News about PaperPanda, Open Access, and Research
Earth’s interior is not a uniform stack of layers. Deep in its thick middle layer lie two colossal blobs of thermo-chemical material. To this day, scientists still don’t know where both of these colossal structures came from or why they have such different heights, but a new set of geodynamic models has landed on a possible answer … Read more
Just over four light-years away, our Solar System’s closest neighboring stars can be found. There’s red dwarf Proxima Centauri, at a distance of 4.2 light-years; and, just a little farther, at 4.37 light-years, a binary system of Sun-like stars – Alpha Centauri AB. We don’t yet know if there are any Earth-like worlds orbiting … Read more
The Cambrian Explosion – around 541 million years ago – was when life and organisms really got going on planet Earth. Now new research has revealed how that explosion of life has left behind traces deep within Earth’s mantle. For scientists, it shows the connected interplay between Earth’s surface and what lies beneath, as … Read more
A recently discovered asteroid seemed to be on a trajectory to hit Earth next year, but orbit recalculation eventually revealed it will miss our planet. The 230-feet-wide (70 meters) asteroid 2022 EA1 was discovered on Jan. 7 and frightened space defenders because it appeared bound to collide with our planet on July 4, 2023 — … Read more
Admit it. We all have our favorite world map, where the place we call home sits right at the center. When that world map is flipped upside down or shifted to the left or right, everything feels… unbalanced. More than just a classroom squabble, it’s a reflection of how maps can shape how we … Read more
Paul M. Sutter is an astrophysicist at SUNY Stony Brook and the Flatiron Institute, host of Ask a Spaceman and Space Radio, and author of How to Die in Space. The Hadean era was a pretty wild ride. Earth had just formed, but meteorites constantly rained from the sky, pummeling our young planet for over 700 million years. Those impacts posed a … Read more
Earlier this year, the discovery of a potentially hazardous asteroid took astronomers on a roller coaster ride. On 6 January 2022, astronomers at the Mount Lemmon Observatory in Arizona discovered an asteroid roughly 70-meters (230 ft) across. Based on their initial observations, it appeared this object – called ‘2022 AE1‘ – could potentially hit Earth on its next pass, on … Read more
Telescopes on Earth and in space had the sun safely in their sights when NASA’s Parker Solar Probe made its 11th daring close flyby of the star on Feb. 25, all to understand more about the sun’s behavior. To be clear, the Parker Solar Probe wasn’t directly visible in the various instruments, as the van-sized … Read more
On Feb. 4, 2022, SpaceX launched 49 satellites as part of Elon Musk‘s Starlink internet project, most of which burned up in the atmosphere days later. The cause of this more than US$50 million failure was a geomagnetic storm caused by the Sun. Geomagnetic storms occur when space weather hits and interacts with the … Read more
Katie Yu Watch Upload, a sci-fi comedy that satirises the idea of a digital afterlife, returns for a second season. Created by Greg Daniels (Parks and Recreation, Space Force), the series will be available on Amazon Prime Video from 11 March. Visit New Scientist Live will be at Manchester Central and online from 12 March. … Read more