Science

The intrepid animators at AsapScience dared to ask Is Masturbation Good For You?Their answer, in their characteristic whiteboard drawing style, covers the positive effects of self-love on brain function, pelvic muscles, and the immune system. Check it out! Contact the author at [email protected].

The First Permanent Astronaut Aboard the ISS Could Be a Robot

Humans only live aboard the International Space Station for a few months, maybe a year. Robots, on the other hand, don’t need food or water or comfort, and can work on the station for as long as need be. Useful! And they’ll be even more useful with a new method of memory storage that can…

Why Cats Rule the Internet Instead of Dogs

LOLcats, Lil Bub, Grumpy Cat, Nyan Cat. Why aren’t dogs as popular as cats in memes and viral videos? The answer, believe it or not, may come from science. Right now, at New York’s Museum of the Moving Image in Queens, there’s an exhibit called “How Cats Took Over the Internet.” Inside runs a 24-minute…

Space Candies on the ISS Make Expedition Work a Little Bit Easier

When hard working astronauts are craving candies beside M&M’s and other snacks, Skittles seem to be the turn-to treat. In the photo above you can see a clear container of Skittles floating in the microgravity environment of the International Space Station. It’s a handy snack stop for the Expedition 45 crew. [NASA]

The Fields of Italy Aren’t Really This Red

You’d be forgiven for thinking that the Italians had decided to grow nothing but poppies and tomatoes from this picture — but in fact you’re looking at an image from Sentinel-2A, where healthy vegetation shows up as red rather than green. The image, taken above Avezzano in Italy, was captured using a multispectral camera aboard…

Here Is a Rare View of Mars’ Icy Backside

This is one of the most fascinating images of Mars I’ve ever seen. The perspective—captured by Mars Express—makes it feel like I’m standing under our closest planetary neighbor, looking up at its south polar ice cap and its billion-year-old cratered highlands. In other words, this is Mars’ nether regions. The image was released by the…

A Lava Ocean on Io Could Mean Better Prospects for Alien Life

Jupiter’s moon Io is an eruptive mystery. Based on scientific models, the tiny Jovian moon’s volcanoes flare up in the “wrong” places. How could that be? Well apparently, our models didn’t account for a massive subsurface ocean of lava. That’s right: According to a new NASA study, Io may be hiding an ocean of molten…

China Could Be the First Country to Land on the Moon’s Far Side

The far side of the moon has long been a tantalizing mystery. But China, a latecomer to the lunar landing game, could soon make history as the first country to touch its surface. State media reports from China this week confirm the country’s intention to send a Chang’e-4 landing probe to the far side of…

Penguins With a “Same Time Next Year” Relationship

Southern rockhopper penguins mate for life, but when biologists used light-based geolocators to track their behavior they found that pairs only spent about 20 to 30 days together each year–just enough time to mate and lay eggs. The birds checked in with each other at night during the 2 months they were raising a chick,…

A New Stretchable Conductor Can Extend to Twice Its Length

Flexible, bendable and rollable electronics remain somewhat of a sci-fi dream: making circuitry that continues to conduct electricity while undergoing deformation is actually quite hard. But now there’s a metallic conductor that can stretch to twice its length — and it’s cheap to make, too. The new material, developed at Washington State University, bonds a…

New Hybrid Solar Cell Produces 5 Times Higher Voltage Than Competitors

Solar cells are becoming increasingly efficient, but many still fail to make full use of the radiation that falls upon them. A new hybrid cell, however, converts unused light into heat to boost its efficiency by 20 percent. Researchers have taken a conventional dye-sensitized solar cell and placed it upon a film of PEDOT —…

Fall Colors Look Even Better From Space

Here in North America, the leaves are only just thinking about changing, but in eastern Siberia, the fall foliage is out in force. This image, captured by the Moderate Resolution Image Spectroradiometer on NASA’s Aqua satellite, does a good job of showing how pretty the leaves can be. Click to embiggen But in the zoomed-out…

What Really Happens When Male Seahorses Are Pregnant

A male seahorse gets pregnant when his mate deposits her as-yet-unfertilized eggs into a pouch on his belly. He fertilizes them, then carries the developing embryos until they’re ready to feed themselves. At which point he forcefully shoots them into the world. But his pouch isn’t just a bag for keeping baby seahorses safe. A…

We Can Now See Ceres’ Mysterious Bright Spots In a Lot More Detail

NASA’s Dawn spacecraft has just sent home a new photo, a much closer look at the famous bright spots on the dwarf planet Ceres. Compared to the previous images taken from higher orbits, significantly more details can be seen in this new photo of the Occator crater. The composite photo below was created using two…

This Is How You Assemble a 21st Century Spacecraft

You’re looking at the critical first manufacturing step being taken to get the United States on the way to Mars. NASA has just published a whole set of images taken on Saturday in the agency’s Michoud Assembly Facility in New Orleans, where Lockheed Martin engineers welded together the first two segments of the Orion crew…

HIV Could Be Killing Cells in a Way Scientists Had So Far Not Noticed

Scientists have been conscientiously studying HIV for decades, but now a new study suggests that the virus can infect and kill immune cells in a way that scientists have so far overlooked. New Scientist reports that new research shows the virus is able kill cells by being pumped from one currently infected cell directly into…

Everything About Social Determinants of Health, You Can Learn From IKEA

It’s that time of year again. Summer is ending, undergrads are flooding university campuses, and people are moving. When people move, a few things become mandatory, for example, pizza or some other reward for those who help you move. But one of the most important things anyone will do though is the annual trek to…

How Space-Aged Whiskey Tastes: Smoked Fruit, Antiseptic, Rubbery Smoke

Back in 2011, Ardbeg Distillery, of Islay in Scotland, sent a sample of unmatured malt whiskey into space aboard the International Space Station. Now, the samples have been tested — and here’s how it tastes. Samples of the distillery’s whiskey were aged aboard the space station: sealed in something called MixStix, astronauts were able to…

A Beautiful Composite Image of the ISS Crossing the Sun

What happens when the International Space Station flies past the Sun? Nothing as bad as the fate that befell Icarus, fortunately — just a nice image, instead. In this picture, you can see how the silhouette of the ISS as it passed across the face of Sun on Sunday September 6th. Moving at about 5…

How to Spot a Black Hole

You don’t need to be a professional astronomer to find black holes. Here’s how you can spot one, using just your laptop or phone. Radio Galaxy Zoo is an online platform that allows cosmically-inclined individuals to make valuable contributions to astronomy, by identifying radio jets from supermassive black holes (SBHs) and matching these features to…