By Begüm Nisa Kasaplı Pluto is a dwarf planet of the Kuiper Belt, which is a group of objects orbiting in a disc-like zone beyond the orbit of Neptune. This distant realm is populated with thousands of miniature icy worlds that formed about 4.5 billion years ago in the history of our solar system. Pluto, which is a member of the Kuiper Belt, is smaller than Earth’s Moon. Also due to its lower density, Pluto’s mass is about one-sixth that […]

In the far depths of time of the early universe, a supermassive black hole causes chaos. by Rida Fatima The Discovery Using a device called Atacama Large Millimeter Array (ALMA), researchers at the National Institute of Natural Sciences have discovered a humongous galactic storm (otherwise known as a quasar wind) caused by a supermassive black hole within the early universe. To understand the significance of these findings, there are a few questions that need to be answered. What is a […]

by Tym Sokolskyi If asked to list cellular organelles, many people will name mitochondria, ribosomes, the nucleus, or maybe chloroplasts or the Golgi apparatus – things they teach about in schools (though many people might not even remember learning about those). It seems perhaps that the age of breakthroughs in cytology is long gone, however, as many studies keep pointing out, we still do not know all that much about many of the diverse forms floating in our cytoplasm. One […]

By Michael May Introduction If scientific research was reflective of high school level science courses, then every field would lie within its own separate sphere: biology dealing with all things living, chemistry describing the interactions of physical matter, and physics covering topics such as motion and the behavior of particles. However, it is fairly common knowledge that there is plenty of overlap between these fields, with studies such as biochemistry and biophysics dedicated to describing how one subject operates within […]

By Devika S How does a sail on a boat work? Simply put, the forces of the wind on the sails (aerodynamics) work against the drag force from the water (hydrodynamics) to propel the boat through the water. But not all sails are powered by the winds on Earth. Applying sail technology to space has led to the development of the “solar sail”, a technology that relies on powering spaceflight by the force of radiation from a star. Solar sailing […]

By Ignacy Górecki There is no doubt that being an astronaut may be among the toughest jobs on the planet. Despite the dangers of working in space and the incredibly demanding selection process, many people dream of going into space. It is clear that being an astronaut requires excellency and a remarkable set of skills. But are those skills universal? What differentiates the class of “Mercury Seven” from candidates of the latest European Space Agency astronaut selection? Each class of […]

by Andrea Di Mauro The fascination of space exploration lies not only in the immensity of discoveries and knowledge offered, but also due to the variety of disciplines and fields of study that it requires. From an early age, when we think of space, images of satellites, spacecraft, and/or rockets may often come to mind. Those of us who even dream of building some of these spacecraft in the near future cannot help but venture into the arduous but rewarding […]

By Andrew Bartnik “We are tied to the ocean. And when we go back to the sea, whether it is to sail or to watch – we are going back from whence we came…”  John F. Kennedy Covering three quarters of the Earth’s surface and containing 97% of the planet’s water, it is unsurprising that the ocean has an immense influence on life on Earth. The ocean is the Earth’s “Great Moderator” — by sequestering enormous amounts of carbon it […]

By Davi Souza As the worldwide human population continues to increase, the concern to meet global nutritional demands is growing as well. A study in 2013 showed that current trends in yield improvement alone will not be sufficient to meet expected global food demand, and suggest that a further expansion of agricultural area may be required. Meanwhile, agriculture is the main driver of loss in biodiversity and a major contributor to climate change and pollution, and so further expansion may […]