News about PaperPanda, Open Access, and Research
The megadrought that has parched the southwestern United States and parts of Mexico over the last two decades is the worst to hit the region in at least 1,200 years, researchers said Monday. Human-caused global heating accounts for more than 40 percent of the dry spell’s intensity, they reported in the journal Nature Climate … Read more
There are few bigger questions than how life first got started on Earth, but trying to put in the detective work almost 4 billion years after the event is understandably hard going for scientists. Now it looks as though we might have found another clue. New research focuses specifically on peptides, smaller versions of … Read more
Underneath Antarctica’s vast ice sheets there’s a network of rivers and lakes. This is possible because of the insulating blanket of ice above, the flow of heat from within the Earth, and the small amount of heat generated as the ice deforms. Water lubricates the base of the ice sheets, allowing the ice to … Read more
By Adam Vaughan Glacier in the Fitz Roy mountain range in Los Glaciares National Park, Argentina Maciej Bledowski / Alamy People living in the Andes in South America will reach “peak water” – defined as a declining availability of water – much sooner than expected because the glaciers they rely on have been found to … Read more
The Arctic is warming faster than anywhere else on the planet, and the toll on Greenland‘s massive ice sheet is becoming achingly clear. According to new satellite data compiled by Polar Portal, a collection of four Danish government research institutions, Greenland has lost more than 5,100 billion tons (4,700 billion metric tons) of ice in … Read more
Sometimes astronomers and astrophysicists are working at such gigantic, mind-bending scales – in terms of both distance and time – that you can’t help but be awestruck at the new discoveries they keep coming out with. Case in point: a temperature check of the Universe in its youngest phase, just 880 million years after … Read more
Water flows mysteriously well through narrow carbon nanotubes, but now there is an explanation: it may all be due to quantum friction Physics 2 February 2022 By Chen Ly Narrow carbon nanotubes behave in an unusual way Shutterstock / ustas7777777 Water flows more easily through narrower carbon nanotubes than larger ones and we have struggled … Read more
We don’t know how life emerged on Earth, but one thing is certain: life as we know it on our planet wouldn’t exist without the water that wraps around the surface, runs in rivulets, and falls from the sky. Our planet is the only one known to have life, and the only one on … Read more
Cooler regions of the sea that protect coral reefs will be virtually wiped out by the end of this century, even under optimistic climate change scenarios Life 1 February 2022 By Carissa Wong A bleached coral reef Rainer von Brandis/Getty Images Cooler regions of the sea provide safe havens for coral reefs by protecting them … Read more
Melting ice can take on different shapes depending on the temperature of the water around it, new research reveals, giving us new insights into the complex physics that underlie this deceptively complicated transition. The team behind the research created ultra-pure ‘clear’ ice for their experiments, free from bubbles and impurities, then observed the ice … Read more