That's Interesting!

Researchers all over North America are attaching tiny transmitters to Monarch butterflies as they begin their migration to Mexico, to learn more about their stops and challenges. Scientists first tagged monarchs with the solar trackers last fall. They're already uncovering some surprises, like that many eastern monarchs actually migrate to northern Florida and to islands in the Caribbean. The monarchs also seem to be hanging out in old industrial parks and urban areas. Read the rest here.

This will be an ongoing topic sharing some pics and factoids, courtesy of the American Museum of Natural History. Many will feature little-known animals that inhabit our planet today, with the occasional extinct or prehistoric species thrown in for good measure. It's a good way to not only share the wonder of our planet's beautiy, but also a reminder that we're not the only ones who exist on it.

Sept 17 (Reuters) - A diminutive wild cat that inhabits Bolivia's cloud forest has been identified as a previously unknown species, marking the first time a new living cat species has been formally named and described in more than a century. The cat, called Tilcayo by local communities, is part of a group called tiger cats found across much of South America. ‌It was found in Bolivia's lush Yungas forest, a mountainous region where forests are often covered by clouds and surrounded by high humidity, according to researchers. It measures about 18 inches (46 cm) long and weighs around 3 pounds (1.4 kg), making it smaller than the average domestic cat. Read the rest here.

A private company is aiming to launch a low-cost interstellar mission to Alpha Centauri, the nearest Sun-like stars to our own, in an attempt to tackle several key parts of the Fermi paradox. The Fermi paradox, for those who haven't stumbled across it yet, is basically this: Given the large numbers of stars in the galaxy and universe, and the potential for life that they hold, why have we not yet detected any signs of intelligent alien life? Why the "great silence"? While there are many proposed explanations for the Fermi paradox, varying in their levels of cosmic horror, there are a few simpler suggestions. One is that space is simply too big for interstellar travel to b…

The universe is a strange place — filled with exploding stars, ancient galaxies, and unseen worlds. Now, astronomers are about to get a brand new tool to explore it. The $4.3-billion Nancy Grace Roman Space Telescope is scheduled for launch Aug. 30. Named for NASA's first chief astronomer, the observatory is expected to reveal new information about the expansion of the universe and discover multitudes of planets orbiting distant stars. Another goal of the telescope is to spend a month surveying all the stars in the Milky Way galaxy. Julie McEnery is Roman's project scientist. She says even though Roman has broadly the same sensitivity and sharpness of vision as the curren…

This will be an ongoing topic featuring the latest images taken by the James Webb Telescope. All photos are credited to NASA.

LONDON (AP) — A massive ancient oak tree linked to the legend of Robin Hood may have been loved to death. The 1,200-year-old Major Oak in Sherwood Forest is believed to have died after it didn’t sprout leaves this spring, the Royal Society for the Protection of Birds said Thursday. Visitors over the past two centuries who viewed the tree’s gnarled limbs and sprawling canopy in Nottingham compressed the soil, making it difficult for rain to reach its roots, the conservation group said. The forest has been under threat for years and the tree had been rumored to have died in the past — only to have the group confirm it was still alive. That is no longer the case. “The tree’s…

Would you consider living in a place like this? If you were in charge of design, what would you do in our own Arnot Mall?

Cornell professor of entomology, Bryan Danforth, and his research assistant, Henry Steig, are walking slowly through Webster Union Cemetery, eyes to the ground, when Danforth sees it. A cloud of dozens of bees, swirling and darting close to the earth. "Whoa, look at this! We did not waste our time," Danforth told Steig, who is an undergraduate at Cornell studying entomology. They were in Rochester last week to put a theory to the test. Their question: Are graveyards natural gathering places for ground-nesting bees? What brought them here was a remarkable discovery at East Lawn Cemetery in Ithaca in 2022: an aggregation of bees thought to be among the largest in the world.…

NEW YORK (AP) — A biotech company that aims to resurrect lost creatures said Tuesday it has hatched live chicks in an artificial environment — a development that was met with mixed reviews from scientists and critics of its de-extinction mission. Twenty-six baby chickens — ranging from a few days to several months old — were born from a 3D printed lattice structure that mimics an eggshell, according to Colossal Biosciences. Colossal previously announced it had genetically engineered living animals to resemble extinct species, including mice with long hair like the woolly mammoth and wolf pups that take after dire wolves. Colossal’s CEO Ben Lamm said the artificial egg tec…

An asteroid roughly the size of one to two school buses will fly by Earth Monday, coming as close as 91,593 kilometers (56,913 miles), according to the European Space Agency — equivalent to about one quarter of the distance between Earth and the moon. Astronomers at the Mount Lemmon Survey in Tucson, Arizona, discovered the asteroid on May 10 and named it 2026JH2. The object belongs to a class of asteroids called Apollo, which orbit the sun on trajectories that intersect with Earth’s own orbit around the sun. At its closest pass, 2026JH2 will be about 24% of the average distance between Earth and the moon, and about two and a half times the distance at which hundreds of g…

This looks neat!! Check out out!

Reed, who studies the speech variations of the Appalachian region, uses the concept "rootedness." It's the local attachment people place onto pronunciations and certain words, he said. "[With] a pronunciation like 'warsh,' it's always the stories about someone's aunt or their grandfather or their grandmother, their mama or their papa," Reed said. "These pronunciations and these words stick around because they are meaningful," he continued. They're indicative of home. In a park in southeast Baltimore, near where filmmaker John Waters shot his 1980s classic Hairspray, which features the classic Baltimore accent, locals and transplants alike offered their perspectives on the…

This is neat! A NASA website that converts your name to pics from satellites https://science.nasa.gov/specials/your-name-in-landsat/?fbclid=IwY2xjawReosFleHRuA2FlbQIxMQBzcnRjBmFwcF9pZA80MDk5NjI2MjMwODU2MDkAAR4aF9luj_hgkkffMDsBU-YTpIW-7z3ATlTkUkwaMPBiTJTewgS9zod_OVeDTA_aem_380DrPfiPRiNXq2wzQvP0Q

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