News about PaperPanda, Open Access, and Research
The likelihood of lakes of liquid water hidden under Mars‘ southern polar ice cap is receding before our very eyes. Last year, a paper found that temperatures were likely far too cold for water to remain unfrozen in the region. Now, a new study has found that the radar signal interpreted as liquid water was … Read more
The great-granddaughters of men who smoked cigarettes when they were pre-pubescent boys are more likely to carry excess fat on their bodies as young women several decades later, a rather startling study has found. The discovery – which scientists claim is one of the “first human demonstrations of transgenerational effects of an environmental exposure … Read more
This article was originally published at The Conversation. The publication contributed the article to Space.com’s Expert Voices: Op-Ed & Insights. Daniel Perley, Reader of Astrophysics, Liverpool John Moores University Astronomers are increasingly drawing back the curtains on black holes. In the past few years, we have finally captured actual photos of these fearsome creatures and measured the gravitational waves — … Read more
A mysterious particle thought to have existed briefly just after the Big Bang has now been detected for the first time in the ‘primordial soup’. Specifically, in a medium called the quark-gluon plasma, generated in the Large Hadron Collider by colliding lead ions. There, amid the trillions of particles produced by these collisions, physicists managed … Read more
Last year, archaeologists presented an incredible first: the discovery of a mummified fetus within the abdomen of its mummified ancient Egyptian mother. Who the woman was, and how she died just over 2,000 years ago are both still mysteries – hence she is known as the Mysterious Lady. But now we know how the fetus … Read more
Located in the Okanagan Valley outside of Penticton, British Columbia, there is a massive radio observatory dedicated to observing cosmic radio phenomena. It’s called the Canadian Hydrogen Intensity Mapping Experiment (CHIME), a cylindrical parabolic radio telescope that looks like what snowboarders would call a “half-pipe”. This array is part of the Dominion Radio Astrophysical Observatory … Read more
The Solar System floats in the middle of a peculiarly empty region of space. This region of low-density, high-temperature plasma, about 1,000 light-years across, is surrounded by a shell of cooler, denser neutral gas and dust. It’s called the Local Bubble, and precisely how and why it came to exist, with the Solar System floating … Read more
China’s mysterious “Moon cube” is a mystery no longer. The big reveal: It’s a rock that’s not even shaped like a cube. The nation’s Yutu-2 rover discovered the object – which appeared to be a gray cube looming on the lunar horizon – in early December. The China National Space Administration (CNSA) dubbed it ‘mysterious hut’, playfully … Read more
Chemical leftovers from the very earliest days of our planet could still be present near Earth’s core, according to new research, and the discovery could improve our understanding of plate tectonics phenomena happening today. The team behind the study compares these leftovers to clumps of flour at the bottom of a bowl of batter … Read more
There are a lot of unexplained objects out there in the Universe, and astronomers have just found another one – a strange, dusty object that may be causing its host star to dim by up to 75 percent. Often, when we see something block out the light of its star it’s an exoplanet or … Read more