Humans Walk Weird. Scientists May Finally Know Why
[ad_1] For something so routine, walking is shockingly complicated. Biomechanists break a single step into several phases: First there’s touchdown, when your heel strikes the floor. Next comes the single…
How Do You Prove There’s Ice on the Moon? With a Lunar Flashlight
[ad_1] “For me, this is a dream measurement,” says David Paige, a planetary scientist at the University of California, Los Angeles who has been part of the mission since its…
Please Stop Freaking Out About This Giant Yellow Spider
[ad_1] Native to East Asia, Jorōs are one of many so-called golden orb weavers, named after the shiny silk they use to spin webs (which can be a whopping 10…
Air Quality Mirrors the Racial Segregation of US Neighborhoods
[ad_1] Racial inequity biases algorithms, skews Covid-19 death rates, and exacerbates the digital divide. Your race is even a good predictor of what’s in the air you breathe—and now, a…
The ‘Brightest of All Time’ Gamma-Ray Burst Sparks a Supernova Hunt
[ad_1] On the morning of October 9, astronomers’ inboxes pinged with a relatively modest alert: NASA’s Swift Observatory had just detected a fresh burst of energy, assumed to be coming…
A New Tool for Eruption Forecasting: Carbon-Catching Drones
[ad_1] She and her team flew these drones while they were standing inside the crater to compare faraway atmospheric measurements with those closer to the source. They also used traditional…
Where Do High-Energy Cosmic Rays Come From? A Star’s Last Gasp
[ad_1] Gamma rays from this supernova remnant have been seen by telescopes since 2007, but exceptionally energetic light wasn’t detected until 2020, when it was picked up by the HAWC…
As Wildfires Get More Extreme, Observatories Are at Greater Risk
[ad_1] It was 4 am on June 17 when Michelle Edwards, associate director of Kitt Peak National Observatory, got the news: A wildfire had breached the road up to the…
NASA is Crowdsourcing Cloud Research—on Mars
[ad_1] At the end of 2020, planetary scientist Marek Slipski found himself glued to his computer, spending countless hours—more than he’d like to admit, he says—poring over image after image…
What Turtles Can Teach Humans About the Science of Slow Aging
[ad_1] There are three ways to die: of injury, disease, or old age. Over time, humans have gotten better at avoiding the first two, but as we get older, senescence—the…