For the first two trimesters of her pregnancy in 2018, Kristen Miller, a high school social studies teacher from Cleveland, had an unremarkable pregnancy—“textbook perfect,” she claimed. However, she was told she had excess amniotic fluid at her 32-week prenatal visit, a condition that can slightly raise the risk of difficulties. She went to work…
Radar has been around for nearly a century. Radar is a simple and elegant element of humanity’s technological toolbox: you put out radio waves, a receiver picks up their reflections, and you examine the waves to figure out where and how far away things are. Designers can now develop complex radar systems that employ many…
Sea otters have a difficult time keeping warm. The animals spend the majority of their time in the water, which absorbs heat 23 times faster than air. Their habitat in the North Pacific is extremely cold, with water temperatures ranging from 0 to 15 degrees Celsius (32 to 59 degrees Fahrenheit). Sea otters are also…
Imperial astronomers of the Song Dynasty in China noticed an unusual star lighting up the eastern sky shortly before daybreak on July 4, A.D. 1054. They wrote in notes to the emperor, “It’s as brilliant as Venus, with pointed beams in all four directions and a reddish-white hue.” The glow was created by an explosion…
Jeremy Joslin, an emergency physician, was in charge of an ultramarathon in Cambodia’s wilderness a few years ago. Many of the participants wanted to cool off after the race, and they saw an attractive stream nearby. The cries began after a few minutes, according to Joslin, who is located at SUNY Upstate Medical University in…
According to a new study, the Trump administration’s move last autumn to delist grey wolves from endangered classification resulted in a 30 percent decline in Wisconsin’s wolf population. More than 300 wolves may have been killed this winter as a result of both authorized hunting and other factors such as illicit poaching, according to scientists.…
The coronavirus epidemic increased the amount of screen time in our daily lives dramatically, from Netflix binges to Zoom meetings. Because spending so much time on gadgets may be stressful on the eyes, you’re not alone if you’ve noticed an increase in headaches, eye tiredness, or impaired vision since starting remote work. Digital eye strain,…
Shark Bay is a lonely island off the coast of Australia, where sienna-streaked cliffs meet the sea and ancient, bulbous stromatolites dot the landscape. This natural wonderland is not just a UNESCO world heritage site, but it also happens to be one of the few remaining homes for the elusive Gould’s mouse, an Australian rodent…
Avi revealed that I look for indications of intelligent civilizations in the sky because avi can’t seem to locate any on Earth in a recent Q&A forum about my book Extraterrestrial. “How do you characterize an intelligent civilization?” a member of the crowd joked.In avi’s opinion, an intelligent society is defined by scientific hallmarks, such…
For the first time, scientists have confirmed the existence of not one, but two black hole-neutron star collisions. The Laser Interferometer Gravitational-Wave Observatory (LIGO) and the Virgo facilities, which detect invisible gravitational waves, saw these two distinct mergers 10 days apart in January 2020. The achievement completes a long-awaited trinity of gravitational-wave interferometer observations: black…