NASA's Mars 2020 Perseverance rover mission is on its way to the Red Planet to search for signs of ancient life and collect samples to send back to Earth. Humanity's most sophisticated rover launched with the Ingenuity Mars Helicopter at... Continue Reading →
Carried by a balloon the size of a football stadium, ASTHROS will use a telescope to observe wavelengths of light that aren't visible from the ground. Work has begun on ASTHROS (short for Astrophysics Stratospheric Telescope for High Spectral Resolution Observations at Submillimeter-wavelengths), a new mission that... Continue Reading →
Temporary loss of smell, or anosmia, is the main neurological symptom and one of the earliest and most commonly reported indicators of COVID-19. Studies suggest it better predicts the disease than other well-known symptoms such as fever and cough, but... Continue Reading →
If you've ever wondered why we get goosebumps, you're in good company -- so did Charles Darwin, who mused about them in his writings on evolution. Goosebumps might protect animals with thick fur from the cold, but we humans don't... Continue Reading →
Psyche, the NASA mission to explore a metal-rock asteroid of the same name, recently passed a crucial milestone that brings it closer to its August 2022 launch date. Now the mission is moving from planning and designing to high-gear manufacturing... Continue Reading →
Thousands of words, big and small, are crammed inside our memory banks just waiting to be swiftly withdrawn and strung into sentences. In a recent study of epilepsy patients and healthy volunteers, National Institutes of Health researchers found that our... Continue Reading →
Life on Earth would not be possible without the Moon; it keeps our planet's axis of rotation stable, which controls seasons and regulates our climate. However, there has been considerable debate over how the Moon was formed. The popular hypothesis... Continue Reading →
The premiere of the movie Scent of Mystery in 1960 marked a singular event in the annals of cinema: the first, and last, motion picture debut "in glorious Smell-O-Vision." Hoping to wow moviegoers with a dynamic olfactory experience alongside the... Continue Reading →
Research out in the journal Cell shows that a specific change in the SARS-CoV-2 coronavirus virus genome, previously associated with increased viral transmission and the spread of COVID-19, is more infectious in cell culture. The variant in question, D614G, makes a small... Continue Reading →
Scents of Science 