Growing plants with colored light changes their nutrient content
Plants have five basic needs – food, water, air, light, and space. Outdoors, plants get everything they need from nature and some…
Category: Big Questions
Weights Slide Uphill On a Frictionless Table
Have you ever tried to hang your coat over the corner of table? Unless it snags, it seems to always fall off. This question inspired two…
Grow High-Tunnel Lettuce Year Round on Fish Waste
A group of agricultural researchers at West Virginia University wanted to find out if it was possible to grow lettuce year round using high…
Dust, Not Aliens, Causing Unusual Star Light on Tabby’s Star
Tabby’s Star, located 1,276 light years from Earth and named for its discoverer Tabetha S. Boyajian, created quite a buzz among…
Resurrecting Ancient Proteins and Simulating Evolution in the Lab
How does a cell stay alive? How do molecules in a cell “know” how to react with one another? Does this chemistry become more…
A space-age rat cage helps NASA study health in low gravity
When the NASA Space Shuttle was flying, it carried a variety of scientific equipment for running experiments. One of these devices was an…
Could Life Thrive on Radiation? Scientists Say It’s Possible
All life on Earth survives because of the sun. Plants use a process called photosynthesis to transfer energy from the Sun’s rays into the…
Computer techniques allow scientists to understand how bacteria work together
Single celled prokaryotic microbes, such as bacteria and archaea, control almost every aspect of our daily lives, from our individual health…
An Expedition to Collect Fish in Africa for a Gene Archive
It was no ordinary fishing trip. In May 2011, Denis Tweddle, a research associate of the South African Institute for Aquatic Biodiversity…
Kepler discovers the first planet believed to be very similar to Earth
1992 First exoplanet to orbit a main sequence star is discovered by Aleksander Wolszczan. The first confirmed exoplanet is a ‘hot…