News about PaperPanda, Open Access, and Research
Have you ever felt a creeping sensation that someone’s watching you? Then you turn around and you don’t see anything out of the ordinary. Depending on where you were, though, you might not have been completely imagining it. There are billions of things sensing you every day. They are everywhere, hidden in plain sight – … Read more
Our planet is home to many radioactive substances—not just in its geologic innards or its weapons caches but also in its hospitals, at its industrial sites and in its food processing plants. In Colorado, for instance, 27 buildings house scary-sounding elements such as cesium 137, cobalt 60, americium 241 and iridium 192. These materials are … Read more
Almost 200 people died in the German floods of 2021 because experts couldn’t convince them of impending danger. We must rethink how to get through to the public, says hydrologist Hannah Cloke Humans | Comment 23 February 2022 By Hannah Cloke Simone Rotella IMAGINATION is one of those powerful human traits that sets us apart … Read more
An old rocket will slam into the far side of the moon on 4 March and no one is accepting ownership of the space junk – similar objects could pose a safety risk for future crewed lunar missions Space 23 February 2022 By Jonathan O’Callaghan A representation of space junk in orbit around Earth ESA/ID&Sense/ONiRiXEL … Read more
On 4 March, a discarded rocket booster will slam into Hertzsprung Crater on the far side of the Moon—humanity’s first known piece of litter to unintentionally reach the lunar surface. Skywatchers originally thought the booster was part of a SpaceX Falcon 9 rocket launched in 2015. But now they say it is part of a … Read more
When we attached tiny, backpack-like tracking devices to five Australian magpies for a pilot study, we didn’t expect to discover an entirely new social behavior rarely seen in birds. Our goal was to learn more about the movement and social dynamics of these highly intelligent birds, and to test these new, durable and reusable … Read more
Early chances for life on Mars might have been diminished by meteorites. A new study suggests that a period of heavy cratering on the Red Planet (and elsewhere in the solar system) persisted 30 million years longer than thought. Studies of the Late Heavy Bombardment, as this period is called, also has implications for the … Read more
When researchers at the Large Hadron Collider discovered the elusive Higgs particle in 2012, it was a landmark for particle physics. It solved a very thorny problem, validating and allowing the Standard Model of particle physics to hold. But, as is often the case with new discoveries, while some questions were neatly answered, others … Read more
As 5G networks rolled out across the country last week, not everyone was focused on the prospect of faster mobile Internet communication speeds. Airlines warned that the new telecommunications standard could interfere with their instruments; this led to flight cancellations and delays. When service providers promised to postpone the deployment of 5G in the areas … Read more
On one level, chess seems like a simple game: 64 individual black or white squares, 16 pieces per side, and two competitors striving for conquest. Dig a little deeper though, and the game offers incredibly complex possibilities, posing challenges to chess theorists and mathematicians that can go unsolved for decades or even centuries. In … Read more