News about PaperPanda, Open Access, and Research
We love it when a rocket comes together. In October 2021, NASA finished stacking the huge Space Launch System (SLS) rocket for its Artemis 1 moon mission inside the cavernous Vehicle Assembly Building at Kennedy Space Center (KSC) in Florida. That was a big milestone for the agency and its moon-exploration plans, and a newly … Read more
Archaeologists have uncovered the largest collection of ancient Egyptian ‘notepads’ found since the beginning of the 20th century. In the long-lost city of Athribis, in central Egypt, researchers have cataloged more than 18,000 inscribed pieces of pottery, some of which seem to have been written by students. The shards of inked pottery are known … Read more
Public library of DNA sequences will allow botanists to track the complex evolutionary history of flowering plants in unprecedented detail Life 1 February 2022 By Chen Ly Zinnia flowers in a meadow Shutterstock / Pheobus More than 9000 species of plants have had sections of their genomes sequenced as part of the Plant and Fungal … Read more
The James Webb Space Telescope has fired its thrusters and reached its orbital destination around a million miles (1.5 million kilometers) away from our planet, NASA said Monday, a key milestone on its mission to study cosmic history. At around 2:00 pm Eastern Time (1900 GMT), the observatory fired its thrusters for 5 minutes … Read more
The Earth Biogenome Project, a global consortium that aims to sequence the genomes of all complex life on earth (some 1.8 million described species) in ten years, is ramping up. The project’s origins, aims and progress are detailed in two multi-authored papers published today. Once complete, it will forever change the way biological research … Read more
You can watch live as a humongous asteroid flies safely past our planet today (Jan. 18). Italy’s Virtual Telescope Project, which is based in Rome, will host a livestream starting at 3 p.m. EST (2000 GMT), when asteroid 7482 (1994 PC1) is almost at its closest approach to our planet: 1 million miles or 1.6 … Read more
In a slow-moving universe, asteroids give us a rare chance to see things moving in real time. We have such a chance coming right up on the evening of Tuesday, January 18th, when 1.1-kilometer asteroid (7482) 1994 PC1 passes 1.23 million miles (1.98 million kilometers) from Earth. This is about five times the distance … Read more
A powerful underwater volcano eruption in Tonga on Saturday (Jan. 15) was captured as it happened in stunning images from an Earth-watching satellite, showing the sheer power for the explosive event in the South Pacific. The volcano eruption on the island of Hunga Tonga-Hunga Ha’apai is visible as a spectacular explosion in views from the … Read more
Multiple sclerosis – an autoimmune disease that affects the brain and spinal cord – may emerge after infection with Epstein-Barr virus (EBV). An estimated 90 to 95 percent of people catch EBV, also called human herpesvirus 4, by the time they reach adulthood, according to the clinical resource UpToDate. In children, the virus typically causes an asymptomatic or … Read more
There’s a new explanation for the moon’s former magnetic field, and it involves 60-kilometre-wide slabs of rock sinking through the lunar mantle Space 13 January 2022 By Matthew Sparkes The moon once had a relatively strong magnetic field NASA Moon rocks collected by the Apollo missions sparked a mystery because they showed signs of having formed … Read more