Medicine & TechnologyFor years, astronomers have pondered the origins and the contents of the mysterious G2 object floating in the center of the Milky Way galaxy. Drifting towards the galaxy’s supermassive black hole, the passing cloud was thought to be composed entirely of hydrogen gas, giving it the nickname “G2”. But earlier this past summer researchers found that G2 had come in close contact with the black hole, and it survived—leading them on a new theory as to what the mysterious object could be.
Looking for a way to observe king penguin colonies in the ice fields of Antarctica, researchers led by Yvon Le Maho from the University of Strasbourg, France developed a fluffy little rover shaped in the image of a penguin chick so that they could get an up-close view of the male penguins’ nesting behaviors.
Earlier this week Australians caught a glimpse of a bizarre sight in their morning sky, something that’s not only rare, but also quite strange to see. Looking like a vortex for clouds, with a looming rainbow trapped in the center, Australians across the continent snapped shots of what they thought was an alien spacecraft, or rather a hole in the atmosphere. Taking to social media, the strange images garnered much attention, but as soon as the mystery was up, the strange solution was found.
It’s the start of November, and that means the holiday season is fast approaching. Shorter days, sweet desserts and family dinners are on their way, but that doesn’t mean there isn’t a bit of time left for some learning. So today we’re taking a familiar face and learning ten new facts about the giblets and meat that we’ve come to know as our Thanksgiving turkey dinner.
It’s a story, much like the ones you’ve heard before. An orphaned bird must stand alone within its flock, to find its own place amongst its peers. But this isn’t the story of an ugly little duckling that turns into a swan, or one of a tap-dancing emperor penguin with a knack for hip hop. This is a tale of a remote-operated rover that brought researchers into the fold of a penguin colony, for a view unlike anything we’ve seen before.
About 40 years late to the “Space Race”, this morning Saturday Nov. 1, 2014, China became the third nation in the world to successfully orbit the moon and return to Earth to tell the tale. As China’s space agency continues to move forward in its ambitious space program, the lunar orbiter marks a great first success for the mission, and undoubtedly shows its growing presence as a space agency in the world. The eight day turn-around trip came to a close this morning after the test lunar orbiter landed about 500 km away from Beijing, in the Siziwang Banner of China’s Inner Mongolia Autonomous Region according to the nation’s Xinhua state-run news agency.
It’s a fanged creature unlike any other, and it clearly won’t need a costume this Halloween. The unusual herbivore, the Kashmir Musk Deer is a species that was once native to the northern ranges of Afghanistan. Though, in spite of the fact that the species has not been seen for more than 60 years, a team of researchers headed by the Wildlife Conservation Society (WCS) recently revealed that more than a handful of the rare species have been identified in alpine meadows of northeast Afghanistan, just in time to come out for Halloween.
It’s a photo worth a thousand words, and one of a near impossible candidate. Captured in the national forest near Grand Canyon National Park, authorities revealed Thursday Oct. 30 that a collared endangered gray wolf from the northern Rocky Mountains may be roaming the lands. A species that environmentalists and national park officials haven’t seen since the 1940’s when the gray wolf was driven to extinction in the area.
Since her disappearance on July 2, 1937, many have questioned the final hours of pilot Amelia Earhart’s life. Was she lost at sea when her plane disappeared over the South Pacific? Or did she go down with her plane? While many feared the worst, urban legends abounded creating alternate endings for Earhart’s expedition around the world—and it appears that one of those endings may be more frightening that the plane crash itself.
For a field-based ecologist, the continental United States is pretty much a textbook of well-known organisms. The thrilling new species often making front-page news are more likely to found in the tropics or open-oceans, than in the plains of the Midwest or the large metropolis cities of the East and West coasts. With such well-defined niche habitats, the species in the United States aren’t too surprising to the experienced biologist, however, sometimes new life can be found where you’d least expect it. No, we’re not talking about the mutant turtles in the sewers of New York City, but it does appear the jam-packed hub may be home to another unique amphibian, colloquially known as the “Atlantic Coast Leopard Frog”.
Amelia Earhart was the first female of her kind; in fact, she set records for it. As the first female aviator to ever cross the Atlantic Ocean alone, she made the headlines of the 1920’s. And now, almost a century later, she’s still making news as the mystery of her disappearance comes more into light. After decades of searching across the Pacific Ocean, nearest the equator, researchers revealed this week that they may have found a bit of Earhart’s wreckage from the plane she disappeared in.
“At its simplest, biotechnology harnesses cellular and biomolecular processes to develop technologies and products that help improve our lives and the health of our planet.”