For many of us, the idea of a job in science conjures up thoughts of pretty broad-stroke careers such as biologist, doctor, or engineer. We start to wonder how on Earth there can be a need for more research into certain topics and maybe even ponder the possibility that we are running out of new things to discover. These thoughts couldn’t be more wrong – in fact, the field of science is alive and well and growing faster than ever!
Today, pigeons have made themselves feel at home in the cities like New York, but they actually belong to the seaside cliffs in the rest of the world where they were domesticated thousands of years ago. They were farmed for protein at first, like chicken. Then they were bred as messengers. Around the 16th century, pigeons became show birds because of the hobbyists. And when Europeans moved to North America in the same century, they brought pigeons with them. To cut it short, the link between humans and pigeons goes way back.
The Milky Way might be right on our cosmic doorstep, but a group of astronomers suspects that the way we currently study it is stunting our understanding. Professor Ralf Klessen at Heidelberg University in Germany is one of four researchers who have recently begun a six-year project, ECOGAL, to try something new: imagine our home galaxy as one huge galactic ecosystem. Prof. Klessen believes that using this lens could answer fundamental questions about how stars and planets form, and how they shape the Milky Way’s future.
Explore 20 fascinating grizzly bear facts, from their habitat and diet to their physical characteristics and conservation status. Get a closer look at these majestic North American brown bears!
Here’s a quick guide to NASA’s payload classification: what is a payload, how NASA classifies them, and what are payload project categorizations.
Here are the top 10 Isaac Asimov quotes on science. Asimov was a prolific writer who wrote or edited more than 500 books (mostly science fiction and popular science).
Here are the orbital altitudes of many significant satellites (both artificial and natural – the latter only being the Moon) of Earth.
Trees may seem like just another plant to some, but they are also critical to sustaining life. Without trees, you wouldn’t be able to breathe. They give you oxygen and store the carbon dioxide you breathe out. Besides this basic fact of life, however, trees have many other ways that make this world liveable. Sustainable development is only one of those factors.
On November 10, 1970, the uncrewed Luna-17 spacecraft launched (see notes 1) and it delivered Lunokhod 1 to the lunar surface on November 17, 1970. Lunokhod 1 was the world’s first automatic self-propelled laboratory, fully controlled from Earth. With Lunokhod 1’s landing on the Moon, a new stage has begun in the exploration of the Earth’s only natural satellite by automatic devices.
Foil Arms and Hog, the Irish sketch comedy group previously published a video titled “Awkward Interview with Planet Earth“, addressing global warming and environmental issues in the group’s unique and funny style. Now, they published the second video of the Earth interview series: “Planet Earth is Pissed”.