What happening above that volcano? Something very unusual -- a volcanic light pillar. More typically, light pillars are caused by sunlight and so appear as a bright column that extends upward above a rising or setting Sun. Alternatively, other light pillars -- some quite colorful --... Continue Reading →
A good night’s sleep is important for many reasons. It helps our body repair itself and function as it should, and is linked to better mental health and lower risk of many health conditions – including heart disease and diabetes. It’s also been shown... Continue Reading →
Why, sometimes, does part of the Sun's atmosphere leap into space? The reason lies in changing magnetic fields that thread through the Sun's surface. Regions of strong surface magnetism, known as active regions, are usually marked by dark sunspots. Active regions can channel charged... Continue Reading →
NGC 2438 is a planetary nebula, formed after the death of a Sun-like star. The medium-sized star would have expelled its outer layers of gas into space as it died, leaving behind a white-dwarf core. A halo of glowing gas... Continue Reading →
Scientists at the John A. Moran Eye Center at the University of Utah have discovered a new type of nerve cell, or neuron, in the retina. In the central nervous system a complex circuitry of neurons communicate with each other... Continue Reading →
More than two thirds (65.5%) of students are experiencing poor sleep quality and this is linked to mental health problems, new research published in the peer-reviewed journal Annals of Human Biologysuggests. The findings, based on more than 1,000 (1,113) men and... Continue Reading →
The haze that blurs a blue sky or a beautiful skyline is caused by tiny particles called PM2.5. PM2.5 describes particulate matter, often made from pollution, less than 2.5 microns wide. Despite their microscopic size, PM2.5 are responsible for more than 4... Continue Reading →
Johns Hopkins University researchers discovered precisely how spiders build webs by using night vision and artificial intelligence to track and record every movement of all eight legs as spiders worked in the dark. Their creation of a web-building playbook or... Continue Reading →
The Horsehead Nebula is one of the most famous nebulae on the sky. It is visible as the dark indentation to the orange emission nebula at the far right of the featured picture. The horse-head feature is dark because it is really an opaque dust cloud that lies in... Continue Reading →
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