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We can send satellites in the orbit and people to the Moon and predict solar eclipses thousands the years into the future but yet we cannot reliably predict the weather…
Exotic chemistry: World’s oldest water and the rarest element
This week’s SciShow news brings you discoveries involving two of the most exotic substances on Earth – the world’s rarest element and the world’s oldest water. Two great tastes that taste great together?
How fast does the Earth rotate?
The ground feels firm and solid beneath your feet. Of course, the Earth is rotating, turning once on its axis every day. Fortunately gravity keeps you firmly attached to the planet, and because of momentum, you don’t feel the movement – the same way you don’t feel the speed of a car going down the highway. But how fast does the Earth rotate?
How Edwin Hubble became the 20th century’s greatest astronomer
When the great minds of science gathered at the U.S. National Museum on April 26, 1920, the universe was at stake. Or at least the size of it, anyway. In scientific circles, it was known as the Great Debate, and although they didn’t know it at the time, the astronomy giants Harlow Shapley and Heber Curtis—the two men who came to Washington, D.C., to present their theories—were about to have their life’s work eclipsed by Edwin Hubble, a young man who would soon become known as the greatest astronomer since Galileo Galilei.
Can brain scans really tell us what makes something beautiful?
When art meets neuroscience, strange things happen.
No swarms in space: DARPA axes $200mn ‘fractionated sat’ project
After spending more than $200 million, the Pentagon’s advanced research branch has decided to scrap one of its key space projects, System F6, which aimed to distribute functions of a big satellite into several small ones orbiting in a tight formation. The project, fully named Future, Fast, Flexible, Fractionated Free-flying Spacecraft United by Information Exchange, [...]
Asteroid 9 times size of ocean liner approaches Earth
The 1998 QE2 asteroid has the physical mass to potentially deliver life on Earth a knockout punch, being 2.7km in length. It is to buzz our planet on May 31, aweing the stargazing community. Officially known as Asteroid 1998 QE2, the ‘minor planet’, as astronomers refer to these space objects, is about nine times the [...]
Weird gravity waves pulse from a tropical cyclone
May 13, the Suomi NPP satellite captured a fascinating image of Tropical Cyclone Mahasen as it moved northeast over the Bay of Bengal. The clouds of the storm itself weren’t optically visible in the darkness of a nearly new Moon, but lightning flashes within it were… as well as the eerie ripples of atmospheric gravity waves spreading outwards from its center.
Opportunity Mars Rover blazes past 40 year old space driving record
Now more than 9 years and counting into her planned mere 90 day mission to Mars, NASA’s legendary Opportunity rover has smashed past another space milestone and established a new distance driving record for an American vehicle on another world this week.
What fear can teach us
Imagine you’re a shipwrecked sailor adrift in the enormous Pacific. You can choose one of three directions and save yourself and your shipmates — but each choice comes with a fearful consequence too. How do you choose? In telling the story of the whaleship Essex, novelist Karen Thompson Walker shows how fear propels imagination, as it forces us to imagine the possible futures and how to cope with them.
