COVID-19 has caused millions of more illnesses than its predecessor, SARS, even though both diseases are caused by similar coronaviruses. Now, a new study suggests one reason why SARS-CoV-2, the virus that causes COVID-19, is much more transmissible than SARS-CoV-1, which causes SARS. The study researchers focused on the spike protein, the structure that allows […]
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SARS vs. COVID-19: Why Some Coronavirus Strains Are More Infectious Than Others
A representation of the SARS-CoV spike protein structures. Credit: Image courtesy of Mahmoud Moradi The coronaviruses that cause SARS and COVID-19 have spike proteins that move into “active” and “inactive” positions, and new research indicates how those molecular movements may make the COVID-19 virus more infectious compared to the SARS virus. Coronavirus outbreaks have occurred […]
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Protons’ antimatter is even more lopsided than we thought
The proton’s antimatter is out of whack. An imbalance between two types of antiparticles that seethe within the proton is even wonkier than previously thought, a new measurement indicates. Protons are built from three quarks — two “up” quarks and one “down” quark. But they also contain a roiling sea of transient quarks and antiquarks […]
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Cygnus X-1 was the First Black Hole Ever Found. New Measurements Show it’s Much More Massive Than Previously Believed
In 1964 two Aerobee suborbital rockets were launched with the goal of mapping x-ray sources in the sky. Each rocket contained a directed Geiger counter, so that as the rocket rotated at the peak of its trajectory to measure the direction of x-ray sources. The project discovered eight x-ray sources, including a particularly bright one […]
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Conservatives aren’t more fearful than liberals, study finds
Are conservatives more afraid of threats than liberals? Political psychologists have long found evidence that people on the right are more sensitive to scary stuff, on average, than people on the left, a basic psychological difference thought to drive some political disagreements between the two groups. But new research suggests that’s overly simplistic. In a […]
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More Than 87,000 Scientific Papers Published on Coronavirus Since Start of COVID Pandemic
Scientists from around the world have published more than 87,000 papers about coronavirus between the start of the COVID-19 pandemic and October 2020, a new analysis shows. Even given the importance of the pandemic, researchers were surprised by the huge number of studies and other papers that scientists produced on the subject in such a […]
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Electric Vehicles Are Driven Less Often Than Policymakers Think – 1/2 As Much as Conventional Cars
By studying electricity meter measurements and electric vehicle registration records in California, researchers found that state regulators are overestimating how often people drive their EVs. Research indicates electric vehicles are used half as much as conventional cars. As the Biden administration pledges to move the country toward electric vehicles (EVs), and states like California work […]
Read MoreScientists revisit the 1st black hole they ever discovered and realize it’s bigger than they thought
New evidence suggests the first known black hole is bigger than previously thought, which may force scientists to reconsider their understanding of how giant stars give rise to black holes. Scientists think stellar-mass black holes, which contain up to a few times the sun’s mass, form when giant stars die and collapse in on themselves. […]
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The first black hole ever discovered is more massive than previously thought
The first black hole ever discovered still has a few surprises in store. New observations of the black hole–star pair called Cygnus X-1 indicate that the black hole weighs about 21 times as much as the sun — nearly 1.5 times heavier than past estimates. The updated mass has astronomers rethinking how some black hole–forming […]
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First Black Hole Ever Detected – Cygnus X-1 – Is Much More Massive Than We Thought
New observations of the first black hole ever detected have led astronomers to question what they know about the Universe’s most mysterious objects. Published today (February 18, 2021) in the journal Science, the research shows the system known as Cygnus X-1 contains the most massive stellar-mass black hole ever detected without the use of gravitational […]
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