A Nearby Gamma Ray Burst Might Have Caused The Ordovician Extinction

Despite the obvious doom and gloom associated with mass extinctions, they have a tendency to capture our imagination. After all, the sudden demise of the dinosaurs, presumably due to an asteroid strike, is quite an enthralling story. But not all mass extinctions are quite as dramatic and not all have an easily identified culprit. The … Read more

10 Interesting Facts About Earth

Alien worlds may be all the rage, with their mystique and promise, but the orb we call home, planet Earth, has all the makings for a jaw-dropping blockbuster movie: from the drama of explosive volcanoes, past meteor crashes and catastrophic collisions between rocky plates to the seeming fantasy of the ocean’s deep abysses swirling with … Read more

What Is A Sea Cucumber? Why Sea Cucumbers Are So Expensive ? Sea Cucumbers Are In Danger!

Sea cucumbers are marine invertebrates that live on the seafloor. They are named for their unusual oblong shape that resembles a fat cucumber. Although people occasionally eat sea cucumbers, these chubby, worm-like sea creatures aren’t related to their namesake fruit and they wouldn’t make a very appetizing salad topping if you were expecting a crunchy, … Read more

The Future Of CubeSat Propulsion By Morpheus Space

The start-up company Morpheus Space develops complete nanosatellite propulsion systems opening up for a sustainable future in space. Morpheus Space addresses handling debris, collision avoidance and agile constellations in space by smart NewSpace solutions, in line with what UN indicates on a sustainable future in space. This is done by using also Artificial Intelligent (AI) … Read more

Quantum Computer, How Does It Work And What It Can Do?

Quantum computers perform calculations based on the probability of an object’s state before it is measured – instead of just 1s or 0s – which means they have the potential to process exponentially more data compared to classical computers. Classical computers carry out logical operations using the definite position of a physical state. These are … Read more

A Black Hole’s Mass

There are no scales for weighing black holes. Yet astrophysicists from the Moscow Institute of Physics and Technology have devised a new way for indirectly measuring the mass of a black hole, while also confirming its existence. They tested the new method, reported in the Monthly Notices of the Royal Astronomical Society. Active galactic nuclei … Read more

Sizes of Black Holes

Black holes are singularities, points of infinitely small volume with infinite density. Such incredibly compact objects cause infinite curvature in the fabric of spacetime. Everything that falls into a black hole is sucked toward the singularity. At some distance away from the singularity, the escape velocity exceeds the speed of light, which is called “the … Read more

Water Vapour on the Habitable-Zone Exoplanet K2-18b

Astronomers have finally uncovered water vapour in the atmosphere of a super-Earth exoplanet orbiting within the habitable zone of its star. The find means that liquid water could also exist on the rocky world’s surface, potentially even forming a global ocean. The discovery, made with NASA’s Hubble Space Telescope, serves as the first detection of … Read more

Is It Possible To Terraform Mars To Support Life As We Know It?

Science fiction writers have long featured terraforming, the process of creating an Earth-like or habitable environment on another planet, in their stories. Scientists themselves have proposed terraforming to enable the long-term colonization of Mars. A solution common to both groups is to release carbon dioxide gas trapped in the Martian surface to thicken the atmosphere … Read more

How Does Solar Sail Work?

Solar sails are a method of spacecraft propulsion using radiation pressure exerted by sunlight on large mirrors. These particles of light have no mass and yet when they impinge on something, they can impart momentum and provide a tiny push. You get shoved by photons every time you step out into the sunshine but their incredibly … Read more