Rogue Cosmic Rays From Outer Space Are Causing Havoc With Our Smartphones

Under Earth's protective magnetic field, we don't usually need to worry too much about the health effects of cosmic radiation – although it's something that's known to impact astronauts in space, and even passengers travelling in airplanes.

But the same can't be said for our technological systems – fierce solar storms can wreak havoc on Earth's communication networks, and new research shows that even ordinary levels of cosmic radiation can have a disruptive effect on our personal devices.

Article
@EverythingScience

Scientists Just Found Evidence That Neurons Can Communicate in a Way We Never Anticipated

Researchers have discovered a brand new mechanism that controls the way nerve cells in our brain communicate with each other to regulate learning and long-term memory.

The fact that a new brain mechanism has been hiding in plain sight is a reminder of how much we have yet to learn about how the human brain works, and what goes wrong in neurodegenerative disorders such as Alzheimer's and epilepsy.

Article
@EverythingScience

The conference is starting. Follow the conference with the link below.
http://goo.gl/thwMZe
@EverythingScience

Or instead you can watch the livestream here
@EverythingScience

BREAKING NEWS: NASA Has Discovered a Potentially Habitable 'Sister Solar System'

In one of the most significant exoplanet discoveries to date, NASA just announced that not one, but seven Earth-sized planets have been found orbiting the habitable or 'temperate zone' of a star just 39 light-years away.

Article
@EverythingScience

Searching for Life on 7 Nearby Alien Worlds: How Scientists Will Do It

The hunt for signs of life on seven nearby exoplanets will likely begin just a few years from now.

An international research team announced that seven roughly Earth-size alien worlds orbit the small, dim star TRAPPIST-1, which lies just 39 light-years from Earth. (For perspective: Our Milky Way galaxy is 100,000 light-years wide. The closest star to the sun, Proxima Centauri, is about 4.2 light-years away.)

Article
@EverythingScience

NASA Just Released Travel Posters for Our New Sister Solar System, and They're Cool as Hell

NASA went all-out to mark the occasion, launching an entire website dedicated to our Sister Solar System, complete with travel posters, infographics, videos, and glimpses into the future of our investigations of TRAPPIST-1.

Article
@EverythingScience

A Physicist Just Explained Why the Large Hadron Collider Disproves the Existence of Ghosts

Recent polls have found that 42 percent of Americans and 52 percent of people in the UK believe in ghosts - a huge percentage when you consider that no one has ever come up with irrefutable proof that they even exist.

But we might have had proof that they don't exist all along, because as British theoretical physicist Brian Cox recently pointed out, there's no room in the Standard Model of Physics for a substance or medium that can carry on our information after death, and yet go undetected in the Large Hadron Collider.

Article
@EverythingScience

The Blood of Komodo Dragons Could Help Us to Slay Antibiotic Resistance

Protein fragments in the blood of Komodo dragons have antimicrobial properties that help them resist toxic bacteria, and they could be used to develop new drugs to counter antibiotic resistance, researchers have found.

The Komodo dragon is the world's largest lizard, growing up to 3 metres (9.8 feet) in length and weighing up to 70 kilograms (154 lbs). It lives on five small islands in Indonesia, where its massive size and sharp teeth enable it to feast on prey as large as water buffalo – but there's another, less obvious reason why you definitely don't want to get bitten by one.

Aricle
@EverythingScience

This Is What Earth's Magnetic Field Sounds Like

The ancients believed that Earth was surrounded by celestial spheres, which produced divine music when they moved. We lived, so to speak, in a huge musical instrument.

This may sound silly but modern science has proved them right to a certain extent. Satellites recording sound waves resonating with Earth's magnetosphere – the magnetic bubble that protects us from space radiation – show that we are indeed living inside a massive, magnetic musical instrument.

Article
@EverythingScience

New episode of Mind Field is now available on @ESHUB!

Tiny 'MoonWatcher' Satellite Will Beam Home Live Lunar Views

Soon, a tiny satellite will start beaming home live, high-resolution views of the moon for all the world to see, 24 hours a day, if all goes according to plan.

The startup Lunar Station aims to launch a cubesat called MoonWatcher to Earth orbit early next year and then air webcasts based on the spacecraft's sharp imagery. The company has launched a Kickstarter campaign to help fund the effort and hopes to raise $150,000 by March 12.

Article
@EverythingScience

Physicists Have Detected a Friction-Like Force in a Perfect Vacuum

One of the most fundamental tenets of modern physics is that in a perfect vacuum - a place entirely devoid of matter - no friction can possibly exist, because empty space cannot exert a force on objects travelling through it.

But despite the conventional wisdom, physicists in the UK discovered that a decaying atom travelling through a complete vacuum would experience a friction-like force, and now they've figured out how this reinforces - rather than breaks - Einstein's theory of general relativity.

Article
@EverythingScience

A Giant Neuron Has Been Found Wrapped Around the Entire Circumference of the Brain

For the first time, scientists have detected a giant neuron wrapped around the entire circumference of a mouse's brain, and it's so densely connected across both hemispheres, it could finally explain the origins of consciousness.

Using a new imaging technique, the team detected the giant neuron emanating from one of the best-connected regions in the brain, and say it could be coordinating signals from different areas to create conscious thought.

Article
@EverythingScience

SpaceX plans to send two civilians around the moon next year

SpaceX announced a plan for beginning the era of space tourism: in late 2018, the space travel company plans to send two private citizens around the moon and back again.

Article
@EverythingScience

Atlas V rocket launch a classified reconnaissance satellite.

@EverythingScience
@Space_English

Scientists Have Found a Way to Rapidly Thaw Cryopreserved Tissue Without Damage

Researchers have developed a technique that allows them to rapidly thaw cryopreserved human and pig samples without damaging the tissue - a development that could help get rid of organ transplant waiting lists.

Cryopreservation is the ability to preserve tissues at liquid nitrogen temperatures for long periods of time and bring them back without damage, and it's something scientists have been dreaming about achieving with large tissue samples and organs for decades.

Not only for the life-extending applications we've read about in sci-fi novels, but, more feasibly, because the technology could allow hospitals to safely store organs for long periods of time.

Aritcle
@EverythingScience

DNA could be the future of data storage

The world is churning out so much data that hard-drives may not be able to keep up, leading researchers to look at DNA as a possible storage medium. DNA is ultra compact, and doesn’t degrade over time like cassettes and CDs. In a new study, Yaniv Erlich and Dina Zielinski demonstrate DNA’s full potential and reliability for storing data. The researchers wrote six files—a full computer operating system, a 1895 French film, an Amazon gift card, a computer virus, a Pioneer plaque, and a study by information theorist Claude Shannon—into 72,000 DNA strands, each 200 bases long. They then used sequencing technology to retrieve the data, and software to translate the genetic code back into binary. The files were recovered with no errors. We spoke with Erlich about the results, and what they mean for the future of data storage.

Article
@EverythingScience