binoculars and telescopes in the early morning sky before sunrise. Now, however, the viewing venue has changed and the newfound Comet Leonard (cataloged as C/2021 A1) has moved into the evening sky, visible low above the southwestern horizon … Read more
NEW ORLEANS—Scientists are getting faster and faster at linking climate change to extreme weather events. If an extreme heat wave, storm or flood occurs tomorrow, scientists could determine in a few days whether it was made worse by climate change. That has some scientists thinking: Why not do it for every disaster as soon as … Read more
SpaceX will launch its second stack of Starlink satellites from the West Coast early Saturday morning (Dec. 18), and you can watch the action live online. The private spaceflight company will launch a stack of 52 Starlink satellites on one of its previously flown Falcon 9 rockets. The mission is set to blast off at … Read more