In this holiday season, our thoughts invariably turn to our families. But astronomers have a much broader definition of family. While the rest of us are researching ancestral histories back through terrestrial years, astronomers are building a family tree on a much broader scale: the origin of our home galaxy, the Milky Way. We are
It’s pretty much accepted that a mass extinction 66 million years ago, at the end of the Cretaceous period, led to the end of the age of the dinosaurs. This catastrophic event has been blamed on an asteroid impact, although volcanic eruptions and gradual climate change may also have been factors. Of course, this was
The astronomical world never ceases to amaze me. You may have heard about another pending near miss of Earth from an asteroid. Except it might not be an asteroid. Astronomers have identified an approaching “space object” — with the catchy name 2020 SO — heading toward Earth. But this one will not go whizzing by.
Dinosaurs are long extinct, right? Not quite. Scientists consider birds to be avian dinosaurs. They first appeared around 150 million years ago as small, raptor-like dinosaurs with feathers, just another branch on the dinosaur family tree. They survived for over 80 million years, occupying virtually every biological niche on the planet. Then came a major extinction
Have you ever wondered why the avocado fruit has such a large pit? It would’ve been so much easier to propagate if it was the size of, say an apple seed. (That’s why we’ve never heard of a Johnny Avocado.) Was this an evolutionary malfunction? Sort of. The current scientific evidence is the avocado plant
Parasites are probably the least popular life-form on Earth. For example, Guinea worm disease is a very painful infection cause by a parasite that can be found in areas of Africa without safe drinking water. The details are too gruesome to detail here and there is no treatment. The only good news is eradication efforts
Studying wildlife can sound exciting, but the truth is there’s a large element of unpredictability. Like when a bird runs up your phone bill. Researchers from the R.R.R. Conservation Network have been tracking the migration routes of 13 endangered steppe eagles since 2015 in an effort to refine conservation efforts. They thought they had a
The Coronavirus pandemic is turning society upside down. Should the grandparents (the most vulnerable population) watch the kids with the daycare centers closed? How can migrant workers come to harvest our food if the borders are sealed? Should the National Guard be mobilized to help other states when their own state might be next? Of
If you don’t believe good ideas can come from anywhere, here is some proof. On October 4, 1957 (when I was nine years old), the USSR launched Sputnik, the world’s first artificial satellite. To say this unexpected breakthrough shook up the U.S. scientific community would be an understatement. Two of those who took notice were
Assume you’re an astronaut flying to Mars sometime in the near future. When you finally arrive (after a trip of anywhere from 150 to 300 days), where will you stay? Someone is working on that. Suppose a robot with a 3D printer went first, gathered local materials, and printed the Martian base’s infrastructure before any
