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Anne-Marie Slaughter, who served as Secretary of State Hillary Clinton’s Director of Policy Planning during part of the Obama administration, has published a column in the New York Times where she notes some effects of the coronavirus that she apparently believes are positive. “We are also suddenly living in a world that the United States government long insisted was impossible--one of drastically reduced plane and car emissions,” she writes. “That is terrible for the airlines but good for the planet. It may be good for us, too,” she said. “And now that we're all at home, what to do with...

Sometimes the host of a beauty pageant can provide as much entertainment as the contestants. Even a perfectly timed eye roll can leave a mark. The 2019 Miss Universe pageant aired December 8 on Fox with Steve Harvey serving as the host. Ninety women from around the world participated. Unlike some other recent beauty pageants, though, this one was striking due to the lack of controversial remarks made by the women. Two questions and answers did raise an eyebrow, though during the segment with the final five contestants. Eventual pageant winner Miss South Africa, Zozibini Tunzi, was asked by Harvey...

Primordial black holes (PBHs) are old and relatively small black holes that emerged soon after the Big Bang. They are thought to have been formed as a result of density fluctuations in the very early universe. It is believed that PBHs with the lowest mass have likely evaporated. However, those with larger masses may still exist, evaporating at the present epoch—even though they have been never directly observed. Astronomers Jakub Scholtz of Durham University and James Unwin of University of Illinois at Chicago, assume that PBHs could reside even closer to us than we think. In a recently published paper,...

The vegan diet is often lauded as the most environmentally friend way to eat, but scientists have highlighted that cutting down on animal products can also help to protect the planet against climate change. A worldwide move towards plant-focused diets is "essential for meeting climate change mitigation targets," scientists wrote in the journal Global Environmental Change. But how this is achieved depends on the country. The team, from Johns Hopkins University, Maryland, looked at the carbon and water footprints of nine plant-rich diets from 140 countries, and compared them with what is typically eaten. A total of 74 food items...

I was just happening to think about this interview with Dan Pena, so I thought it would be entertaining. Enjoy yet again!!!!

A tiny, old star just 12 light-years away might host two temperate, rocky planets, astronomers announced today. If they’re confirmed, both of the newly spotted worlds are nearly identical to Earth in mass, and both planets are in orbits that could allow liquid water to trickle and puddle on their surfaces. Scientists estimate that the stellar host, known as Teegarden’s star, is at least eight billion years old, or nearly twice the sun’s age. That means any planets orbiting it are presumably as ancient, so life as we know it has had more than enough time to evolve. And for...

While searching for the source of methane on Saturn’s large moon Titan, researchers found a completely unexpected corridor of methane ice wrapping nearly halfway around the moon. Three orientations of Titan’s globe. The icy corridor is mapped in blue. Image via Caitlin Griffith/UA Lunar and Planetary Laboratory.A research team has discovered huge ice feature on Titan while trying to understand where Saturn’s largest moon gets all of its methane. Like Earth, Titan has rain, seas and a surface of eroding organic material. However, on Titan it is methane, not water, that makes up the raindrops and fills the lakes.A team...

Launched in 2018, TESS is NASA’s new space-based exoplanet hunter. Now it’s found its 1st Earth-sized world orbiting a nearby star. The discovery bodes well, scientists say, for finding more similar worlds in the near future. Artist’s concept of HD 21749c, the first Earth-sized exoplanet discovered by TESS. Image via Robin Dienel/Carnegie Institution for Science.NASA’s newest exoplanet-hunting telescope, the Transiting Exoplanet Survey Satellite (TESS), has now found its first Earth-sized world. It’s the smallest planet TESS has found yet in its still-young mission. Astronomers say it’s another exciting step towards finding worlds beyond our solar system that might be capable of...

The records include dates and times, Cesario said, which makes them useful to modern-day astronomers. Planet Nine, if it exists, would have about 10 times the mass of Earth and orbit 20 times farther from the sun than Neptune does... Scientists suspect the existence of Planet Nine because it would explain some of the gravitational forces at play in the Kuiper Belt, a stretch of icy bodies beyond Neptune. But no one has been able to detect the planet yet, though astronomers are scanning the skies for it with tools such as the Subaru Telescope on Hawaii's Mauna Kea volcano....

The most distant object humanity has ever visited looks something like a spinning snowman or hourglass that’s lost in space.Researchers who work on NASA’s nuclear-powered New Horizons mission released a movie on Tuesday showing the rotation of the mountain-size rock, which is known formally as (486958) 2014 MU69.(It’s more commonly referred to as “Ultima Thule”.)Mu69 is about 4 billion miles (6 billion kilometres) from Earth and 1 billion miles (2 billion kilometres) beyond Pluto.New Horizons flew by the object on New Year’s Day at a speed of 32,200 miles per hour (52,000 kilometres per hour), and came within about 2,200 miles...

