Nickelodeon's annual Kids Choice Awards show is notorious for dumping buckets of green slime on the heads of unsuspecting hosts and celebrities. Fortunately for the winners, that was not possible during this year's virtual award ceremony, aired on May 2, 2020. To compensate, the popular children's cable channel surprised the millions of online viewers with footage of International Space Station (ISS) astronauts getting "slimed". The video's debut was particularly timely given that May 2, 2020, was National Astronomy Day!...
Read news articleThe COVID-19 pandemic shelter-in-place mandates and the need for social distancing has changed our lives in unprecedented ways and put a damper on everything — from graduations to proms, milestone birthdays and even summer vacations. However, it has also helped raise awareness of the importance of family. Hence, it is not surprising that many Americans plan to go the extra mile to demonstrate their love and appreciation for the real-life superhero in their lives on Mother's Day, which will be celebrated on May 10, 2020....
Read news article"Glow in the dark" dolphins may seem like something straight out of a science fiction movie. However, that is precisely what Newport Coastal Adventures' Captain Ryan Lawler and professional videographer Patrick Coyne witnessed on April 22, 2020, when they set out to explore the spectacular neon blue tides that have been lighting up the waters off Southern California's coast since mid-April....
Read news articleChristie's is well-known for selling expensive, one-of-a-kind items. However, its latest offering is literally "out of this world." On April 30, 2020, the British auction house announced that the fifth-largest chunk of the Moon — a 29-pound (13.5-kilogram) rock dubbed NWA 12691 — was being offered for private sale for a "reasonable' $2.5 million!...
Read news articleThe negative health impacts of plastic on both wildlife and humans have been well-documented. However, the versatile material, which is used for everything from grocery bags to drink bottles to food packaging, is hard to avoid. Experts estimate that of the 359 million tons of plastics produced annually worldwide, about 150–200 million tons end up in landfills or the environment. To make matters worse, the material derived from the small percentage of plastic that is recycled is of lower quality and can only be used a few times for items like clothing or carpets before it has to be discarded....
Read news articleOn April 29, 2020, Earth will get an intimidating visitor — a massive asteroid called 1998 OR2. Fortunately for us, the space rock, which experts believe will be the largest one to fly by our planet this year, will be following the strict COVID-19 pandemic regulations. 1998 OR2 will not only be zooming past Earth at a safe "social" space of about 3.9 million miles (6.3 million km), or about 16 times the distance between the Earth and the Moon, but it will also be wearing a "face mask."...
Read news articleResearchers have long believed that all four-limbed animals or tetrapods, a group that includes amphibians, reptiles, and mammals, evolved from an ancient group of fish known as Elpistostege watsoni, which lived between 416 million and 358 million years ago, during the Devonian Period....
Read news articleWhile the novel coronavirus is dangerous for everyone, it is particularly so for the first responders who are being exposed to the illness daily. In the US alone, almost 5,500 nurses, doctors, and other healthcare professionals have been infected with COVID-19. Of these, dozens have succumbed to the disease. Now, hospital workers worldwide may get some reprieve thanks to Spot, a semi-autonomous four-legged robot developed by Waltham, Massachusetts-based robotics company, Boston Dynamics....
Read news articleNASA's ambitious plans to land humans on the Moon by 2024 just got one step closer to becoming a reality thanks to the first comprehensive map of our satellite's surface. Unveiled on April 23, 2020, the colorful 1:5,000,000-scale "Unified Geologic Map of the Moon" is the result of decades of painstaking work by scientists from the United States Geological Survey (USGS), NASA, and the Lunar and Planetary Institute....
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