News about PaperPanda, Open Access, and Research
Say hello to the Jorō spider (Trichonephila clavata), an arachnid you’re likely to be seeing a lot more of in the future if you live on the East Coast of the US. New research suggests the distinctive black-and-yellow creature – currently flourishing in the state of Georgia – is unlikely to face any barriers in … Read more
Iceland’s glaciers are melting as a consequence of climate change, but the rate of loss has fallen in the past decade, perhaps because a blob of cold water in the Atlantic is cooling the island Environment 11 February 2022 By Jason Arunn Murugesu Skaftafellsjökull glacier in Vatnajokull National Park, Iceland Guitar photographer/Shutterstock Iceland’s glaciers are … Read more
In the Cosmic Calendar, which maps the chronology of the Universe across a single Earth year, modern humans don’t appear until the very last minute of December 31. Everything we understand about the evolution of the Universe, we’ve had to piece together. We simply haven’t been around for pretty much any of the 13.7 billion-year … Read more
By Clare Wilson GAP Photos/Anna Omiotek-Tott IN MY garden, bulbs such as snowdrops are coming up. Every year, I wonder if spring is arriving earlier due to climate change. One study from 2006 found that many signs of spring, such as plant species unfurling their leaves, had been hastened by 7.5 days across Europe in … Read more
Sometimes astronomers and astrophysicists are working at such gigantic, mind-bending scales – in terms of both distance and time – that you can’t help but be awestruck at the new discoveries they keep coming out with. Case in point: a temperature check of the Universe in its youngest phase, just 880 million years after … Read more
Melting ice can take on different shapes depending on the temperature of the water around it, new research reveals, giving us new insights into the complex physics that underlie this deceptively complicated transition. The team behind the research created ultra-pure ‘clear’ ice for their experiments, free from bubbles and impurities, then observed the ice … Read more
As school absences soar in England because of covid-19 – and classroom mask-wearing guidelines are lifted – many teachers aren’t sure how best to improve ventilation amid winter temperatures Health | Analysis 26 January 2022 By Jason Arunn Murugesu A primary school in England Chris Bull / Alamy S More than 350,000 carbon dioxide monitors … Read more
Geologists may need to come up with a new explanation for the sources of volcanic activity in places like Iceland and Hawaii Earth 6 January 2022 By Alex Wilkins Hawaii’s Kilauea volcano erupting in 2018 U.S. Geological Survey via Getty Images The plumes of rock feeding Earth’s volcanic hotspots are much cooler than previously thought, … Read more
“The last star will slowly cool and fade away. With its passing, the Universe will become once more a void, without light or life or meaning.” So warned the physicist Brian Cox in the recent BBC series Universe. The fading of that last star will only be the beginning of an infinitely long, dark epoch. … Read more
After a detailed analysis of where the James Webb Space Telescope is now (29 December 2021) and how it got there, NASA determined the observatory should have enough propellant to operate in space for significantly more than 10 years in space. Webb’s mission lifetime was designed to be at least 5-1/2 years, and mission … Read more