News about PaperPanda, Open Access, and Research
After the first-ever explosion of an atomic bomb on July 16, 1945 near Socorro, N.M., J. Robert Oppenheimer, director of the Los Alamos Laboratory, recited a line from the Bhagavad Gita: “Now I am become death, the destroyer of worlds.” Less than a month later, a quarter of a million lives were lost to the … Read more
Since Disney Plus is the home of Marvel these days, some well known Marvel titles are making the jump over from Netflix. TV shows including Daredevil, The Defenders, Agents Of S.H.I.E.L.D and more are moving from one streaming service to another. These shows will add to Disney’s already huge Marvel collection and will be available … Read more
The conflict between Russia and Ukraine has escalated: Russian troops have invaded and now control several areas in Ukraine. Heavy fighting is raging in some cities, and Ukrainian president Volodymyr Zelensky has declared martial law. This causes fear and worry to many people in Europe, including children and other young people. But how do you … Read more
Last Friday the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention announced a pivot in its guidelines for indoor mask wearing that suggests that more than two thirds of Americans no longer need to wear masks—including children in schools. “We want to give people a break from things like mask wearing when our levels are low and … Read more
Amid concern from NASA, SpaceX says it has “significant resources” to exceed best practices with Starlink when it comes to sustainability and safety. In an update published to the company website Feb. 22, SpaceX outlined its sustainability and safety protocol for its Starlink internet satellites on Monday (Feb. 28), as the company seeks to add … Read more
Astronomers may have spotted the afterglow from an epic cosmic event known as a “kilonova.” Kilonovas occur after the collision of two hyper-dense neutron stars, which are the remnants of stars that have died in supernova explosions. Astronomers think they have spotted an afterglow in X-rays from the event, which is dubbed GW170817. The discovery … Read more
Three dozen private broadband satellites are scheduled to launch atop a Russian rocket on Friday (March 4), and not everyone is happy about the situation. Russia’s federal space agency, Roscosmos, has cleared a Soyuz rocket topped with 36 OneWeb internet satellites to roll out to its launch pad at Baikonur Cosmodrome in Kazakhstan tomorrow (March … Read more
Two huge black holes are locked together by gravity as they inevitably spiral towards a collision, researchers have found in a new study. Researchers in a new study have spotted two supermassive black holes that whip around each other every two Earth years, on average, with respective masses each of hundreds of millions of times … Read more
What astronomers had concluded to be a black hole a mere 1,120 light-years from Earth instead appears to be something quite different: a two-star system where one of the stars is sucking the life out of the other. Far from disappointing, though, the conclusion gives astronomers an exciting opportunity to explore how these ‘vampiric’ stars … Read more
A towering colossus and predatory beast, the comically tiny-armed Tyrannosaurus rex is perhaps the most iconic of all prehistoric predators. Its place in the popular imagination is mirrored in academia, with researchers investigating everything from how it walked, to how it mated, to how many there even were. Despite abundant research into the genus Tyrannosaurus, all adult … Read more