German Astronomers Create Largest Astronomical Image Ever Seen

Astronomers at the Ruhr-Universität Bochum in Germany have created the largest astronomical image known to man. 

Over the course of five years, researchers compiled pictures taken from their university observatory in the Atacama Desert in Chile — the driest place on earth. 

The Atacama Desert's dry air and high altitude provided ideal conditions for space observation. 

Dryness minimizes the amount of moisture in the air that can interfere with light, which therefore provides clearer skies.

The Alma Observatory in the Atacama Desert

The photos — which are of our galaxy, the Milky Way — were originally divided into 278 sections and then combined to form the single image made up of 47 billion pixels.

The image also uncovered 50,000 new variable objects. Variable objects are described as objects that differ when the light we receive from them has been interfered with by anything from another planet to another star. These variable objects were identified by astronomers, who took snapshots of the same location over several days before comparing them.

The full image can be seen here.




Main image via Ruhr-Universität Bochum

Advertisement

Continue Reading

From First "Like" To Breakup Text: Teen Romances Need Technology, Study Says

From likes on a Facebook profile pic to the accidental sext that ends it all, a U.S. study finds that technology plays an integral role in teenage romances.

Remember when you could only flirt, ask someone out or break up with someone in person? Yeah, me neither. That is definitely the case for teens across the country. Nearly every step of teenage relationships is interwoven with cell phones and social media.

Lead author for the report Amanda Lenhart said digital technology acts as a powerful tool in teens' dating toolboxes. "Even as teens enjoy greater closeness with partners and a chance to display their relationships for others to see, mobile and social media can also be tools for jealousy, meddling and even troubling behavior," shesaid to the BBC.

Pew Research Center surveyed 1,060 teens between 13 to 17 years old and what they said isn't that surprising. "But it is affirming," said Julie Beck, senior editor at the Atlantic, who unpacked the results. "Humans are social animals, and we build tools to connect with each other."

Fifty percent of teensshowed interest in someone by friend-ing someone on Facebook — roughly the same number like or share something with their potential boo there. Kids who've never dated before use this as "entry-level" flirting, which could be characterized as an easy way to connect with your crush but also duck away if the sparks don't fly. 

Over a sixth of teens who've dated before will sent flirtatious messages over social media to try and hook someone in. And once they're "in like" with each other, between 85 to 90 percent of the teens expect to be in touch at least once a day — if not more.

They text (92 percent), talk over the phone (87 percent), and post and chat on social media (approximately 70 percent) to the point that 59 percent of couples feel social media keeps them better connected to their significant other's life. More boys than girls as a whole said they felt this, which might be an upside considering boys need more encouragement in showing their emotions. 

The digital sphere is also where 63 percent of teens give and get the thumbs down or up from friends, with 71 percent of girls approving of their friends' relationships.

Then again, 69 percent of them say too many people can snoop on their relationship on social media.

What if Joe and his bae need to fight? Nearly half of the "we need to talk" conversations where partners air out grievances respectfully with minimal yelling happen in front of a screen — specifically over texts or instant messaging. It's streamlined — they fight andresolve issues that way. Thankfully, most breakups are still done in person with only 27 percent of teens getting the boot through text.

But there's trade-offs for constant connectivity. A lot of it isn't pretty.

Let's start with what we've all done at least once. Forty-three percent of teens felt that their significant other spent too much time on their cell phones when they were together. Taking it a step further, just under a third of teens said that “social media makes them feel jealous or unsure about their relationship.”

Similar to the case for adult women, teen girls are more likely than teen boys to be targets for harassment with 35 percent of them blocking or unfriending someone because of frequent and intense harassment. That figure is twice what it is for boys.

It gets worse but less frequent. 

Some teens reported being on the receiving end of abusive or controlling behavior from their partner. Twenty-one percent of them said their significant other had read their texts without their permission and then 11 percent said their ex or even who they were with now had threatened them over the phone.

