#ICYMI: Dr. Andrew Siemion received the Drake Award Thursday night. Ahead of the awards reception, communications specialist Beth Johnson sat down at the SETI Institute offices and talked with him about his career so far, receiving the Drake Award, and his vision for the future of SETI research.
https://www.seti.org/keeping-eye-comet-a3-next-naked-eye-comet-candidate
In early 2023, a new comet took stargazers by surprise. Called Comet C/2023 A3 (Tsuchinan-Atlas), this icy visitor was discovered by two separate observatories in South Africa and China. Comet A3 had scientists and amateurs alike wondering if it would be the next naked-eye comet to light our skies. As 2024 unfolds, we eagerly anticipate whether Comet A3 will deliver the breathtaking celestial display we have all been hoping for!
The SETI Institute is proud to learn that Science Advisory Board member Mike Garrett was elected a Fellow of the Royal Society yesterday. Prof. Garrett is the Sir Bernard Lovell Chair of Astrophysics and the Director of Jodrell Bank Centre for Astrophysics (JBCA), Department of Physics and Astronomy, University of Manchester.
#PPOD: This photo was taken by NASA's Bill Dunford near Malad City, Idaho, on May 11, 2024; the International Space Station appears as a white streak in this 8-second exposure. Credit: NASA/Bill Dunford
🐚 Connaissez-vous les "laisses de mer" ? Il s'agit des débris naturellement déposés sur les plages par les vagues et le vent, dont l'accumulation constitue un véritable écosystème.
🎨 J'en ai illustré quelques-uns des éléments, dont certains sont de véritables petits trésors qu'on peut s'amuser à dénicher et répertorier !
In 2007, Roar Publishing planned a book about evolution. I created some artworks for it but the book was shelved. Here is my draft drawing for the Ordovician spread that never happened...
Perusing the science news this morning, as I do, I came across an interesting article about scientists finding an effect of menthol on Alzheimer's disease. Anecdotally, my nan had a obsession for sucking on boiled mints, which only grew with her sad decline.
I remember worrying that maybe the mints were making her worse, but maybe it was her way of fighting back against the disease ...
Why don't we ever see the far side of the moon? From Earth, it appears as if the moon doesn't rotate at all, but it does spin on its axis, just like Earth does. However, the moon is tidally locked to our planet. That means it takes just as long for the moon to rotate about its axis as it does to orbit Earth — roughly one month.
#PPOD: M51 (NGC 5194) lies about 27 million light-years away from Earth in the constellation Canes Venatici and is trapped in a tumultuous relationship with its near neighbor, the dwarf galaxy NGC 5195. The interaction between these two galaxies has made these galactic neighbors one of the better-studied galaxy pairs in the night sky. Credit: ESA/Webb, NASA & CSA, A. Adamo (Stockholm University) and the FEAST JWST team
Why were the northern and southern lights so visible over the past weekend? Let's talk about the sun's solar cycle, solar maximum, what causes the northern lights -- and even a conspiracy theory that the aurora were artificially created.
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Could play have evolutionary benefits? From sledding crows to roughhousing wolves to bees rolling balls, we examine how play shapes the animal kingdom. Plus why children need risky play. It’s “The Play’s the Thing” this week on Big Picture Science.
#PPOD: As carbon dioxide frost sublimates with the warming Martian spring, a pattern emerges of dark brown sand dunes interspersed with the remaining bright frost. Image taken by the HiRISE camera onboard NASA's Mars Reconnaissance Orbiter. Credit: NASA / JPL-Caltech / University of Arizona
What I'd like to know is why did SkyNews (Australia) choose to go with the headline: "AstraZeneca withdrawn worldwide over side effects" #covid19#antivaxxer#antivax#scicomm
https://scitechdaily.com/new-space-snowman-discovery-shakes-up-solar-system-theories/
A recent study exploring the development of comets suggests that objects in deep space, such as the Kuiper Belt Object 486958 Arrokoth, might act as time capsules, preserving ancient ices from billions of years in the past. A new study is shaking up what scientists thought they knew about distant objects in the far reaches of the solar system, starting with an object called the space snowman.
#PPOD: This Hubble Space Telescope image shows boulders ejected from the asteroid Dimorphos after the DART spacecraft slammed into it in September 2022. The bright object with a tail is Dimorphos, and the tiny white dots clustered around it are boulders ranging in size from 1 to 6.7 meters (3 to 22 feet) in diameter. Credit: NASA, ESA, D. Jewitt (UCLA)
https://nautil.us/how-whales-could-help-us-speak-to-aliens-559443/
On Aug. 19, 2021, a humpback whale named Twain whupped back. Specifically, Twain made a series of humpback whale calls known as “whups” in response to playback recordings of whups from a boat of researchers off the coast of Alaska. The whale and the playback exchanged calls 36 times. In their 2023 published results, McGowan, Sharpe, and their coauthors are careful not to characterize their exchange with Twain as a conversation.