Monthly Archives: March 2017

Our understanding of astrophysics states that we should be seeing co-orbiting planets when astronomers look through their telescopes. Co-orbiting planets are planets of roughly similar size that have overlapping orbits around their host star. These two planets orbit so closely to each other that they influence the orbital paths and speeds of one another. When solar systems and their planets are forming, scientists expect this formation to cause co-orbiting planets. For years now, astronomers have been cataloging exoplanets, planets in other solar systems, and have not observed any co-orbital planets. Many of these distant stars are quite far away, so they are difficult to see even with humankind’s strongest telescopes. The planets that orbit these distant stars are even harder to spot. Astronomers are utilizing a variety of techniques to attempt to detect these planets, including the radial velocity technique and the star-transit technique. The radial velocity technique tries to…

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Cancer is one of the greatest challenges of our time. A common misconception about cancer is that it is one disease. There are hundreds of unique types of cancers that all require different treatment strategies. This diversity in cancer types is one reason curing cancer is so difficult. The advances in medicine over the last 50 years have been astounding, but still have not been able to outpace the suffering of cancers’ victims. However, cancer treatment has recently found an unlikely ally – viruses. A recent paper in the journal PLOS Pathogens reviews the developments in leveraging viruses as weapons against cancer. A virus is a pathogen, which means it is a disease-causing agent. Scientists debate over whether or not a virus is alive — it consists only of some protein and some DNA (or RNA). They are very simple, yet possess alarming abilities. They are able to take over…

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Ecosystem A biological community of living things interacting with one another and their physical surroundings.

You are on one of those trips where the travel is so tedious that even your cell phone looks boring. Not being able to sleep, you look out the window to distract yourself. You see lots of plants, people along the road, birds disappearing in the distance, and you just can’t stop wondering — how did all this life come to be? The theory of evolution explains that life adapts to its surroundings as it is selected by the environment. But how do you explain the way life itself works? How do we define the fundamental feature of life? You could say it is the cell, but that wouldn’t help to distinguish between similar bacteria that are only one cell to begin with. How about metabolism? This is possible, except viruses aren’t able to metabolize anything without the help of another living being — the host. If you think about…

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Animals are unable to tell us why they do the things they do, and curious scientists often want to find out. They set up experiments to see how animals behave in certain situations and try to determine the motivations for the behavior. The behavior often gives the animal a survival edge, as is the case for this study of Anomalops katoptron, otherwise known as the splitfin flashlight fish. This fish lives in shallow waters in coral reef caves in the Indian Ocean, and has some peculiar traits. Researchers in Germany wanted to understand the purpose of blinking lights under the flashlight fish’s eyes. That’s right – blinking lights! Many species of fish actually live in a symbiotic relationship with glowing bacteria that live on their bodies. “Symbiotic” means that both species benefit from the relationship — the fish get light in dark waters and caves, and the bacteria get a…

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Model In science, a model is a representation of an idea, an object or even a process or a system that is used to describe and explain phenomena that cannot be experienced directly. Models are central to what scientists do, both in their research as well as when communicating their explanations. – Read More @ Science Learning Hub A systematic description of an object or phenomenon that shares important characteristics with the object or phenomenon. Scientific models can be material, visual, mathematical, or computational and are often used in the construction of scientific theories. See also hypothesis, theory. – Read More @ Dictionary.com

Molecule A group of atoms covalently (permanently, can’t be broken without using energy) bonded together to create a totally new substance with it’s own unique physical and chemical properties. It is different from a mixture, where the components are not covalently bonded together.

Species a group of living organisms consisting of similar individuals capable of exchanging genes or interbreeding. The species is the principal natural taxonomic unit, ranking below a genus and denoted by a Latin binomial, e.g., Homo sapiens. Credit: Google

Nitrogen pollution is a big problem in standing water such as lakes and ponds. The nitrogen comes from many sources, often agricultural fertilizers. Some of this nitrogen is in the water, but the rest of it is actually trapped in the sediment at the bottom of the lake. You can see evidence of this pollution when a green mat of algae, which loves nitrogen, forms over the surface of a pond. This is unhealthy for fish, because it starves them of oxygen. An international group of scientists have decided to remedy the problem rather creatively. To decrease the amount of nitrogen in the sediment, they built microbial fuel cells, which are basically batteries powered by bacteria. They also wondered if combining the fuel cell with plants would speed up nitrogen removal even more. Plant roots harbor lots of useful bacteria that may help the fuel cell operate better, and also…

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51 Pegasi b is a roughly jupiter-sized planet around a star pretty similar to our sun. This planet has been part of astronomy conversations before, as it is a huge planet with a really small orbit; this planet orbits around its star only every 4 days. For comparison, Earth orbits the sun every 365 days. One way of spotting planets orbiting other stars is via the use of spectral lines. Spectral lines are the different colors of light emitted by an object that tells us what that object is made of. Different elements and molecules will emit light in different colors. This is the same phenomenon that makes phosphorous glow-in-the-dark green. These scientists wanted to use this technique on 51 Peg b, but because this planet is so close to its star, it was proving quite difficult. It is difficult to see the planet 51 Pegasi b’s spectral lines because…

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Nucleus The center of the cell, bound by a membrane that contains and protects the DNA.

Theory A scientific idea supported by such a large body of evidence over a long period of time that it is unlikely to be overturned.

At the center of the Milky Way Galaxy, there is a supermassive black hole. This is normal — at the center of almost every galaxy there is a black hole that is millions or billions times heavier than our sun. As galaxies move through the universe, they occasionally collide (the Milky Way is currently colliding with the Sagittarius Galaxy) and over a long time 1, eventually the cores of these galaxies crash into each other, resulting in two supermassive black holes orbiting one another. The two black holes will get closer together, orbiting faster and faster as they fall into one another. This phenomenon should be common, based upon how frequently galaxies collide, however, we have never detected any close orbiting supermassive black holes. Due to this lack of evidence, there has been much debate in the scientific community regarding if it were even possible to for black hole orbits…

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When we first learn about cells in biology, we are taught that bacterial cells are simple, and animal and plant cells are more complex. Mammalian cells, the cells that make up dogs, humans and all mammals, are “eukaryotes.” Eukaryotes have multiple membranes — one surrounding their innermost section, the nucleus, which protects their DNA and another outer membrane enclosing the entire cell. Bacterial cells, also called “prokaryotes,” have only an outer membrane. However, reality is never so black and white! As it turns out, there are some species of bacteria that have a more complex membrane system resembling the animal-like cells (eukaryotes). One example of these more complex bacteria is Gemmata obscuriglobans. These bacteria are aquatic and can be found in fresh or brackish bodies of water, such as lakes and ponds. Although there has been some debate on this subject, a recent paper in PLOS One has cleared up…

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