In the Community

May 7, 2020

Touching the Asteroid Ryugu Revealed Secrets of Its Surface and Changing Orbit

The Conversation
Planetary scientist Paul Byrne looks at what researchers learned from the Hayabusa2 mission, which not only rendezvoused with an asteroid as it whizzed around the Sun but also collected a sample.

May 6, 2020

Physicists Criticize Stephen Wolfram’s ‘Theory of Everything’

Scientific American
“I think the popular notion that physicists are all in search of the eureka moment in which they will discover the theory of everything is an unfortunate one,” says Katie Mack, a cosmologist at North Carolina State University. “We do want to find better, more complete theories. But the way we go about that is to test and refine our models, look for inconsistencies and incrementally work our way toward better, more complete models.”

May 4, 2020

Back on Earth, NASA Astronaut Christina Koch Is a Pro at Social Distancing

WRAL
It's been an unusual, incredible year for NASA astronaut and North Carolina State University graduate Christina Koch.

May 2, 2020

Fluids Only Get So Runny as Physicists Put a Universal Lower Limit on Viscosity

PhysicsWorld
Thomas Schäfer of North Carolina State University in the US says that the pair’s formula might be a good estimate for what he calls “typical fluids”. But he reckons that assumptions about length being on the scale of the Bohr radius and time being tied to the Debye frequency may not always hold true. In ultra-cold Fermi gases, he says, such as laser-cooled atoms of lithium or potassium, the length and time scales “are quite different”.

May 2, 2020

So Your Sourdough Is Ugly. Now What?

Mashable
Dr. Mike Taveirne, a microbiologist and assistant professor at North Carolina State University, believes that sharing these losses — or “unexpected results” — can be instrumental in not only understanding a scientific process, but also getting closer to one’s desired outcome. In fact, he’s uniquely suited to speak on the internet’s collective sourdough project: He’s in the middle of that experiment himself.

Apr 28, 2020

Horny Lemurs Use Body Odor as a Pick-Up Line

Popular Science
Adam Hartsone-Rose, a lemur researcher at NC State not involved in the study, says that while the researchers examined a behavior we already knew about, they did the first deep-diving into the chemistry that drives it. “This study did a fantastic, really thorough job of unlocking those little microscopic keys,” he says.

Apr 19, 2020

Can the Air Stay Clean After COVID-19? New Numbers Are Promising, but the Public Must Act

The News & Observer
It’s an illustration that clean air is not some Utopian fantasy of climate change activists. It’s very attainable. But is there any way to conquer this virus without surrendering this cleaner air when normal economic activity resumes? Viney Aneja, an air quality professor in the Department of Marine, Earth and Atmospheric Sciences was able to answer this question. “This is a teaching moment,” he said. “We should learn from it. We should promote behavior that will allow air quality to be as good as it is outside right now.” Anej is the recipient of the 2007 North Carolina Science Award and developed one of the nation’s leading air-quality and climate research programs at NC State.

Apr 17, 2020

NC State Researchers Predict Up to 22 Named Storms During 2020 Atlantic Hurricane Season

WNCN
Lian Xie, professor of Marine, Earth, and Atmospheric Sciences, anticipate this hurricane season will see 18 to 22 named storms, which is above both long- and short-term averages.

Two kids work on building a straw rocket

Apr 17, 2020

The Science House Comes to Your House

Learn how to get new K-12 science activities and resources every week from NC State's The Science House.

Corbin Kling wears a face shield that he 3D printed in his home

Apr 9, 2020

Shielding Health Care Workers From COVID-19

Learn how MEAS graduate student Corbin Kling is using a research tool to build protective equipment for at-risk workers.