What digital spaces are not used for is blind dating. Teen couples don't use it to strike up something out of the blue; instead it's a tool where they woo and win, ignore and eventually screw up their relationships. Understanding the teenage generation who grew up with tech at their fingertips gives us a window into how they'll interact with future partners.




Main image via The Atlantic | Edgard Garrido / Reuters

Collage image via Youth Health Magazine | MedicalDaily 

Advertisement

Continue Reading

Mars Has Flowing Water In The Summer!

Flowing water is the definitive theory for these seasonal, dark, narrow, 100 meter-long streaks flowing downhill on Mars.

Where there’s smoke, there’s fire. But when looking for E.T., where there’s water, there 's (possibly) life.

So you can imagine how excited scientists were announcing that dark streaks that sometimes appear on Martian slopes are actually flowing water, according to findings published in the journal Nature Geoscience.

NASA announced that during Martian summers, salty liquid water flows down the slopes. That discovery could mean habitable conditions for microbe life on the planet’s cold, dry surface — past or present.

Planetary scientists examined reflected light from images from 2010 and determined they were recently-hydrated salts from Mars' Horowitz crater.

This confirms a longtime theory that dark streak images taken from the Mars Reconnaissance Orbiter in 2010 are water.


The steaks are technically called recurring slope lineae and span over 100 meters long and five meters wide.

At the end of last year, a team of eight scientists started analyzing the light reflected from the dark features that only showed up during the Martian summer and disappeared in its winter. This process tells us what minerals make up the surface of planets.

After these mineral salts soak up water, they leave these dark streaks, saidlead author and University of Arizona graduate student Lujendra Ojha.

"There were these stark, linear, narrow features forming" all over the planet, Ojha told Bloomburg Business, "and they were only forming when the temperature was ideal for liquid water."

GIF of the dark streaks on Mars' Newton Crater slopes from McEwen et al. published in 2011. These early images formed the basis for findings published Monday.

Ojha and his colleagues say that the molecular water couldn't be locked in the salts without a recent influx of water. The paper says the conditions are similar to the Atacama Desert in western Latin America whose salt beds are perfect for potential microbes.

The saltiness of the water is key because it keeps the water from freezing over in Mars's cold temperatures.

The paper didn't say exactly where the water came from but offered several possibilities, including water from melting subsurface ice, liquid bubbling up from an aquifer, or water being pulled out of the Martian atmosphere by the salty surface.

We’ve known for years that Mars has had water frozen at the poles and glacier belts, in the atmosphere and more recently in tiny puddles that form at night. The Red Planet also shows topographical scars of ancient water flow, which lead scientists to believe Mars was once warmer and wetter than today.

Main Image Source: NASA/JPL/University of Arizona

Advertisement

Continue Reading

Researchers Recommend Women Not Wear Bras

Ah, bras — those expensive things that women are told to wear underneath their tops. They come in many shapes, sizes, colors, and even materials. October 13th has been dubbed "National No Bra Day" and was invented in order to promote breast cancer awareness — as well as raise money for research. Some people swear by bras, while others are vehemently opposed to them. Bras are often touted for giving support and reducing the sagging of breasts, as well as other things. These pieces of underwear have become something major in today's society.

Recently, however, bras have come under fire. 

The reason for this is that scientific research into the usefulness of bras has been conducted and it has actually shown that bras are detrimental, not beneficial, to breast health. Sports science researcher Jean-Denis Roullion conducted a 15-year study on the effect of women from ages 18 to 35. Within his research, he found that bra usage at a young age actually provided no benefit in terms of breast support. His findings actually showed the complete opposite, stating that there was a 7 mm lift in the nipples of women who did NOT use bras. He claims that bras could reduce circulation and breast tone over time.

Is it time to burn your bras?

The women who showed an improvement in nipple lift were the women who chose, by their own will, to not wear bras (so they weren't forced to for the study). Another doctor who was not part of the research stated that the removal of bra usage could actually increase collagen production and elasticity, which would then lead to an improved lift in the breasts. While this research is very compelling...

