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20 articles-
The Young Milky Way Collided With a Dwarf Galaxy
Reprinted with permission from Quanta’s Abstractions blog.As the Milky Way was growing, taking shape, and minding its own business around 10 billion years ago, it suffered a massive head-on collision with another, smaller galaxy. That cosmic cataclysm changed the Milky Way’s structure forever, shaping the thick spirals that spin out from the supermassive black hole at […]
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Why Enceladus’ Ice Is Part of the Climate Change Conversation
To imagine the absence of the Arctic and Antarctica produces something like the opposite of sublime, a pang of emptiness and a longing to appreciate that terrain in person before it passes.Image by NASA / Wikicommons Beneath the icy surface of Saturn’s sixth-largest moon, Enceladus, an ocean dwells. Traces of it get expelled skyward through […]
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Taking Another Person’s Perspective Doesn’t Help You Understand Them
No moral advice is perfectly sound. The Golden Rule—do unto others as you would have them do unto you—is only as wise as the person following it.A more modern-sounding tip—take the perspective of others—can seem like an improvement. It was Dale Carnegie’s eighth principle in How to Win Friends and Influence People (it is “a […]
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Scavenging Russia’s Rocket Graveyard Is Dangerous and Profitable
This might be one of the most remote places on earth, little accessible by road, but its peace is routinely broken by the oldest, largest and busiest spaceport in the world: the Baikonur Cosmodrome. Photograph by Alex Zelenko / Wikicommons The Altai mountain region of Central Asia is a rugged and remote place. Right in […]
