News about PaperPanda, Open Access, and Research
An asteroid discovered in the 19th century has just been identified as the most crowded we’ve ever found. It’s called 130 Elektra, or just Elektra for short, and astronomers have just discovered that it has not one, nor two, but three smaller satellite companions, or moons. That not only makes it the most numerous asteroid … Read more
An extensive new study has found evidence that links physical attractiveness to the functioning of the immune system. While there are still numerous questions left to answer, the researchers suggest their findings show “a relationship between facial attractiveness and immune function is likely to exist.” Just how reliable that relationship is remains to be seen, however. … Read more
About 95 million years ago in what is now Australia, a massive crocodile relative clamped down with its powerful jaws on the small body of a dinosaur and gulped nearly all of it down in one mighty swallow. The crocodilian died soon after, and as it fossilized, so did the partly-digested and near-complete dinosaur … Read more
Astronomers have just found an absolute monster of a galaxy. Lurking some 3 billion light-years away, Alcyoneus is a giant radio galaxy reaching 5 megaparsecs into space. That’s 16.3 million light-years long, and constitutes the largest known structure of galactic origin. The discovery highlights our poor understanding of these colossi, and what drives their … Read more
What appears to be a teeny tiny alien world has just been found orbiting the Solar System’s closest stellar neighbor. The exoplanet candidate, named Proxima d, orbits a star named Proxima Centauri: a small, dim red dwarf star just 4.2 light-years from the Sun. Amazingly, the exoplanet is just a quarter of the mass … Read more
Since at least the 1920s, scientists have been puzzled by the turbulence that arises when a liquid hits a wall. For instance, what happens when water violently sloshes against the side of a pool or when crude oil hits the inside of a pipeline? At long last, researchers have discovered equations that describe the intricacies … Read more
This article was originally published at The Conversation. The publication contributed the article to Space.com’s Expert Voices: Op-Ed & Insights. David Rothery, Professor of Planetary Geosciences, The Open University Research has shown that the Earth trails an asteroid barely a kilometer across in its orbit about the sun — only the second such body to have ever been … Read more
A pair of asteroids orbiting the Sun formed less than 300 years ago, a new study has revealed. This makes them the youngest pair of asteroids ever discovered in the Solar System, by a factor of 10. The discovery could tell us more about how asteroids crumble, while raising some intriguing new questions. “It’s … Read more
COVID-19 has infected every part of our lives over the last two years. The ways we work, engage with our surroundings, and see family and friends have all been drastically altered during the ongoing pandemic. By far the worst have been the deaths of all the loved ones the disease has taken from us. … Read more
By Gege Li THIS is a newly discovered colony of gentoo penguins on Andersson Island off the Antarctic Peninsula, photographed by Tomás Munita. The animals and their 75 nests were found by researchers from Stony Brook University in New York during a Greenpeace expedition to the frigid region. The team is surveying, and filming, penguins … Read more