The eyes of Leonardo da Vinci’s iconic Mona Lisa have long been thought to follow viewers around the gallery of the Louvre Museum in Paris where it is exhibited, as well as those looking at photographs and reproductions of the famous painting. Now, researchers from Germany's Bielefeld University assert that while “The Mona Lisa Effect,” – the impression that the eyes of the subject in a portrait are following the viewer – is real, it is not true for its namesake painting.
In DC Film's recent action-packed blockbuster Aquaman, the superhero flaunts many spectacular powers. While the half-human, half-Atlantean’s ability to heal others and withstand intense heat may be hard for scientists to emulate, here are three Aquaman superpowers that may be available to all of us in the very near future.
Overnight from Sunday, Jan. 20 into Monday, Jan. 21, stargazers will be treated to what promises to be a spectacular total lunar eclipse. Also being referred to as the “Super Blood Moon” – “super” because the Moon will be at perigeeand appear larger than normal, and “blood" because of its reddish-orange color during totality – the eclipse will be seen in its entirety in North and South America, Europe, and western Africa.
Martin Luther King Jr. (MLK), whose life and legacy is celebrated annually on the third Monday of January, was an extraordinary man. It is thanks to the vision, courage and leadership of the clergyman-turned-civil-rights-activist that all Americans are granted equal rights, regardless of race, color, religion, or national origin.
In addition to providing us with delicious honey, the hardworking honey bees also pollinate about a third of food crops and almost 90 percent of wild grasses, like alfalfa, used to feed livestock. Hence, it is not surprising that their declining population, caused by climate change, habitat loss, and deadly microbial diseases, has researchers scrambling to find ways to protect the vulnerable insects, which are so crucial to our existence. Now, scientists from the University of Helsinki in Finland have found a way to help honey bees fight off infectious diseases with a sweet, edible vaccine!
The Moon’s near side, the one we all see, has been the target of numerous robotic and human missions. However, our lunar companion’s far side, which is not visible from Earth, has never been explored. That changed on Jan. 2, 2019, when Chinese spacecraft Chang'e 4 made a soft landing on what is often referred to as the “dark side,” because it remained largely unseen until humans were able to send spacecraft around the Moon in 1959.
If you have been paying any attention to the news, you probably know that the US Government has been partially shut since midnight December 21, 2018. More specifically, work at nine departments, as well as a number of other agencies making up roughly 25 percent of the federal government, has either ground to a halt or is being conducted at a slower pace because the budget to fund their day-to-day operations has not been approved by Congress. As a result, a fraction of the 800,000 employees, who are considered “non-essential,” have been furloughed, or forced to take a leave of absence. The remaining “essential” employees are expected to report for duty as usual, but will not get paid until a budget has been approved.
NASA’s New Horizons spacecraft, launched in 2006 with a primary mission to perform the first-ever flyby of Pluto, has provided researchers with invaluable information about the dwarf planet. Now, the space probe has made more history with its January 1, 2019 flyby of distant world 2014 MU69. The close rendezvous with the icy rock, located four billion miles from Earth in the Kuiper Belt, is not only humanity’s furthest encounter with a distant object, but also the most primitive one ever visited by a spacecraft.
