News about PaperPanda, Open Access, and Research
Thousands of feet beneath the surface of Monterey Bay off California, scientists recently captured footage of a fish with a bulbous, translucent head and green orb-like eyes that peer out through its forehead. This bizarre creature, known as a barreleye fish (Macropinna microstoma), is very rarely seen. Researchers with the Monterey Bay Aquarium Research … Read more
By Simon Ings Getty Images/iStockphoto The first rule of popular science is to reveal the wonder and mystery of the world. For that reason, Sentient (Picador), written by photographer and wildlife film-maker Jackie Higgins, is my personal pick of the year. It reveals how the 86 billion nerve cells in the human nervous system afford … Read more
A major part of tackling the climate crisis is in understanding what’s happening in Earth’s atmosphere in terms of heating, cooling, and the factors playing into that. Now scientists have discovered a massive new source of nitrous oxide (N2O), one of the greenhouse gases causing our planet to warm up. This nitrous oxide source … Read more
A sleep technique described by surrealist artist Salvador Dalí and famous inventor Thomas Edison might actually work to inspire creativity, researchers have found. To get the creativity boost, you essentially need to wake up just as a certain sleep stage sets in, where reality seems to blend into fantasy. To use the technique, visionaries … Read more
A deepwater robot, humming through the twilight zone of Monterey Bay, has managed to capture incredibly rare video footage of a giant phantom jelly. In 34 years of conducting deep sea studies, the Monterey Bay Aquarium Research Institute (MBARI) has sent out remotely operated vehicles (ROVs) to the deep sea on thousands of occasions, and … Read more
A new discovery has deepened the mystery of galaxies without dark matter. In a galaxy named AGC 114905, 250 million light-years away, astronomers could find no trace of the mysterious stuff, even after 40 hours of detailed observation and subsequent analysis. The result, to be published in the Monthly Notices of the Royal Astronomical … Read more
The supermassive black hole at the center of our Milky Way galaxy periodically “burps” a “mini-jet” out into space. The Milky Way‘s supermassive black hole, known as Sagittarius A* (Sgr A*), is over 4 million times more massive than our sun. Its strong gravitational pull draws nearby stars and gas clouds into its accretion disk. … Read more
In 1981, as a young scientist, I applied for my dream job as a geologist with the British Antarctic Survey. As a child, I had adored snow and ice. Winter was my favorite season (and still is). My most cherished book was Wilson A. Bentley’s atlas of snowflake photographs, and I avidly read the accounts … Read more
Scientists have just proven that the freezing temperature of water can be even lower than what we thought was possible. Taking tiny droplets of water, up to just 150 nanometers in size, a team of engineers at the University of Houston has pushed the critical temperature threshold to -44 degrees Celsius (-47.2 degrees Fahrenheit) – … Read more
The International Astronomical Union (IAU) has a very strict definition of the word “planet”. According to the definition – drafted, tweaked, and agreed upon in August 2006 – an astronomical body is officially a planet if it orbits the Sun, has sufficient mass to be spherical, and has cleared the neighborhood around its orbit. … Read more