A diet has been developed that promises to save lives, feed 10 billion people and all without causing catastrophic damage to the planet. Scientists have been trying to figure out how we are going to feed billions more people in the decades to come. Their answer - "the planetary health diet" - does not completely banish meat and dairy. But it requires a ginormous shift in what we pile onto our plates and turning to foods that we barely eat. What changes am I going to have to make? If you eat meat every day then this is the first...

In his book "2061 - Odyssey Three" (the third of his Space Odyssey series), Arthur C. Clarke put forward the intriguing proposal that the core of the planet Jupiter was, in fact, a diamond the size of Earth. Now Clarke, even though a science fiction author of some repute, had a science background and always tried to bring rigorous scientific accuracy to his stories. So, could his proposition be possible? The somewhat predictable answer is - we don't know. But we can analyse the possibility within known scientific parametres, to see if it is, at least, possible. For diamond to...

The discovery team nicknamed the object "Farout," and its provisional designation from the International Astronomical Union is 2018 VG18. Preliminary research suggests it's a round, pinkish dwarf planet. The same team spotted a faraway dwarf planet nicknamed "The Goblin" in October. The object is more than 3.5 times the current distance between Pluto and the sun (34 AU), and it outpaces the previous farthest-known solar system object, the dwarf planet Eris, which is currently about 96 AU from the sun. NASA's Voyager 2 spacecraft recently entered interstellar space at about 120 AU, leaving the sun's "sphere of influence" called the...

Astronomers have captured one of the most detailed views of a young star taken to date, and revealed an unexpected companion in orbit around it. While observing the young star, astronomers led by Dr. John Ilee from the University of Leeds discovered it was not in fact one star, but two.The main object, referred to as MM 1a, is a young massive star surrounded by a rotating disc of gas and dust that was the focus of the scientists' original investigation.A faint object, MM 1b, was detected just beyond the disc in orbit around MM 1a. The team believe this...

About 11 light-years away, Ross 128 b is closer to the solar system than any known exoplanet save Proxima b. First there was Proxima b, the Earth-sized planet orbiting the closest star to us, Proxima Centauri. Then came the seven Earth-sized worlds orbiting TRAPPIST-1, a star 39 light-years away, three of which are in the habitable zone. Now we welcome a new tantalizing exoplanet to the group, the second closest we know of, also Earth-sized and temperate, orbiting a calm red dwarf star: Ross 128 b. Ross 128 is an old, inactive red dwarf star that sits 11 light-years away....

How do you describe something that is beyond ridiculous, beyond absurd? How do you paint a picture of something that is so upside down that it defies logic and reason? Let me give it my best shot. Not a word here is exaggerated or made-up. In 1997, a woman whom we'll call "Mrs. H." was jogging when a man jumped out of the woods and tried to rape her. She was able to fight him off and ran for her life, bruised and cut on the outside and deeply traumatized on the inside. Police were called; trained dogs searched the...

A bizarre rogue planet without a star is roaming the Milky Way just 20 light-years from the Sun. And according to a recently published study in The Astrophysical Journal, this strange, nomadic world has an incredibly powerful magnetic field that is some 4 million times stronger than Earth’s. Furthermore, it generates spectacular auroras that would put our own northern lights to shame. The new observations, made with the National Science Foundation’s Karl G. Jansky Very Large Array (VLA), not only are the first radio observations of a planetary-mass object beyond our solar system, but also mark the first time...

Stargazers, get your binoculars ready: a string of bright planets, called a "Planet Parade," will grace the night's sky this week, and the show is expected to last several days. It's just the start of what will be a breathtaking month. A "worm moon" rose on March 1, and another full moon, known as a "blue moon," will pop up on March 31. But this may be the most stunning show yet. A rare parade of planets, including Jupiter, Mars, Saturn, Mercury and Venus along with the bright star Antares, will light the sky starting March 7, though they won't...

In a clean room inside a clean room at NASA’s Kennedy Space Center, a petite telescope is perched on a stand for a final series of checkouts prior to launch. The extra fastidiousness is because the observatory’s four cameras will fly without protective covers—one of several simplifying design decisions made to help ensure the Transiting Exoplanet Survey Satellite, or TESS, will meet its goal of measuring the masses of at least 50 small, rocky and potentially Earth-like worlds as part of the first all-sky, exoplanet survey. TESS was proposed even before NASA’s planet-hunting Kepler space telescope, launched in 2009, demonstrated...

“In truth, the GRS has been shrinking for a long time,” Glenn Orton of NASA’s Jet Propulsion Laboratory told Business Insider. The storm was once as large as four times the diameter of Earth, but more recent observations have shown that it’s rapidly losing steam. “Now it’s something like 13 degrees wide in longitude and only 1.3 times the size of the Earth,” Orton says. “Nothing lasts forever.” Late last year, Juno revealed some surprising information about the huge storm, including how deep into the planet it goes. The data showed that the storm is up to 100 times deeper...