Amazing Facts Archives - Page 49 of 79

Gamma rays create Red Hulk in Captain America: Brave New World, but how do they work in the real world?

13Feb

By Muhammad MirzaNo Comments

Amazing Facts

Gamma rays create Red Hulk in Captain America: Brave New World, but how do they work in the real world?

Captain America: Brave New World opens in theaters globally on Valentine's Day 2025, bringing with it a popular expansion to Hulk-lore, the Red Hulk.Like all Hulks across various forms of media, there is a good chance that the origins of the Red Hulk in the latest installment of the Marvel Cinematic Universe (MCU) are tied to a form of high-energy radiation called "gamma-rays."Gamma rays originate from a variety of sources in both the Marvel Universe and the real world. Primary among non-fictional cosmic gamma-ray sources, are supernovas, neutron stars, and gamma-ray bursts, the most powerful explosions since the Big Bang, the cause of which is still shrouded in mystery.While Space.com can't make you as well-versed in gamma science as Bruce Banner (probably a good thing; look how that work...

Warming climate making crocodiles hotter with unknown effect

13Feb

By Muhammad MirzaNo Comments

Amazing Facts

Warming climate making crocodiles hotter with unknown effect

Andrea the crocodile. Credit: Australia Zoo Crocodiles in northern Australia are altering their behaviour to try to keep cool as they experience increasingly stressful temperature extremes driven by climate change. New research has revealed that saltwater crocodiles (Crocodylus porosus) are spending more time at or close to their critical thermal limit of 32-33°C, diving less and cooling themselves off more. “As ectotherms crocodiles can’t regulate their own temperature like birds and mammals,” says Kaitlin Barham, a PhD candidate at The University of Queensland (UQ) and first author of the paper published in the journal Current Biology. “So, as their environment is becoming warmer, the animals in our study are also getting hotter and needing to spend more time on cooling behav...

The Euclid Space Telescope Captures a Rare, Stunning Einstein Ring

13Feb

By Muhammad MirzaNo Comments

Amazing Facts

The Euclid Space Telescope Captures a Rare, Stunning Einstein Ring

Sometimes, things across the vast Universe line up just right for us. The Einstein Ring above, like all Einstein Rings, has three parts. In the foreground is a distant massive object like a galaxy or galaxy cluster. In the background, at an even greater distance away, is a star or another galaxy. We’re the observers, the third part, and all three must be perfectly aligned for an Einstein Ring to appear. An Einstein Ring (ER) works by gravitational lensing. The massive foreground object has such powerful gravity that it bends space-time, which means the light from the distant object follows a curved path. The light is magnified and shaped into a circle. Einstein Rings are intriguing visual oddities, but they’re also powerful, naturally occurring scientific tools. “All str...

Highest energy neutrino observed by undersea telescope

13Feb

By Muhammad MirzaNo Comments

Amazing Facts

Highest energy neutrino observed by undersea telescope

This is the optical module of the telescope KM3NeT that has captured the highest energy neutrino yet known. It made the discovery from the dark depths of the bottom of the Mediterranean Sea. Image via KM3NeT (CC BY-NC 4.0). Highest energy neutrino observed from undersea telescope There’s a telescope sitting more than a mile and a half under the Mediterranean Sea, where no sunlight can reach. In this inky darkness, the Kilometer Cubic Neutrino Telescope (KM3NeT) waits for a neutrino – a weakly interacting particle – to show up. And now one has shown up, in a big way. The KM3NeT collaboration said on February 12, 2025, that its telescope has caught a neutrino with the highest energy observed so far, 220 Petaelectronvolt (PeV, a measure of an amount of kinetic energy). That’s equal to 220 mil...

Whale song follows the same pattern as human language

12Feb

By Muhammad MirzaNo Comments

Amazing Facts

Whale song follows the same pattern as human language

Whales – a mother and a calf – swim offshore of Maui, Hawaii. A new study said whale song – the sounds and vocalizations of whales – follows the same statistical properties as human language. Image via Guille Pozzi/ Unsplash. Whale song consists of the sounds and vocalizations that whales make. A new study found these songs follow a specific pattern. All human language follows a pattern called Zipf’s law, where the most frequent word is twice as frequent as the second most frequent word and three times as frequent as the third, etc. A new study found whale song also follows this law. The researchers believe this is a product of culture and passing along information to the next generation in a way that’s easy to learn. By Jenny Allen, Griffith University; Ellen Garland, University of St...

