Recent posts by Rick Pantaleo:
Scientists Trace Process Of How One Cell Can Develop into Complex Lifeforms
All forms of multicellular life here on Earth begin with just a single cell. From this one cell springs a stream of specialized cells that go on to serve needed functions to create and keep a new life-form alive. This complex process is one of nature’s greatest mysteries. A zebrafish egg cell forms a complex […]
Sunlight Can Hinder Oil Spill Cleanup Efforts
A 2003 report by the National Research Council of the National Academies of Sciences estimated that more than 1.3 million metric tons of petroleum make it into the sea each year. Among the tools used to lessen the impact of oil spills are chemical dispersants which break up the floating oil into small droplets. But […]
Galaxy Megamergers 1.4 – 1.5 Billion Years after the Big Bang
Two teams of astronomers have used the Atacama Large Millimeter/submillimeter Array (ALMA) and the Atacama Pathfinder Experiment (APEX), in Chile, to observe dense concentrations of so-called “starburst” galaxies. With these galaxies packing together so closely, the scientific teams realized that they were getting ready to violently collide and merge with each other, which would eventually […]
New DNA Structure Observed in a Living Cell
When you visualize a DNA structure, you probably think about the well-known ‘double helix’ that was revealed in 1953 by Cambridge University scientists James Watson and Francis Crick. The duo, along with physicist and molecular biologist Maurice Wilkins, won the 1962 Nobel Prize in Physiology or Medicine for what the Nobel Foundation described as their […]
Study: Planet Uranus Smells Like Rotten Eggs
A new study has confirmed what a number of scientists have long suspected about the ice giant planet, Uranus. Its upper atmosphere probably smells like rotten eggs. The rotten egg smell can be attributed to a flammable and poisonous gas called hydrogen sulfide. An international group of scientists led by Patrick Irwin, from the UK’s University of Oxford, […]
NASA Launches TESS the Exoplanet Hunter
The Transiting Exoplanet Survey Satellite, or TESS, will soon join NASA’s fleet of exoplanet-hunters that, so far, includes the Kepler, Hubble, and the Spitzer Space Telescopes. TESS was launched at 2251 UTC on April 18, 2018, from the Cape Canaveral Air Force Station in Florida. The space observatory is expected to survey about 85% of […]
Astronomers Search for the Sun’s Long-Lost Solar Siblings
While a family reunion is highly unlikely, Australian and European astronomers are still trying to find our Sun’s long-lost solar siblings which are now scattered throughout the sky. To do so, the scientists examined the of some 350,000 stars in the Milky Way – as though they were mapping each star’s DNA. The sun was […]
People Trust Audio/Video Material With High Sound Quality
When watching or listening to news or information reports, a new study published in Science Communication finds audio quality plays an important role in whether the listener will believe the speaker and trust the source of the material. The study authors are Eryn Newman from UCLA and the Australian National University and Norbert Schwarz from […]
SWARM Tracks the Ocean’s Magnetic Field
Earth’s magnetic fields protect us from deadly radiation from high-energy solar particles and cosmic rays. Most of this protective shield is produced by a vast amount of hot molten iron swirling around in our planet’s outer core. But there’s another little-known contributor to our geomagnetic field. It’s the salty and electrically conductive ocean. When salty ocean […]