In The News: College of Sciences
Last December, astronomers caught sight of an extremely bright, extremely close gamma ray burst that lasted for a little under a minute — close as far as gamma ray bursts, anyways: about a billion light-years away. Ordinarily, it would be interesting, but nothing groundbreaking, something to be filed away with the tens of thousands of other long gamma ray bursts that have been observed over the past half-century. But then, something didn’t happen: the supernova required to create such a lengthy explosion was nowhere to be found.
NASA’s Perseverance rover snagged two new samples from the Martian surface on Dec. 2 and 6. But unlike the 15 rock cores collected to date, these newest samples came from a pile of wind-blown sand and dust similar to but smaller than a dune. Now contained in special metal collection tubes, one of these two samples will be considered for deposit on the Martian surface sometime this month as part of the Mars Sample Return campaign.
More than a year and a half after its first flight on Mars, the Ingenuity helicopter has set a new record.
Social media is flooded with posts that claim to prove the Earth is flat. A recent example is a post that claims a photo of Chicago taken from Indiana demonstrates the Earth's flatness.
Mankind's crucial fossil fuels—coal, natural gas and crude oil—all unfortunately contain large amounts of carbon. But why is that and where does it come from?
Certain metals are essential to producing renewable energy products, and tellurium (Te) is one that is becoming more widely used in the manufacturing of photovoltaic cells for solar panels.
Five major El Niño events per century could lead to fewer fishes that thrive in cold water and more terrestrial birds in eastern coastal ecosystems.
Since Hubble Space Telescope was launched and deployed in April 1990, scientists have used it to observe the most distant stars and galaxies. One of these cosmic wonders that Hubble captured was the image of the star cluster NGC 2660.
What a tangled web we weave. Well, when it comes to the climate crisis' impact on marine food webs, we apparently didn't know the half of it. That's according to a new UNLV study which compared ancient and modern ocean ecosystems in a bid to understand how to make them healthier and more resilient.
Have we damaged marine life too much for it to recover?
Some social media users are sharing a meme that claims to present evidence that Earth is flat instead of spherical.
While manatees in the United States today are more associated with the state of Florida, a relative of theirs once swam the seas along North America’s Pacific coast. Millions of years ago, the Steller’s sea cow (Hydrodamalis gigas) grazed in the kelp forests along the Northern Pacific Ocean and the Bering Sea. This marine mammal is part of the Sirenia order that includes present-day manatees. It could weigh up to four tons and grow to lengths of 26 to 30 feet—much longer than today’s manatees. It grazed along the Northwest’s mighty kelp forests, which today stretches from Baja California, Mexico up the Pacific coastline to Alaska. The sea cow ate huge quantities of kelp from the upper canopy of kelp forests, which allowed needed sunlight to travel down to the forest’s understory.