Sharks and rays leap out of the water. But why?

12Feb

By Muhammad MirzaNo Comments

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Sharks and rays leap out of the water. But why?

This is a mobula ray. Many species of sharks and rays can jump out of the water. But, why do they do it? Image via Nico Marín/ Pexels. Leaping out of the water requires significant energy. This suggests breaching serves an important function. Sharks and rays leap out of the water for several reasons, such as removing parasites, evading predators, hunting, or during courtship. Further studies could provide more insights into this behavior. Researchers have studied breaching behaviors through technology like drones and data loggers. By A. Peter Klimley, University of California, Davis Sharks and rays leap out of the water. But why? Many sharks and rays are known to breach, leaping fully or partly out of the water. In a recent study, colleagues and I reviewed research on breaching and ran...

Einstein ring spotted around a nearby galaxy

12Feb

By Muhammad MirzaNo Comments

Amazing Facts

Einstein ring spotted around a nearby galaxy

Look closely. Can you spot the ring of light around the center of this galaxy, NGC 6505? ESA’s Euclid telescope captured galaxy NGC 6505, which is acting as a gravitational lens, bending the light from a more distant galaxy and creating this Einstein ring. See closeup below. Image via ESA/ Euclid/ Euclid Consortium/ NASA. Image processing by J.-C. Cuillandre/ G. Anselmi/ T. Li. When massive galaxies bend the light of more distant galaxies, it can create a ring of light around the foreground galaxy known as an Einstein ring. The Euclid space telescope spotted an Einstein ring around the galaxy NGC 6505 in September 2023, while it was still in its testing phase. This Einstein ring is around a nearby galaxy that scientists have known about since the 1880s. Yet this is the first time they’ve ...

Why is Venus so bright in our Earth’s sky?

12Feb

By Muhammad MirzaNo Comments

Amazing Facts

Why is Venus so bright in our Earth’s sky?

View at EarthSky Community Photos. | Karthik Easvur in Delhi, India, captured these 2 images on September 12, 2023. They show a crescent moon – and a crescent planet Venus – on the same evening. “It was just amazing,” he wrote. You need a telescope to see Venus as a crescent. But the planet and the moon appear as crescents to us for the same reason. It happens when they are located nearly along our line of sight to the sun, so that their lighted portions – or day sides – are turned mostly out of our view. On the evening Karthik captured Venus, it was just a week away from its greatest brilliancy on September 19, 2023. Why is Venus so bright in our sky, when it’s showing us a crescent phase? Read on to find out. Venus brightest in the evening sky, February 14, 2025 The 2025 EarthSky lunar c...

New AI decision tool improves hospital efficiency

12Feb

By Muhammad MirzaNo Comments

Amazing Facts

New AI decision tool improves hospital efficiency

Credit: Charday Penn via Getty Images A new artificial intelligence-driven approach to more efficiently free up hospital beds will likely be rolled out across several South Australian hospitals within the year, with plans to implement it interstate in the next 18 months. The system provides a prediction of the likelihood that the patient will be discharged within 24 hours. Known as the “Adelaide Score,” because it gives a number between 0 and 100, the artificial intelligence program predicts the length of a patient’s stay in hospital, helping healthcare staff prioritise tasks to streamline the discharge process. A prospective trial in April 2024 at the Lyell McEwen Hospital, a public hospital in Adelaide’s northern suburbs, found the program significantly reduced the average le...

Venus brightest on Valentine’s Day, 2025. Don’t miss it!

12Feb

By Muhammad MirzaNo Comments

Amazing Facts

Venus brightest on Valentine’s Day, 2025. Don’t miss it!

Venus, named for the Roman goddess of love, reaches its greatest brilliancy on Valentine’s Day, February 14. Venus is currently blazing, low in the west after sunset, with Saturn below. Join EarthSky’s founder and editor-in-chief Deborah Byrd at 12:15 p.m. CT (18:15 UTC) on Wednesday, February 12, to learn how (and why) to love Venus. The 2025 EarthSky lunar calendar makes a great gift. Get yours today! Venus brightest around February 14 Venus is the brightest planet we see from Earth. It outshines all other objects in our sky, except the sun and moon. And, every so often, Venus has a time of greatest brilliancy. Venus will reach its next peak brilliancy on February 14. It’ll then be in the evening sky, brightest for 2025. You can’t miss Venus! Look for it in the sunset direction on any c...