...the researchers still caution people to take it with a grain of salt. The research does show that bra usage may be potentially harmful, but the research sample was 330 women, so generalizing to every woman across the world would be a bit of a stretch.

To conclude, the researchers believe that more research should be done on the harmful effects of bra usage since they believe their research to be "preliminary." It's also worth noting that not all women wear bras for breast support. Some women simply don't want people to see the exposed breast and nipple, so they use bras for a different reason than the study was focused on. Basically, hold off on torching those bras.

Advertisement

Continue Reading

Study Says Walking 30 Minutes A Day Isn't Enough

Don't freak out, but those 30 minutes of moderate-intensity exercise that millions of us do isn't enough to keep heart failure at bay.

Turns out that exercising twice to four times as much that amount reduced people's risk of heart risk by 20 to 35 percent respectively. The analysis of a dozen older studies was published in the journal Circulation, and this research challenges the American Heart Association's (AHA) minimum guidelines of exercising only half an hour a day with activities like brisk walking.

To be fair, the AHA said that figure results in "modest reductions" of risk of heart failure compared to those who didn't do anything and the AHA does say that more physical activity is always better. Heart failure happens when your ticker can't get enough blood to your body, and this condition affects more than 5.1 million Americans and leads to $32 billion in health-care costs a year. 

The number of people experiencing heart failure is expected to shoot up by25 percent in 2030 from what it was in 2010. 

The findings suggested a "dose dependent" relationship linking heart failure and exercise — so higher levels of physical activity meant lower risk of heart failure. That was the case regardless of age, gender or race.

Jarett D. Berry, senior author and associate professor at University of Texas Southwestern Medical School, said doctors and policy makers have to take note.

Basic symptom list for heart failure

The analysis looked at the combined data from over 15 years of 370,460 men and women with varying levels of physical activity. The researchers found that 20,203 of them had heart failure events. Each participant in the different studies reported their daily activities and gave researchers a ballpark number.

Berry said that 30 minutes a day probably won't be enough for middle-aged people with hypertension and that people with diabetes or a history of heart disease should do a lot more. But the problem is fitting in 300 to 600 minutes of "moderate" exercise into our week.

The Centers for Disease Control and Prevention says one minute of vigorous activity counts for two minutes of moderate activity. So as long as that activity makes you breathe hard and pushes up your heart rate, you're in the clear for it counting towards your exercise time.

Vigorous Activity: Jogging, swimming laps, riding quickly on a bike, singles tennis or basketball

Moderate-intensity activity: Speed walking, water aerobics, pushing lawnmower, taking a leisurely bike ride




Main image via Medics Index | Chase Jarvis / Getty Images

Collage image via The Atlantic | Dominick Reuter / Reuters

Advertisement

Continue Reading

Bed Bugs Develop Resistance To Previously Effective Insecticides

Saying "don't let the bed bugs bite" could be something we start saying ironically because the prime thing we use to kill them isn't working anymore.

Researchers have found that bed bugs in Cincinnati and Michigan have developed "dramatic levels" of immunity to the regular amount of chemicals we use to kill them. Turns out, these resistant blood-suckers need concentrations that are 1000 times larger than non-resistant bed bugs.

The study urges us to stop relying on chemicals because chemical resistance will just happen again.

Bed bugs live by sucking on the blood of animals which leaves behind itchy, red weals and bite marks all over victims' bodies. 

You compulsively scratching everywhere?

How about now? Google bed bug bites to see how bad it can get — actually maybe don't.

While, bed bugs do most of their bloodsucking at night, they actually can live a year without eating. But all it takes is for one fertilized female to infest an entire apartment building. 

In other words, once they've found their way into homes and offices, they're a massive pain to get rid of. And that's with the chemicals we use to carpet bomb the insects with now.

