Archive: Sep 2016

Presented by Ashley Villar and Tansu Daylan The detection of gravitational waves has crowned a decades-long experimental endeavor in physics, confirming the major prediction of Einstein’s general theory of gravity. For the first time physicists are able…

President Obama has recently established the Northeast Canyons and Seamounts Marine National Monument off of the coast of New England. The monument is the first in the Atlantic Ocean and measures in at 4,913 square miles, roughly the size of Connecticut.…

by Rose Filoramo figures by Daniel Utter A Report that Changed History On June 5th, 1981, the Center for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) released a medical report documenting something peculiar: within the span of one year, five previously healthy…

In 1948, Claude Shannon proved that information could be securely encrypted and transmitted given a single-use, randomly generated key. As long as the key – commonly referred to as a ‘one-time pad’ – is used only once, and is equal in length to the…

A new planet with the potential of sustaining life was discovered by astronomers at Queen Mary University Of London orbiting Proxima Centauri, the nearest star to the Sun – 4.2 light years away. Using small wobbles in the trajectory of Proxima Centauri…

by Benika Pinch figures by Kaitlyn Choi If you watched the Rio Olympics, you probably noticed that several athletes, including swimmer Michael Phelps, were covered in bizarre circular marks. These bruises were caused by cupping, a therapy that uses…

“Shrink to grow” is a two-pronged business strategy where a company gets rid of unprofitable brands (“shrink”) to focus its resources on a few remaining or new brands (“grow”). Companies like P&G and Microsoft have used it, and a similar idea to…

Astronomers used the Gemini Telescope to photograph Dragonfly 44, an ultra diffuse galaxy comprised of almost entirely dark matter. Last week, astronomers announced the discovery of a galaxy that is almost entirely comprised of dark matter. At first…

by Michael Goldman figures by Michael Gerhardt LIGO’s observation of gravitational waves was perhaps the most stunning physics discovery of the past several years. Two black holes, each 20 to 30 times as massive as the sun, collided in an event of…

by Gabriel Filsinger figures by Anna Maurer Can biological aging be slowed or reversed? Time is constantly passing. Given enough time, we change as people and move between stages of life, transforming from children into young adults and evolving from…