News about PaperPanda, Open Access, and Research
We stick calendars on the wall or load them up on our phones, but the people of the third millennium BCE used giant rocks, new research suggests. A new study explains how Stonehenge may have originally been used to keep track of a solar year (aka tropical year) of 365 and a quarter days, which … Read more
Black holes could make a strong case for being the most fascinating phenomena in the whole Universe, and scientists are constantly discovering more about the way that they work and behave – including how they’re created in the first place. Now, a new study of an unusually misaligned one some 10,000 light-years away from … Read more
Not all planetary systems are alike. Out there in the big, wide galaxy, a number of different configurations have been spotted, some vastly different from our home system. These include extrasolar planets, or exoplanets, that orbit not one, but two stars, like the fictional Star Wars world of Tatooine. Now, for the first time, astronomers … Read more
A meteor that exploded in the sky over Chelyabinsk, Russia in 2013 could have also been somehow involved in the giant impact that formed the Moon. This tantalizing finding comes thanks to a new way of dating collisions between rocks in space, based on microscopic analysis of minerals within meteorites. Although further investigation is warranted, … Read more
A new collision-warning system could help satellite operators sleep a little easier. The prototype system, developed by the U.S. National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration (NOAA), is designed to alert operators when their spacecraft may be on a collision course with another object. That’s a real and growing concern, given how crowded Earth orbit is becoming. … Read more
Successfully achieving nuclear fusion holds the promise of delivering a limitless, sustainable source of clean energy, but we can only realize this incredible dream if we can master the complex physics taking place inside the reactor. For decades, scientists have been taking incremental steps towards this goal, but many challenges remain. One of the … Read more
An extensive new study has found evidence that links physical attractiveness to the functioning of the immune system. While there are still numerous questions left to answer, the researchers suggest their findings show “a relationship between facial attractiveness and immune function is likely to exist.” Just how reliable that relationship is remains to be seen, however. … Read more
Nothing on Earth can live without water. The origin of water on Earth, therefore, is the origin of life in the Solar System (and the Universe) as we know it. Figuring out where and how our world obtained its water might be key to finding life on other worlds, but the truth is we don’t … Read more
We’ve just taken another step closer to time crystals that can be used for practical applications. New experimental work has yielded a room-temperature time crystal in a system that is not isolated from its ambient surroundings. This, the researchers say, paves the way for chip-scale time crystals that can be used in real-world settings, … Read more
NASA and China plan to mount crewed missions to Mars in the next decade. While this represents a tremendous leap in terms of space exploration, it also presents significant logistical and technological challenges. For starters, missions can only launch for Mars every 26 months when our two planets are at the closest points in … Read more