Wendy Science

I've seen the needle and the damage avoided Mar 17, 2015 | | As I write these words in early February, the nation is watching a measles outbreak caused by parents opting out of vaccines for their children. Meanwhile presidential hopefuls have been making news via their strong pro-choicey opinions, which are somehow about whether to get your kids vaccinated. I was going to pass on commenting, so weary did I become upon hearing the retrograde absurdities that came out of the mouths of Senator Rand Paul (R-KY), Governor Chris Christie (R-NJ) and Representative Sean Duffy (R-WI). But then Senator Thom Tillis (R-NC) saw and raised them in this game of high-stakes public health poker by questioning whether we need regulations mandating that restaurant employees wash up after they defecate. Just when I thought I was out, they pull me back in. Speaking at the Bipartisan Policy Center, Tillis noted his sadness over the shackles that regulations put on businesses. And as an example, he c...

Credit: NASA/JPL-Caltech Black holes break theories. These sites of extremely large masses in extremely small spaces invoke both of the behemoths of modern physics—general relativity (which rules over large masses) and quantum mechanics (which reigns in small spaces). But the two theories do not get along, and they break down in situations where both apply. For physicists, this is a good thing—it means black holes have revealed a flaw in our existing view of the universe, and offer fertile grounds to look for a solution. The latest development in the quest for a better theory introduced —theoretical borders around black holes made of walls of high-energy particles. are a radical departure from conventional thinking, which held that the borders of black holes—their so-called event horizons—were nothing special; simply continuous space where an invisible boundary marked the point of no return. Someone passing through one would have noticed nothing amiss. But if event horizons contain f...

Tanning beds can be seductive, addictive and a route to cancer—especially for teenagers Mar 17, 2015 | | As spring begins, fun in the sun—even artificial sun—beckons teenagers. Many, especially girls, flock to tanning salons to acquire a base tan for the beach and get that “healthy glow” for a strapless prom dress. But whatever the reason or the season, minors should not be allowed to lie in tanning beds. These devices are skin cancer factories, and people younger than 18 have the highest risk. One fifth of girls in grades 9 through 12 have bathed in ultraviolet (UV) rays from a tanning device in the past year, and one out of 10 girls reported popping into a tanning bed at least 10 times during that period, according to the Youth Risk Behavior Survey of 2013. (Only 5 percent of teen boys used beds at all.) The 14,000 tanning salons in the U.S. make that access easy. The quest for a tan contributes to frequent visits, but the behavior is also addictive. Basking under the bulbs release...

The agency's controversial Asteroid Redirect Mission no longer calls for redirecting an asteroid into high-lunar orbit. March 26, 2015 | | This artist's rendition shows part of the plan for NASA's Asteroid Redirect Mission to robotically pluck a boulder off an asteroid and ferry it to high lunar orbit. Astronauts would then visit the boulder as early as 2025. In the 2020s, NASA’s human spaceflight program will revolve around sending astronauts to high lunar orbit to study a small boulder robotically plucked from the surface of a large asteroid, agency officials announced yesterday. The announcement is a crucial milestone for the agency’s nascent (ARM), which is intended to set the stage for future missions sending humans to Mars and other deep-space destinations.NASA’s decision comes after months of delays as two separate teams investigated how to best achieve ARM’s objectives. The original ARM proposal, dubbed Option A, called for a “grab and bag” approach, in which a r...

One of the architects of the idea that “firewalls” of high-energy particles border black holes will answer readers’ questions in a video chat Mar 17, 2015 | | An astronaut unfortunate enough to fall into a black hole would be in for certain demise. The method of this annihilation, however, has recently become a subject of fierce debate, thanks to a new idea that is throwing the world of theoretical physics for a loop. The notion is that the “event horizon, which forms the boundary of a black hole, beyond which no light can escape, is an actual physical wall—a . These firewalls would be made of high-energy particles that would destroy anything on contact. Our hapless astronaut, rather than sinking straight to the heart of a black hole, would be instantly vaporized at its periphery. In our April issue University of California, Santa Barbara, physicist Joseph Polchinski describes in depth how he and his colleagues reasoned that exist, and what they might mean not just for black holes ...

Georgetown, Texas, is home to the oldest university in the Lone Star State and is affectionately called the "red poppy capital" of Texas. It will soon add another accolade to the mix: the state's first city-owned utility to run on 100 percent renewable energy. Last Wednesday, the city announced a 25-year contract with SunEdison to buy 150 megawatts of solar energy. In order to supply the power, SunEdison will build a solar farm in West Texas. The solar will complement a deal Georgetown signed last year with EFD Renewables for 144 MW of wind power from its West Texas wind farm through 2039. Between the two sources, the city of about 50,000 people will have more than enough power even with projected population growth, said Keith Hutchinson, a spokesman for the city. When it came down to it, Hutchinson said the price was right for renewable power. "With renewables, you avoid the price volatility of fossil fuels," he said. "We've certainly seen plenty of vo...

By Jean-Francois Rosnoblet and Tim Hepher SEYNE-LES-ALPES/PARIS, March 25 (Reuters) - Investigators have retrieved cockpit voice recordings from one of the black boxes of the German Airbus plane that smashed into the Alps, killing everyone onboard, and they expect a preliminary read-out of their content in days, an official said on Wednesday. The development came as French President Francois Hollande, Germany's Angela Merkel and Spain's Mariano Rajoy travelled to the crash site in a remote French Alpine region to pay tribute to the 150 victims, mostly Germany and Spanish. However, while Hollande promised that authorities would not rest until the causes of the crash were known, France's BEA air incident investigation bureau said it was still far too early to draw meaningful conclusions on why the plane, operated by the Germanwings budget arm of Lufthansa, went down. "We have just been able to extract a useable audio data file," BEA director Remi Jouty told a news c...