News about PaperPanda, Open Access, and Research
Black holes may be well known for their gluttonous tendencies, but they’re not the only dead stars capable of slurping down passing objects. For years, evidence has been mounting that white dwarf stars also have a penchant for snacking – and on their own planets, no less. Now, for the first time, astronomers have … Read more
As basic science teaches us, changes in temperature can result in phase transitions in materials – like when water solidifies as ice in the freezing cold. However, in some cases the temperature that triggers the change is different depending on whether the material is cooling down or warming up. This is known as a hysteresis … Read more
Last year in August, a surprise tsunami in the South Atlantic Ocean mushroomed to distances over 10,000 kilometers (more than 6,000 miles) away, rippling through the North Atlantic, the Pacific, and the Indian Oceans. It was the first time a tsunami had been recorded in three different oceans since the 2004 Indian Ocean earthquake, … Read more
Vaughn Cooper sees white-tailed deer every day in his neighborhood outside Pittsburgh. The species is common in most US states. Pennsylvania alone has around 1.5 million white-tailed deer – about 30 per square mile (2.6 square km) – while the US has around 30 million in total. “My dog goes ripping after the deer … Read more
Peering back hundreds of millions of years into the past can turn up some astonishing findings – as it has with the discovery of a second species of opabiniid, a soft-bodied arthropod with a segmented exoskeleton that lived on the seafloor during the Miaolingian (509-497 million years ago). The original opadiniid, Opabinia regalis, was … Read more
The bottom of the Arctic Ocean, below the permanent sea ice, is not a friendly place for life. Down there in the cold dark, nutrients and vegetation are sparse; it’s expected that any life that does manage to eke out an existence under these conditions would be likewise thin on the ground. Scientists were … Read more
The number of active satellites in the night sky has more than doubled since 2019 – from around 2,200 to 5,000. That is mostly due to Starlink, a SpaceX project aimed at providing internet anywhere in the world through ‘mega-constellations’ of satellites. Since it began, Starlink has launched over 2,000 satellites. Unfortunately, the thousands of … Read more
As we battle against our own pandemic, sea stars are being killed in the millions by a horrible condition that melts them into a sickly goo. Sadly, there’s no straightforward way to help these animals, such as protecting them with a vaccine, so conservation biologists have been desperately trying to find another way. In … Read more
Although meteorites are known to fall all over the world, the environment and unique processes in Antarctica make them somewhat easier to find on the pristine, snowy landscape. Still, collecting meteorites in Antarctica is physically grueling and hazardous work. But what if there was a “treasure map” which showed the most probable places to … Read more
Domestic dogs are fertilizing the green spaces where they regularly poop and pee, and not in a good way. Even in nature reserves where dogs are supposed to be kept on leash, a new study in Belgium shows our pets’ droppings are a major disturbance to wildlife. Each year, researchers estimate the paths that run … Read more