News about PaperPanda, Open Access, and Research
Time-lapse imaging of Yutu 2 progress across the lunar landscape. (Image credit: NASA/GSFC/Arizona State University) China’s Yutu 2 rover has returned a view of its path over three years of travels across the harsh environment of the moon’s far side. The new images — released by Ourspace, a Chinese language science outreach channel affiliated with … Read more
China’s Yutu 2 rover has made yet another curious discovery during its travels on the far side of the moon, this time turning up a pair of translucent glass globules. The rover’s panoramic camera spotted the two glass spheres as it drove across the surface of Von Kármán crater on the far side of the … Read more
An ancient skull uncovered at a 6,000-year-old megalithic monument in Spain still holds signs of what would have been a brutal ear surgery. Archaeologists suspect the patient probably had a double-sided acute middle ear infection, which can cause earaches and fevers. Without treatment, fluid can gather behind the eardrum, possibly causing a visible lump … Read more
Riley Stearns’s dark comedy about a death match between clones has an appealing premise, but it doesn’t quite hit the mark Humans 23 February 2022 By Davide Abbatescianni Preparing for a death match against your double brings mental and physical challenges Courtesy of Sundance Institute Dual Riley Stearns Coming in 2022 FROM its very first scene, … Read more
There’s an ongoing saga about the object that will smash into the far side of the moon early next month. First thought to be the upper stage of the SpaceX Falcon 9 rocket that launched the DSCOVR Earth-observation spacecraft in February 2015, it was then tagged as a leftover from the launch of China’s Chang’e … Read more
China’s Yutu-2 mission has made another fascinating discovery on the far side of the Moon. Glistening amid the dry, gray dust, the rover’s panoramic camera picked out two small intact spheres of translucent glass. Such spherules can record information about the Moon’s history, including the composition of its mantle and impact events. Yutu-2 was … Read more
Theoretical cosmologist Katie Mack spends a lot of time on Twitter. Mack, at North Carolina State University, joined the platform to talk about science under the moniker “Astro Katie” more than a decade ago. Since then, her fun and informative posts about space have earned her nearly half a million followers. Unfortunately, she says, there … Read more
A giant exoplanet 855 light-years away is so extreme, it has clouds of vaporized metals and rains liquid rubies and sapphires. That’s the conclusion astronomers have reached after probing its atmosphere – the most detailed such analysis to date, revealing for the first time the conditions and dynamics of the exoplanet’s permanent night side. … Read more
Have you looked at the international rankings of the world’s happiest countries lately? Measuring a country’s subjective levels of happiness has become something of an international sport. People look with interest (and a little jealousy) to nations such as Denmark, which consistently tops the world’s happiness rankings. It has also led to Danish practices … Read more
The international scientific community has long been discussing the need to keep the far side of the moon free from human-made radio frequency intrusion. Doing so can make possible observations of the unexplored early epochs of the universe known as the dark ages and cosmic dawn, scientists say. The moon’s far side always faces away … Read more