Scientists in the UK think they may have found a cheap, low-tech way to help fight age-related loss of vision. In a small clinical trial, people over 40 who were told to stare into a deep red light for three minutes a day had noticeable improvements to their sight. They reported being able to see better in the dark and to better distinguish colors.
Continue reading A Certain Frequency of Red Light Boosted People’s Eyesight in New Study
Astronomers are having an easier time finding fast radio bursts as of late, and that now includes the first regular pattern for those bursts. A research team from MIT and elsewhere has discovered that something 500 million light-years away is routinely producing four days of seemingly random but frantic bursts, followed by 12 days of silence — something that happened consistently for 500 days of study. Continue reading Astronomers find the first known regular pattern of fast radio bursts
If you simultaneously drop a feather and a bowling ball in a vacuum, they’ll hit the ground at the same time. In other words, despite their mass, they’re affected by a gravitational field in exactly the same way. The same goes for massive objects like stars, according to Einstein’s Theory of Relativity, and astrophysicists have confirmed his inference. Continue reading Scientists confirm the basis of Einstein’s Theory of Relativity
Scientists in the United Kingdom have discovered a rare bone, called the os cordis, in chimpanzees with a common heart condition. The implications of this finding could extend to humans, who share a close genetic relationship to chimps. Continue reading Some Chimpanzees Have a Bone in Their Heart—and Some Humans Might, Too
Thirty-six years after becoming the first American woman to walk in space, Kathy Sullivan has made history yet again. On Sunday, the 68-year-old oceanographer and former NASA astronaut became the first woman to reach the deepest known spot in the ocean after returning from a 35,810-foot dive from the Challenger Deep. At the same time, she also became the first person in history to have both walked in space and descended to the deepest part of the earth. Continue reading The first American woman to spacewalk has now conquered the deepest ocean
A new study finds further evidence that humans are driving the world’s sixth mass extinction. Published in the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences Monday, this research focuses on terrestrial vertebrates—amphibians, birds, mammals, and reptiles—and found that more than 500 species are “on the brink of extinction,” per the paper. Continue reading More Than 500 Vertebrate Species Are on the Brink of ‘Biological Annihilation’
On Friday, President Trump announced that the U.S. would immediately terminate its “relationship with the World Health Organization”—the culmination of a threat that the administration issued a month earlier. It’s a decision, experts warn, that could have dire repercussions on efforts to keep people safe from the coronavirus pandemic and other global public health threats. Continue reading Why Leaving the WHO Could Be Disastrous for the U.S. and the World
