Reading Time: 2 minutes Last week, Vice President Kamala Harris and French President Emmanuel Macron visited NASA headquarters to take a peek at a recent snapshot of two galaxies gracefully swirling together – a galaxy merger referred to as II ZW 96. Taken by the James Webb Space Telescope, this image of two galaxies colliding 500 million light years […]
Georgia Michelman
Georgia Michelman is a reluctant recent Yale College graduate with backgrounds in physics, astronomy, and history. She is always searching for intersections between the worlds of science and the humanities. She is also an avid chatter with contrarian tendencies, which are classic Gemini traits (though she also recognizes that astrology has no basis in scientific fact).
Posted inSpace
‘Planet killer’ asteroids found in inner solar system
Reading Time: 2 minutes Scientists studying inner solar system objects have discovered three nearby asteroids previously shrouded in the Sun’s glare. Two of these are larger than one kilometer, earning the label “planet killer”—and one is the largest potentially hazardous asteroid (PHA) discovered in at least the past eight years. Astronomers studying inner solar system asteroids have the odds […]
Posted inSpace
Webb’s infrared capabilities reveal hidden cosmic details
Reading Time: 2 minutes The James Webb Space Telescope has continued to capture dazzling interstellar scenery since the first batch of images was released in July. Recent discoveries highlight how useful Webb’s high-resolution, infrared capabilities really are. As Webb’s infrared cameras plunge past visibly opaque gas and dust, previously obscured treasures are revealed. This is particularly useful in the […]
Posted inSpace
New tech shatters previous model of Moon’s origin
Reading Time: 3 minutes A team of scientists at Durham University in the UK has flipped the chessboard of our longstanding consensus about the origin of the Moon. It was a story made to capture my attention. In high school English classes, I often lightly plagiarized the last line of Walt Whitman’s “When I Heard the Learn’d Astronomer.” Whitman’s […]
Posted inEvolution
Fish fossils aid the search for human origins
Reading Time: 2 minutes Perhaps the greatest question driving science—and human thought in general—is the mystery of origins. This question has manifested itself in myriad shapes and sizes: our fascination with the Big Bang, the birth of our Earth, the evolution of our own species, and even our own individual genealogies. Especially as many have turned away from religion—the […]
Posted inSpace
NASA’s DART shows the explosive power of astronomical collaboration
Reading Time: 2 minutes On September 26th, the clickbait-able happened: NASA smashed a spacecraft going 14,000 mph into an asteroid larger than the Washington Monument. This was intentional, the years-long result of careful planning, engineering, and worldwide collaboration that constituted the Double Asteroid Redirection Test. What was surprising to scientists was just how spectacular DART’s impact with its target […]
Posted inScience
When it comes to asteroid danger, gravity’s not so attractive
Reading Time: 2 minutes Sorry, astrology haters. The rumors are true: humans are being pulled at by the gravity of all planets at all times. There is not a drop of evidence for these minuscule gravitational tugs as tools of personality formation nor as predictors of luck. Still, we are not the free-floaters we imagine ourselves to be, but […]
Posted inBiology
Life on Mars? Perseverance rover finds organic matter
Reading Time: 2 minutes Humans have been captivated by fictional images of Martian life since the 19th century. In 1877, Giovanni Schiaparelli, an Italian astronomer, observed canali–channels, then mistranslated as canals–on the planet, unintentionally sparking a movement of Martian conspiracists enchanted by the possibility of extraterrestrial life. Since then, we’ve been inching closer and closer to finding the real […]
Posted inHealthcare
Antibodies effective against a variety of COVID variants
Reading Time: 2 minutes COVID anxiety levels are dwindling among Americans. Even the very liberal have finally begun to take a breather. As more Americans eschew their N95 and cut large gathering limitations, the more COVID-conscious of us needn’t fret. Optimistic news on new treatment efficacy is also on the rise. Perhaps one of the most exciting and underreported […]
Posted inSpace
A dry run to save the planet: NASA DART probe closing in on asteroid impact
Reading Time: 6 minutes NASA’s DART spacecraft will crash into an asteroid on September 26, the first real-life test of planetary defense techniques.