google celebrates 315th birthday of french physicist émilie du châtelet

Google is celebrating the 315th birthday of Émilie du Châtelet, who was a physicist, translator, philosopher despite the exclusion of women from physics at the time. Du Châtelet’s most influential book was her anonymously published 1740 text, “The Foundations of Physics,” which built on Isaac Newton‘s work. She also completed a translation of his “Principia,” … Read more

Venus: Early impacts on the planet may have made it far hotter than Earth

Collisions with high-speed space rocks in Venus’s early history could have melted most of the planet’s mantle and driven any water into the atmosphere Space 17 December 2021 By Jonathan O’Callaghan Artist’s rendering of an early, large collision on Venus Southwest Research Institute/Simone Marchi High-speed impacts on Venus early in its history could help explain … Read more

This Footage From The First-Ever Probe to Touch The Sun Will Leave You Speechless

Many science fans were freaking out this week when NASA confirmed that its Parker Solar Probe had become the first spacecraft ever to ‘touch the Sun’ back in April. But if you thought that was mind-boggling, hang on to your seat, because there’s actually time-lapse footage of the spacecraft’s view as it swoops into the … Read more

Poem: ‘The Scalar Nature of Snow’

Science in meter and verse Credit: Detached Retina Imaging Getty Images Advertisement Edited by Dava Sobel elusive if not rare. there are always vectors and other values if not measured at least felt or experienced at the boundary of ground: imbalance and, therefore, movement. the creation comes, then with the condition of height and time: … Read more

News at a glance: A bold antitobacco plan, updated Arctic warming rates, and a COVID-19 infection from a lab | Science

RESEARCH FACILITIES Tornado razes agricultural center A hub of agricultural research in the small city of Princeton, Kentucky, was among the many places left in ruins last week as a series of tornadoes ripped through the region, killing dozens. No employees of the University of Kentucky’s Research and Education Center were killed, and just one … Read more

Missed shots: Science revisits its 2020 Breakthrough of the Year | Science

When Science crowned the development of effective SARS-CoV-2 vaccines the scientific Breakthrough of the Year in December 2020, it was a moment of celebration. “This breakthrough is a triumph for all of science,” Editor-in-Chief Holden Thorp wrote in an editorial. “There will be plenty of time for an exegesis of what went wrong. But for … Read more

Forget dogs: These rats could be the future of search and rescue | Science

Think search and rescue animal, and you’re likely to picture a dog in an orange vest. But a Tanzanian nonprofit wants you to imagine something else: the African giant pouched rat. Donna Kean and her colleagues at APOPO, a nonprofit that trains pouched rats to save lives, have spent the past 2 decades working with … Read more

Ambergris: What fragrant whale excretions tell us about ancient oceans

Ancient whale poo, known as ambergris, has long been prized by perfumiers – but it also contains precious information about ancient oceans that could help save today’s whales Humans 15 December 2021 By Claire Ainsworth Peter Crowther THEY say, where there’s muck, there’s brass. Anyone who has stumbled upon ambergris will confirm this. The weathered … Read more

Newfound Millipede Breaks World Record for the Most Legs

A newfound species of millipede has more legs than any other creature on the planet—a mind-boggling 1,300 of them. The leggy critters live deep below Earth’s surface and are the only known millipedes to live up to their name.  “The word ‘millipede’ has always been a bit of a misnomer,” said Paul Marek, an entomologist at … Read more