Scientists have long tried to explain the origin of a mysterious, large and anomalously cold region of the sky. In 2015, they came close to figuring it out as a study showed it to be a “supervoid” in which the density of galaxies is much lower than it is in the rest of the universe. However, other studies haven’t managed to replicate the result.
Low energy efficiency is already a major problem for petrol and diesel vehicles. Typically, only 20% of the overall well-to-wheel energy is actually used to power these vehicles. The other 80% is lost through oil extraction, refinement, transport, evaporation, and engine heat. This low energy efficiency is the primary reason why fossil fuel vehicles are emissions-intensive, and relatively expensive to run.
In the past few decades, there has been an explosion in the number of extra-solar planets that have been discovered. As of April 1st, 2018, a total of 3,758 exoplanets have been confirmed in 2,808 systems, with 627 systems having more than one planet. In addition to expanding our knowledge of the Universe, the purpose of this search has been to find evidence of life beyond our Solar System.
Mars’ natural satellites – Phobos and Deimos – have been a mystery since they were first discovered. While it is widely believed that they are former asteroids that were captured by Mars’ gravity, this remains unproven. And while some of Phobos’ surface features are known to be the result of Mars’ gravity, the origin of its linear grooves and crater chains (catenae) have remained unknown.
For almost a century, astronomers and cosmologists have postulated that space is filled with an invisible mass known as “dark matter”. Accounting for 27% of the mass and energy in the observable universe, the existence of this matter was intended to explain all the “missing” baryonic matter in cosmological models. Unfortunately, the concept of dark matter has solved one cosmological problem, only to create another.
Humanity has long dreamed of establishing itself on other worlds, even before we started going into space. We’ve talked about colonizing the Moon, Mars, and even establishing ourselves on exoplanets in distant star systems. But what about the other planets in our own backyard? When it comes to the Solar System, there is a lot of potential real estate out there that we don’t really consider.
For millennia, human beings stared up at the night sky and were held in awe by the Moon. To many ancient cultures, it represented a deity, and its cycles were accorded divine significance. By the time of Classical Antiquity and the Middle Ages, the Moon was considered to be a heavenly body that orbited Earth, much like the other known planets of the day (Mercury, Venus, Mars, Jupiter, and Saturn).
Speculating about what aliens look like has kept children, film producers and scientists amused for decades. If they exist, will extra terrestrials turn out to look similar to us, or might they take a form beyond our wildest imaginings? The answer to this question really depends on how we think evolution works at the deepest level.
Between the orbits of Mars and Jupiter lies the Solar System’s Main Asteroid Belt. Consisting of millions of objects that range in size from hundreds of kilometers in diameter (like Ceres and Vesta) to one kilometer or more, the Asteroid Belt has long been a source of fascination for astronomers. Initially, they wondered why the many objects that make it up did not come together to form a planet. But more recently, human beings have been eyeing the Asteroid Belt for other purposes.
Remember the graph paper you used at school, the kind that’s covered with tiny squares? It’s the perfect illustration of what mathematicians call a “periodic tiling of space”, with shapes covering an entire area with no overlap or gap. If we moved the whole pattern by the length of a tile (translated it) or rotated it by 90 degrees, we will get the same pattern. That’s because in this case, the whole tiling has the same symmetry as a single tile. But imagine tiling a bathroom with pentagons instead of squares – it’s impossible, because the pentagons won’t fit together without leaving gaps or overlapping one another.
Barclays, the UK bank, is to replace the password system on its phone banking service with personal voice recognition. “Unlike a password, each person’s voice is as unique as a fingerprint,” said Steven Cooper, Barclays' head of personal banking. Yet the reality is we have no idea whether either fingerprints or voices are unique at all.
All we can ever hope to do, Sigmund Freud once wrote, is “to change neurotic misery into common unhappiness”. This pessimistic statement from arguably the most influential psychological theorist of modern times captured the mood that prevailed in psychology through most of the 20th century. That is, most psychologists, psychiatrists and psychoanalysts were essentially guided by a model of the patient that was based on what was wrong with people, and how to deal with these deficiencies.
The sight of the determined, lycra-clad jogger has become a familiar feature of urban parks around the world. Jogging – defined as “the activity of running at a steady, gentle pace” – was made popular by running pioneer Arthur Lydiard, who realised that this was a better way to train for competition than sprinting to exhaustion. Jogging gained a huge following in the 1980s, and has recently experienced something of a resurgence.
Many scientists believe that alien civilisations exist. For them, the question is now whether we will encounter them in the near future or a very long time from now, rather than if at all. So let’s imagine that we suddenly stand face-to-face with members of an alien species. What would we do first? Surely communicating that we come in peace would be a priority. But would we ever be able to understand each other?
Beyond the orbit of Neptune, the farthest recognized-planet from our Sun, lies the mysteries population known as the Trans-Neptunian Object (TNOs). For years, astronomers have been discovering bodies and minor planets in this region which are influenced by Neptune’s gravity, and orbit our Sun at an average distance of 30 Astronomical Units.
With an estimated lifespan of 400 years, the Greenland shark has just been reported to be the longest-lived vertebrate on the planet. This is only the latest of a series of recent findings that push the boundaries of animal longevity, and it raises the perennial question of what factors enable some animals to achieve what we might call extreme longevity – lifespans that can be measured in centuries.
“In space, no one can hear you scream” was the tagline of the 1979 box office film success Alien. And it’s true. Sound waves propagate mechanically as a vibration and therefore need a medium – solid, liquid or gas – to travel through. Although interplanetary (and interstellar) space is not completely empty, gas molecules and dust grains are so sparsely distributed that they do not form a continuous medium that would enable sound waves to be transmitted directly.
One of the most profound and exciting breakthroughs in planetary science in the last two decades has been the discovery of liquid methane lakes on the surface of Saturn’s largest moon Titan, and liquid oceans under the icy surfaces of many of the giant gas planets' other moons. Thrillingly, these some of these “waters” may actually harbour life.
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