Tag: science
LIGO detected gravitational waves! Here’s how it proves Einstein was right!
Science finally supports that we are all born as blank slates and gender is merely a construct
Moons of Mars
Mars has two moons, Phobos and Deimos, which are thought to be
captured asteroids. Both satellites were discovered in 1877 by Asaph
Hall and are named after the characters Phobos (panic/fear) and Deimos
(terror/dread) who, in Greek mythology, accompanied their father Ares,
god of war, into battle. Ares was known as Mars to the Romans.
Could plants move in connection with the moon?
There is a possibility in the correlation between the moon and the movement of leaves.
Peter
Barlow of the University of Bristol made the discovery while attempting
to determine why the leaves of some plants seemed to move up and down
during the night despite the lack of sunlight.
After gathering as much data as he could on
the subject Barlow hypothesized that water motion within the joints
of the leaves may be responsible for this peculiar form of movement. The phenomenon has since come to be referred to as “leaftide”.
Carnivorous plant finds way to attract bats
Pitcher plants traditionally gain nutrition by trapping and digesting
insects, but in Borneo one particularly large variety of pitcher plant
has managed to adapt itself to take advantage of an alternative source
of nutrition thanks to its rather unusual relationship with bats.
Known as Nepenthes hemsleyana,
the species is still capable of catching insects but does not need to
consume as many because it supplements its nutritional intake with bat
droppings. To attract bats the plant has developed a unique
reflector mechanism that mirrors their ultrasonic communications thus
making it a lot easier for the animals to find it.
“With
these structures, the plants are able to acoustically stand out from
their environments so that bats can easily find them,” said study
co-author Michael Schöner. “Moreover, the bats are clearly able
to distinguish their plant partner from other plants that are similar in
shape, but lack the conspicuous reflector.”
Werewolf plant, the only known plant species that relies on the lunar cycle for survival.
At night, Ephedra foeminea secretes small translucent globules of sugary liquid to
attract nocturnal pollinating insects. The globules are like tiny beads
oozing out from cone-shaped female organs and appeared exactly when the moon was full, but a wind-pollinated relative showed no lunar correlation.
Wonders of the Monsoon: Monster leech swallows giant worm
For the first time, filmmakers in the forests of Borneo’s Mount Kinabalu have documented the so-repulsive-it’s-captivating behavior of a large, red, worm-guzzling predator. While it remains unclassified by science, the animal is known to the area’s tribes people, fittingly, as the “Giant Red Leech.”
Deep-Sea Animal Species Look Like Mushrooms but Defy Classification
The new animal species Dendrogramma enigmaticaI, shown here, was pulled from the deep sea off Australia in 1986 but has only now been scientifically described. The opaque portion is its highly branched digestive canal. Two species are recognised and current evidence suggest that they represent an early branch on the tree of life, with similarities to the 600 million-year-old extinct Ediacara fauna.
A new study finds that around the full moon humans get less shut-eye and their slumber is not as deep, even if sleep is restricted to windowless rooms free of environmental and time-based cues—such as those found in a sleep lab. The findings … suggest that restful sleep takes a hit during a full moon as well as a few days before and after the phase. Still, no one has any idea why that would occur or what biological mechanism could be at work.
A scientific mystery: The full moon disrupts our sleep patterns – a curious curveball in the already complex and fascinating science of what we do know about sleep, the relationship between dreaming and depression, and how our internal clocks dictate our whole lives.
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