News about PaperPanda, Open Access, and Research
A rogue iceberg that drifted dangerously close to an Antarctic penguin population in 2020 and 2021 released billions of tons of fresh water into the ocean during its breakup. A new study, based on satellite data, tracks the aftermath of the once-mighty iceberg A-68a, which held the title of world’s largest iceberg for more than three years … Read more
Baleen whales are heavy drinkers. In just ten seconds, these giant mammals can down over five hundred bathtubs of ocean water, filtering out roughly 10 kilograms of krill in a single swig. All they have to do is open their mouths and lunge forward at roughly 10 kilometers an hour (6 miles per hour). The … Read more
When you think of the word “ephemeral”, many people will immediately conjure up the image of a soap bubble: delicate, gorgeous, and gone in a blink (or maybe a few). Now a team of physicists led by Aymeric Roux of the University of Lille in France has defied this cliché, creating a bubble that maintained … Read more
A spectacular coral reef has been found between 35 and 70 metres below sea level near Tahiti, and it seems to be in good health despite the global biodiversity crisis Environment 20 January 2022 By Chen Ly The pristine coral reef, newly discovered in deep water near Tahiti @alexis.rosenfeld This spectacular rose-shaped coral has been … Read more
The road to life in the Arabian desert might once have been paved with the dead. In what is now Saudi Arabia, archaeologists have revealed an impressive network of lost highways, marked by human tombs, that link one oasis to another. Many thousands of years ago, these roads would have led Bedouin people and … Read more
The Kingdom of Tonga doesn’t often attract global attention, but a violent eruption of an underwater volcano on January 15 has spread shock waves, quite literally, around half the world. The volcano is usually not much to look at. It consists of two small uninhabited islands, Hunga-Ha’apai and Hunga-Tonga, poking about 100 meters (328 … Read more
New Year’s Day comes around once every 47.5 hours on the roughly Neptune-sized exoplanet TOI 674b, which makes it something of a rare creature. In spite of years of hunting, surprisingly few middle-sized gas giants have ever been seen with orbits shorter than a few days in length, creating what astronomers refer to as a … Read more
Scientists onboard an icebreaker in Antarctica were blown away when they spied a trove of 60 million icefish nests dotting the floor of the Weddell Sea. The bonanza of nurseries – each guarded by a ghostly looking parent – represents the largest known breeding colony of fish. Autun Purser of the Alfred Wegener Institute was on the … Read more
Molecules containing carbon atoms, called organics, have been found all over Mars and could hypothetically have been formed by living organisms, but it seems they were not Space 13 January 2022 By Leah Crane The Allan Hills 84001 meteorite NASA/JSC/Stanford University Organic compounds – those containing carbon atoms – found all over Mars were produced … Read more
China’s Chang’e 5 lunar lander just marked a historic first: The spacecraft became the first to detect water on the moon at its landing site in real time. Chang’e 5 found water at its landing site near Oceanus Procellarum on the moon’s near side, using an instrument that detects water by determining spectral reflectance measurements … Read more