By Xi Chen The history of the Neogene paleoclimate and environment are hidden in a “secret collection” written by nature in code. Scientists all over the world are explaining and reading these “secrets”, among which the three most widely read books include deep-sea sedimentation, polar ice cores, and Chinese loess. The Loess Plateau is one of the longest (about 20 million years) and most complete land paleoclimate recorders discovered so far. The Loess Plateau is composed of loess, a word […]

by Diego Dueñas Parapar Mars is one of the planets that many members of humankind plan to settle relatively soon. Since the mid-20th century, many space missions have been carried out for the exploration of Mars — satellites, landers, rovers, and even a helicopter have been sent with the aim of getting to know the climatological, geological, and (maybe) biological conditions on the Red Planet. Thanks to these missions, we know that Mars has an atmosphere dominated by approximately 96% […]

By Daniel Runyan What is the origin of life? This question can loosely sum up what Dr. Jim Cleaves has been so devoted to studying for most of his scientific career. When he learned that the origins of life itself was a valid field of study, he just knew that he had to focus his research on that question. The evolution of molecules and the boundary of where the inorganic becomes organic are exactly the kind of problems that led […]

A story by Chirantan Ganguly & Mahima Banerjee It was a bright Sunday morning during New Year’s week and Dr. Marcus Xavier was home after almost 2 months. Dr. Xavier’s son Quinn, a 14-year-old intelligent and dutiful boy, is a senior in middle school. He always had a knack for the sciences and he is particularly fond of studying Physics in his school. Quinn’s love for the sciences was instilled in him by his dad from a very young age. […]

By Fernanda Jamel The arrival of the rover, Perseverance, on Mars carried with it many expectations for the potential detection of life beyond Earth. The rover, which arrived on the red planet on 18 February 2021, contains specific instruments for identifying and characterizing organic compounds and minerals of astrobiological interest. Altogether there are seven payloads (or scientific instruments). Some of them are the ones that interest us for the detection of mineral biosignatures, such as the SuperCam, which has a […]

Are astronauts no longer required for space exploration? By Avanija Menon Automation is a widely debated topic across several professional fields. The accuracy and efficiency of machines often drives spiraling fears of unemployment, obsoletism, and worse. Automation is well known in the space industry as well, with the advent of rovers, landers, and orbiters aiding space missions and going to areas in the solar system that are currently out of human reach given our physical and monetary constraints. However, the […]

By Madeline Raith While humans have yet to journey in-person to Mars, we’ve now sent several rovers to drive around and explore the Red Planet for us. A rover can take pictures, perform experiments, and travel across the rocky terrain of Mars (this last part is what sets rovers apart from landers, which do all of their work in the place they landed). Since 1996, NASA has successfully landed a total of 5 rovers on Mars, and 2 of these […]

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 […]