|  Starship Enterprise vs. Superman: Who's the Fastest Sci-Fi Spacefarer? (Graphic)  | If the fictional USS Enterprise raced the ship from "Battlestar Galactica" to the nearest star system, which would get there first? When leaving Earth on a voyage to Alpha Centauri, it turns out, Galactica would get there in just 29 minutes, traveling at an average speed of 53.4 trillion miles per hour (85.9 trillion kilometers per hour). The USS Enterprise from "Star Trek" would take more than 161 days, at a speed of "just" 6.6 billion mph (10.6 km/h).
| Read More » Star Tunes: Composer Sets Twinkling Data to Music  | The twinkling star is one of two in a binary system called Y Cam whose two stars orbit very close together. The pulsing frequencies that Y Cam A beams toward Earth form the basis of the chords and musical scale used in the composition. Burak Ula?, an astronomer at the Izmir Turk College Planetarium in Turkey, started the project after finding, in an earlier study, that the star Y Cam A's vibrations closely match a particular, unusual musical scale.
| Read More » 'Lonely Mountain' on Dwarf Planet Ceres Shines in Jaw-Dropping Photos  | The mountain, with an altitude of 21,120 feet (6,437 meters), is one of many gorgeous features captured in the new images, which Dawn took on Aug. 19. Dawn currently orbits Ceres at an altitude of 915 miles (1,470 kilometers), but in October, the probe will start spiraling down to an orbit just 230 miles (375 km) above the surface. The images show that the "lonely mountain" is not part of any visible mountain range (hence its name).
| Read More » Has Stephen Hawking Just Solved a Huge Black-Hole Mystery?  | Einstein's theory of general relativity predicts that the physical information about material gobbled up by a black hole is destroyed, but the laws of quantum mechanics stipulate that information is eternal. Hawking — working with Malcolm Perry, of the University of Cambridge in England, and Harvard University's Andrew Stromberg — has come up with a possible solution: The quantum-mechanical information about infalling particles doesn't actually make it inside the black hole. "I propose that the information is stored not in the interior of the black hole, as one might expect, but on its boundary, the event horizon," Stephen Hawking said during a talk today (Aug. 25) at the Hawking Radiation conference, which is being held at the KTH Royal Institute of Technology in Stockholm, Sweden.
| Read More » Giant Washington Wildfire Spotted from Space (Photo)  | A new satellite photo captures the wildfires raging throughout the American West, including the biggest conflagration in the history of Washington State.
| Read More » Billionaires Wanted to Fund Private Mars Colony  | Could the first Mars colony be called Buffettville, or Zuckerburgh? The Netherlands-based nonprofit Mars One aims to establish a permanent settlement on the Red Planet, beginning with the touchdown of the first four pioneers in 2027. Mars One "is so ambitious and — I think 'crazy' is the right word — that we might actually get a phone call from a billionaire who says, 'I want to make this happen.
| Read More » 'Panda Swap' Keeps Newborn Twins in Mom's Care  | Zookeepers are playing a complicated game of "baby swap" with two new pink and fuzzy panda twins at the Smithsonian's National Zoo in Washington, D.C. The mother, 17-year-old Mei Xiang (may-SHONG), gave birth to the twins on Saturday (Aug. 22), delivering the first at 5:35 p.m. EDT and the second at 10:07 p.m., the zoo reported. But giant pandas (Ailuropoda melanoleuca) can care for only one cub at a time.
| Read More » Amazing 'Red Lightning' Photographed from Space  | Astronauts aboard the International Space Station (ISS) captured two rare photographs of red sprites from above on Aug. 10. Red sprites are strange luminous phenomena that occur alongside more familiar lightning strikes. "They're very exciting to look at, they create these fabulous visual images, but there is a lot that we still don't understand about them," said Ryan Haaland, a professor of physics at Fort Lewis College in Colorado who is involved in an ongoing project studying sprites.
| Read More » Vigorous Flossing Caused Woman's Knee Infection in Strange Case A woman in Wisconsin got a nasty bacterial infection in her knee, but the infection's source was an unexpected culprit: her vigorous tooth-flossing regimen. About 1 percent of people who undergo joint-replacement surgery develop an infection in the joint during the first several months after surgery (although the rate is slightly higher in smokers and people with diabetes), Hepinstall said. Read More » Compounds in Flax & Sesame Seeds May Prevent Weight Gain Eating a plant-based diet is known to be good for your waistline, but now a new study has zeroed in on specific plant compounds — found in foods such as flax and sesame seeds — that may help prevent or slow weight gain. The study found that women who consumed high levels of these compounds, called lignans, tended to weigh less and gain less weight over time, compared with women who didn't consume these compounds in high amounts. Earlier studies in animals have suggested that lignans may play a role in regulating weight. Read More » Plague Cases in US Are Unusually High This Year There's been an unusually high number of plague cases in the United States this year, according to a new report from the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC). Since April 1, there have been 11 cases of plague in six states, the report said. In 2014, there were 10 plague cases, and in 2013 and 2012, there were four cases each year. Read More » Nearly 1 in 5 Children and Teens Are Obese More than one-third of American adults are obese, and now, a new report shows that children and teens aren't far behind. The report, released today (Aug. 25) by researchers at the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, shows that 17.5 percent of children and adolescents ages 3 to 19 are now obese. But the researchers also found that the prevalence of childhood obesity has leveled off in the past decade, with an increase of only 0.9 percent since the 2001-2004 study period. Read More » Women's Sexuality May Depend on Romantic Options Women's sexual orientation may be partly influenced by their romantic options, new research suggests. In addition, the study confirmed that women tend to be more flexible than men in their sexual orientation, with women in the study being nearly three times more likely than men to experience a change in their orientation during the study. That doesn't mean that lesbians or bisexual women are settling for the ladies because the "good men" are all taken, said study author Elizabeth Aura McClintock, a sociologist at the University of Notre Dame in North Bend, Indiana. Read More » | |
