Michelle Starr

2 days ago | sciencealert.com | Michelle Starr

A giant mouth-like hole in the Sun about as wide as five Jupiters is blasting hot Sun breath in Earth's general direction. It's not an actual hole in the Sun, but what is known as a coronal hole: a region where the Sun's magnetic field opens up, allowing the wind of solar particles constantly blowing from our Sun to escape more readily, sending a gust of material blasting through the Solar System.

2 days ago | sciencealert.com | Michelle Starr

A giant conundrum has been found orbiting a teeny tiny red dwarf star just a fifth of the size of the Sun. Such small stars were thought to be incapable of producing giant planets. But there, in its orbit, appears to be unmistakable evidence of an absolute unit: a gas giant around the size of Saturn. TOI-6894b, as the exoplanet is named, has 86 percent of the radius of Jupiter.

3 days ago | sciencealert.com | Michelle Starr

A dangerous fungal pathogen has proven no match for what may be one of the most useful plants in nature. Scientists studying the chemical properties of cannabis have found it kills one of the most dangerous fungal pathogens in the world – in a laboratory setting, at least. Cryptococcus neoformans, a species of fungus behind cryptococcosis and cryptococcal meningitis, appears to be vulnerable to topical treatment with cannabidiol and cannabidivarin, compounds found in the plant Cannabis sativa.

3 days ago | yahoo.com | Michelle Starr

A dangerous fungal pathogen has proven no match for what may be one of the most useful plants in nature. Scientists studying the chemical properties of cannabis have found it kills one of the most dangerous fungal pathogens in the world – in a laboratory setting, at least. Cryptococcus neoformans, a species of fungus behind cryptococcosis and cryptococcal meningitis, appears to be vulnerable to topical treatment with cannabidiol and cannabidivarin, compounds found in the plant Cannabis sativa.

3 days ago | sciencealert.com | Michelle Starr

If you live on this planet Earth, odds are good that you've experienced a lightning storm in your life: a wild, crashing affair, with forks of light that split the sky, accompanied by the bone-rattling roar of thunder. Although lightning is common here on Earth, there is still a lot we don't know about this extreme phenomenon. Scientists have set up all sorts of apparatus to find out, and have made great strides in teasing out some of the split-second processes that go into a bolt of lightning.