Like a headline straight from an episode of Star Trek, scientists at NASA confirm that they recently discovered remnants of a “Zombie star” in the galaxy “NGC 1309”, nearly 110 million light-years away. Arising out of a very abnormal situation where an unusually weak supernova reaction obliterated only a portion of the white dwarf star, the researchers published their results yesterday, Aug. 7 in the journal Nature.
A summer filled with many memorable moments, the image of a night sky covered in light may be one for the record books, astronomers assure. In the second installment of the supermoon trilogy that is taking place this summer, this Sunday Aug. 10 will take the record for the next two decades as the largest full moon of the quarter-Century.
Adding a bit of science to the sweetness of ice cream, one Spanish physicist turned culinary mastermind has created a secret weapon he calls “Xamaleón” that’ll blow your mind and your taste buds away. A man of many talents, the master inventor Manuel Linares is Barcelonian marvel, whose many talents can best be explained by his inability to settle for less.
Sized up at only 3 feet long and one foot tall, a new dog-sized dinosaur of the early Jurassic period was recently indexed into the fossil record after Venezuelan paleontologists harvested skeletal fossils they found in the La Quinta rock formations of the Venezuelan Andes. With its fossils carbon dated at roughly 200-million-years-old, the new species named Laquintasaura venezuelae, because of the region it was discovered in, opens up an entirely new avenue of the evolutionary tree (also known as phylogeny) as it gives scientists a deeper understanding of the poorly documented late-Triassic/earl-Jurassic periods.
Integrating a creative concept that makes use of the ancient art of origami, Harvard School of Engineering PhD student Sam Felton introduced the world to his first self-folding autobots in the newest issue of the journal Science. Transforming from a flat sheet of paper, fully equipped with circuitry and a robotic brain, into a fully-functional robot in under four minutes, Felton's autonomous robots are causing quite a stir amongst the robotics community and the general public.
For bees, a nectar-filled flower field abundant with pollen may as well be the Holy Grail. And as such, protecting this sweet source is a primary cause for concern. Most species display a poker face of sorts to hide the spoils from anyone other than its nestmates, but one study shows that in Brazil one species of bees is defending its pollen with a much stronger signal.
In anticipation for the 27th annual phenomenon that is Discovery's Shark Week, which begins this upcoming Sunday Aug. 10, all eyes and ears are set to the open ocean for news of the violently stunning fish. As a part of their general tracking and surveillance protocols, the Woods Hole Oceanographic Institute has been tracking and documenting wildlife behavior of Great Whites off of the coast of Mexico using what they call their “REMUS SharkCam”. And it’s courtesy of this “REMUS SharkCam” that we are able to now experience first-hand the sensation of being ambushed by a Great White shark.
A new study by professors at Harvard Medical School may prove that both HIV and herpes can be treated one day with the same medications, but not cured. Both being retroviruses that infect cells in a similar manner, herpes and HIV can cause a lifetime of symptoms and even be extremely lethal, but researchers say that new inhibitor medication may block the spread of the viruses.
