Mysterious ‘Russian Flu’ 130 Years Ago May Have Been a Coronavirus, Scientists Say

In 1889, a mysterious respiratory illness emerged in Russia and then spread across the globe, triggering at least three waves of infection over the course of several years. Now, some scientists suspect that this illness, dubbed the “Russian flu,” actually may have been caused by a pandemic coronavirus similar to SARS-CoV-2, the virus that causes COVID-19, The New … Read more

Scientists discover lost range of ‘supermountains’ three times longer than the Himalayas

Twice in our planet’s history, colossal mountain ranges that towered as tall as the Himalayas and stretched thousands of miles farther reared their craggy heads out of the Earth, splitting ancient supercontinents in two. Geologists call them the “supermountains.” “There’s nothing like these two supermountains today,” Ziyi Zhu, a postdoctoral student at The Australian National … Read more

Privacy policies are four times as long as they were 25 years ago

A machine learning analysis of 50,000 privacy policy texts shows they have ballooned to an average of over 4000 words since 1996 Technology 3 February 2022 By Chris Stokel-Walker Privacy policies are getting harder to read Antons Jevterevs / Alamy Privacy policies have become longer and less readable, and require more access to user data … Read more

New Models Let Us Dive Into One of The Brightest Star Explosions We’ve Ever Seen

A star that exploded into brightness nearly 200 years ago can now be explored in glorious, multi-wavelength detail. In a new video, a team of scientists modeled the Homunculus Nebula around the star Eta Carinae in three dimensions, enabling insight into this incredible event.   The binary system Eta Carinae started erupting in the late … Read more

Astronomers Detect Rare ‘Missing Link’ Black Hole in Our Closest Galactic Neighbor

A rare treasure that could shed light on the evolution of black holes has been discovered in the Milky Way’s closest large galactic neighbor. In a cluster of stars in the Andromeda galaxy, aka M31, astronomers studied changes in light to identify a black hole clocking in at almost 100,000 times the mass of the … Read more

China’s $1 trillion ‘artificial sun’ fusion reactor just got five times hotter than the sun

China’s “artificial sun” has set a new world record after superheating a loop of plasma to temperatures five times hotter than the sun for more than 17 minutes, state media reported.  The EAST (Experimental Advanced Superconducting Tokamak) nuclear fusion reactor maintained a temperature of 158 million degrees Fahrenheit (70 million degrees Celsius) for 1,056 seconds, … Read more

Newly Discovered ‘Mini’ Supermassive Black Hole Is Among The Smallest Ever Found

Because they emit nothing we can detect, there are many things about black holes we simply do not know. Amongst the most perplexing are supermassive black holes, millions to billions of times the mass of our Sun. Since black holes form from the cores of massive dead individual stars, how do supermassive behemoths grow so … Read more

The Same N95 Mask Can Be Decontaminated at Least 25 Times, New Study Indicates

With the enhanced virulence of the Omicron variant, some experts are urging us all to upgrade cloth and surgical masks to the much more protective N95s, but supply remains a concern. The limited supply is why this advice has so far been held back, but a new study may make this more feasible – suggesting … Read more

What We Learned From a Dead Star Erupting With The Fire And Fury of 100,000 Suns

In a nearby galaxy, a rare kind of dead star erupted into a giant outburst. This in itself may not be so peculiar; but, for the first time, changes in its brightness during this event have been documented in detail, giving scientists a window into understanding the processes that produce these colossal flares.   The … Read more

Virgin Orbit lands in Times Square NYC to ring NASDAQ bell

NEW YORK — Another kind of countdown hit New York City’s Times Square Friday (Jan. 7) as a commercial spaceflight company celebrated joining the NASDAQ stock exchange. Virgin Orbit, the satellite-launching company founded by Richard Branson, brought one of its 70-foot-long (21 meters) rocket, LauncherOne, to Times Square amid New York City’s first sizeable snow … Read more