The Austrian athlete Felix Baumgartner won a place in the history books yesterday, October 14, after becoming the first human being to break the speed of sound in free fall. After flying into the stratosphere, at an altitude of 39,045 meters, aboard a space capsule propelled by a helium-filled hot air balloon, Baumgartner jumped towards the Earth's surface, reaching a maximum speed of 1,342.8 kilometers per hour on the descent.
The European Southern Observatory (ESO) celebrates this month of October 50 years since the signing of its founding agreement. After half a century, ESO has become the most productive ground-based astronomical observatory in the world, operating three world-class observatories in Chile: La Silla, Paranal and Chajnantor.
During pregnancy, baby mice are surrounded by fluids such as amniotic fluid that have a characteristic odor. After birth, the young are able to recognize this unique combination of smells in their mother, and this is the signal for them to start sucking milk and feeding. These are the results of a work published in the journal Current Biology that shows that, contrary to what was thought, pheromones are not responsible for awakening this instinct in all mammals.
Preserved in amber, it is one of the rarest preserved fossils, estimated to be between 97 and 100 million years old. It freezes the moment when a young spider attacks a wasp in its web, and also contains the body of an adult male spider in the same web, which indicates that at that time there was social behavior among arachnids, and they were not only " solitary cannibals ".
Dogs have bigger brains than cats because they are more sociable, while felines lead a lonelier existence. Researchers from the University of Oxford (United Kingdom) reached this conclusion after analyzing the evolutionary history of the brain of different mammals during the last 60 million years.
A study shows that the dentition of hadrosaurs evolved in the same way as that of mammals, such as the mink or the elephant, which facilitated their adaptation to the surrounding flora and their rapid expansion. According to the authors, "these bipeds broke with the primitive archetype of reptiles and developed one of the most sophisticated dentures ever discovered."
An international team of researchers, with Spanish participation, has found the star closest to Sagittarius A *, the black hole with four million times the mass of the Sun located in the center of the Milky Way. It is the star S0-102, which takes only 11.5 years to complete its orbit around the black hole. The work will allow to know how the law of gravity operates in extreme environments.
Hypnosis is a method widely used as therapy to treat psychological conditions such as phobias and anxiety states. However, not all people are equally receptive to this technique and some patients cannot reach the trance state of hypnosis. Now, a group of researchers from Stanford University (USA) has discovered that, in these people, the activity of the areas of the brain related to attention and decision-making is lower than in those who are easily hypnotized.
Danni Büchner is invited to Sam Dylan's Halloween party. But the "Goodbye Germany" emigrant has no desire for many other party guests. And find clear words.
