In some beaches of Madagascar you can find in the sand, if you are lucky, fragments of egg shells that seem oddly large. They used to be, in fact, part of huge bird eggs, massive as watermelons (and able to become the most memorable omelet ever), laid by the avian titans: the extinct elephant birds […]
Planck data back standard cosmic evolution model, shake up dark-matter theories Data collected by the European Space Agency’s Planck space observatory have resulted in a detailed full-sky survey of the cosmic microwave background, the remnants of radiation left behind by the Big Bang 13.8 billion years ago, reaffirming the standard model of cosmic evolution. However […]
The Unknown Continent, t he White Desert. In the past only few -and brav e- people, such as Shackleton, Amundsen or Scott, dared to explore Antarctica. Nevertheless, in the fifties scientists started thinking that it was a very interesting place for doing research, due to its unique conditions, and started building more and more stations […]
Although not the most important among the many different animals studied by Charles Darwin during his amazing journeys on board the Beagle, the little finches from the Galápagos Islands have become one of the most popular representatives of Darwin’s theory of natural selection. They embody the process of speciation forced by environmental conditions, in the […]
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Hummingbird flight similar to that of insects Scientists recorded a hummingbird as it hovered then created a 3D model to assess the airflow patterns created by the flapping of its wings. While other birds use the downstroke of their wings to fly, hummingbirds use upstrokes and downstrokes to create small vortices that merge into one […]
Imagine there is another world in the universe similar to the Earth, where there are mountains, rivers and seas. There are also winds, volcanoes, clouds and rains… science fiction, no, such a world does exist and not too far from the Earth if one considers the scale of the universe. This is the largest moon […]
Almost everyone with basic knowledge of physics have one clear concept, there is a minimum temperature and it is called ‘absolute zero’. This temperature corresponds to -273.15 degrees in the Celsius scale. In the Kelvin or absolute scale it is zero, by definition. Furthermore, there is another idea that is also widespread: absolute zero is […]
How far are the stars we see every night? This was possibly one of the first questions early astronomers asked themselves and it is still among the most fundamental problems for present day astrophysics. In some sense, astronomers do build the Universe as the observing methods allow them to place neighboring stars, distant galaxies or […]
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Massive mountain range in Antarctica covered by protective ice The Gamburtsev Mountains in Antarctica are 100 million years old but look much younger due to lack of erosion because its massive expanse is entirely encased in ice. Scientists used airborne imaging technology to survey the range’s massive peaks and also found a network of subglacial […]
DNA damage is one of the most deleterious forms of cellular damage. If unrepaired, DNA lesions can create genomic instability, a hallmark of cancer . As most of the DNA is confined to the nucleus, for many years the study of DNA damage response has mainly focused on its nuclear effects, including mechanisms such as […]