Bed bugs have gotten stronger...

Back in 2012, researchers collected bed bugs from Cincinnati and Michigan and doused them with four different neonicotinoids. Then, they compared the effects to a bed bug colony from 30 years ago and found that a stronger concentration of chemicals were needed to kill the bugs of today.

In fact, the bed bugs which weren't exposed to neonicotinoids 30 years ago could easily develop enzymes which breaks down the chemicals making them useless. 

Dr. Alvaro Romero, the lead author from New Mexico State University, says the way we're killing bed bugs has to change.

"We need to emphasis that we need to use different tools - we can't depend totally on chemicals we need to incorporate other alternatives"

Bed bug resistance has happened before...

In the 1940s and '50s, we used a powerful insecticide called DDT to hold off bed bugs from spreading. But it stopped working because the bed bugs developed immunity by the 1960s. Then we went onto the next chemical, pyrethroids and started mixing it with neonicotinoids.

But recently, we've found out those have a massive detrimental effect on the environment, its bees and other wildlife. 




Main image via BBC News | Alvaro Romero

Advertisement

Continue Reading

Rat Legs Might Soon Be Prosthetic Limbs

A group of scientists are growing a rat leg in a petri dish, and this could be the best hope for every amputee in America to grow back the limbs they’ve lost.

Hell, that’d change the world.

Find out how success at the University of Massachusetts would mean the biggest step in our history of amputations.

Advertisement

Continue Reading

Why SpaceX Landing An Unmanned Rocket Was A Damn Historic Flight

SpaceX just passed a milestone for human beings going and forth to the stars. "But I don't have thousands of dollars to go to space..." you may be thinking. 

Well, you better shut your mouth because the return of this rocket will cut the bill. Here's why.

On Monday night, the Falcon-9 rocket blasted off its launchpad in Cape Canaveral, Florida and flew 125 miles into the air. During the flight, it propelled a small section of the rocket — stuffed with 11 communications satellites — into freakin' space. At that point, the spacecraft's booster engines turned on and started sending the 23-story rocket back to Earth. 

The whole thing took some ten minutes. And now we're one step closer to schmucks like you and me going to space.

Because this happened. SpaceX successfullylanded the rocket upright.

This is the first time a rocket of this size landed back on Earth upright

It was flawless. 

This is the first time an orbital rocket successfully landed back on Earth, according to SpaceX commentators. SpaceX employees screamed with joy as they watched their unmanned rocket touch down. It's actually been six months since SpaceX has sent any rocket into orbit. 

Because the last one they sent blew up. So that's why this launch and return is significant for two reasons.

First, replace those 11 satellites with people

Through his company, billionaire and tech entrepreneur Elon Musk wants to slash the cost of private trips to space. Figuring out how to reuse and relaunch rockets does just that.

Just think: substitute those 11 satellites into space with human beings into space. The whole flight took ten minutes and the rocket was able to come back down to Earth. Consistently repeating what SpaceX did with humans would change the world — this is no exaggeration.

After three previous attempts earlier this year, this was SpaceX's first time successfully recycling of a rocket.

At the top of this flight, the rocket pushed out 11 satellites into orbit 

Second, SpaceX has learned from their last rocket exploding in June

Back in June, an identical Falcon-9 rocket to the one that touched down on Monday exploded in midair minutes after takeoff. The rocket had actually had 18 prior successes before the fateful flight that was supposed to send cargo to the International Space Station. 

The company has spent months fixing what caused June's explosion. NASA actually has a $1.6 billion contract with SpaceX, who's been delivering payloads into space for more than six years. 

A rocket returning back to Earth was actually done four weeks ago by one of SpaceX's competitors, Blue Origin. But they sent a smaller, less powerful rocket and it went half as far as SpaceX's rocket did.

This is what the rocket looks like

Main image via Inquirer | Associated Press

Collage image via BBC News | Associated Press

Advertisement

Continue Reading