There was a lot of excitement when the Event Horizon Telescope collaboration showed the world the first-ever image of a black hole back in April 2019. Weighing in at 6.5 million times the mass of our Sun, this supermassive black hole is located in the galaxy Messier 87, or M87, some 55 million light-years away from Earth.
At least 820 million people suffer from hunger and malnutrition globally and human population growth is likely to exacerbate this problem in the future. It is becoming increasingly important to develop sustainable and efficient methods to meet food demands. To address this global issue, Dr. Sanju A. Sanjaya and Bagyalakshmi Muthan from West Virginia State University and their colleagues from Michigan State University have developed genetic technologies to improve the nutritional and energy content of crops. Their technology could increase production and improve profitability and sustainability across a range of important crop plants.
In April 2021, Ingenuity (the small helicopter stored in NASA’s Perseverance Mars rover) will perform the first powered, controlled flight on another planet. And NASA put a small piece of fabric on the Mars helicopter from the wing of the Wright Brothers’ first aircraft, the “Flyer 1”, which performed the first powered, controlled flight here on Earth on December 17, 1903. The swatch is bound in insulating tape to a wire under Ingenuity’s solar panel.
The destruction of tropical forests is a major contributor to biodiversity loss and the climate crisis. In response, conservationists and scientists like us are debating how to best catalyze the recovery of these forests. How do you take a patch of earth littered with tree stumps, or even a grassy pasture or palm oil plantation, and turn it back into a thriving forest filled with its original species?
David Burslem, University of Aberdeen; Christopher Philipson, Swiss Federal Institute of Technology Zurich, and Mark Cutler, University of Dundee
In fact, contrary to the popular belief, the lengths of day and night aren’t equal on an equinox. There’s another term for this: equilux.
Rain is a euphoric natural occurrence. Homeowners often install tin roofs, sheltered sunrooms, and skylights to maximize the calming effects of rainfall. Unfortunately, this tranquil weather pattern can negatively impact the global ecosystem if the built environment isn’t prepared for it.
As precipitation increases in the atmosphere, Earth’s surface experiences a rise in stormwater runoff. As rain and snowmelt travel along streets, roofs, and fields to reach a drain, it collects debris. The excess material then finds its way into essential bodies of water, introducing multiple types of environmental degradation.
NASA Climate Change channel has published a video showing the movement of carbon dioxide (CO2) between the air and sea.
Earth hasn’t always been a blue and green oasis of life in an otherwise inhospitable solar system. During our planet’s first 50 million years, around 4.5 billion years ago, its surface was a hellscape of magma oceans, bubbling and belching with heat from Earth’s interior.
Science writer Pat Brennan has published a great article on the NASA exoplanets website titled “Life in the Universe: What are the Odds?”. In the article, he published a diagram showing the habitable zones of our solar system, and the TRAPPIST-1 system. The amazing thing is how cramped the TRAPPIST-1 system is: the orbits of the TRAPPIST-1 planets (seven in total) could fit into the orbit of Mercury!
Founded almost 50 years ago, the Association for Women in Science (AWIS) is a global network that inspires bold leadership, research, and solutions that advance women in STEM, spark innovation, promote organisational success, and drive systemic change. In this exclusive interview, we speak with AWIS president and world-renowned biomedical innovator Dr. Susan Windham-Bannister, who describes the barriers that women face in the STEM workplace, and the many ways in which AWIS supports women in science and works towards eliminating inequality through systemic change.