Salma Alawi

Computer Science & Behavioral Neuroscience // Class of 2025

Rogue stars: Ejected stars permanently roam space in between galaxies

In 1997, the NASA Hubble telescope discovered that there existed stars without a tie to a specific galaxy, a finding that shook the scientific community. These stars were located in the region of the Virgo supercluster, an area of space containing around 2,000 galaxies. They were around 300,000 lightyears away from the nearest galaxy and […]

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Mirrors and quantum physics: A new way of viewing the world around us

When you go through your day and interact with the world, are you thinking of what the items you interact with are made of? Numerous theories have been proposed that aim to define what reality is, using quantum physics to support the claims. Recently, Carlo Rovelli, an Italian physicist, put forward a new theory that

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Brr! How butterflies react to sudden coldness

Whether it be jumping into an ice-cold body of water or stepping outside into the cold, unexpected immersion into the cold isn’t uncommon. However, in extreme coldness, the body may undergo an automatic response; this is called a cold shock response. Cold shock responses include a series of involuntary responses, specifically in the heart and

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The extraordinary empathy of canaries’ immune systems

Animals face numerous dangers, one of them being illnesses. Species have found a variety of ways to protect themselves from diseases, but not much is known about how they affect the physiological state of the individual. A phenomenon surrounding the immune systems of canaries was recently discovered by researchers at the University of Connecticut. The

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Glitches in stars

Star-gazers are captivated by an astronomical phenomenon called a glitch. Glitches occur in neutron stars, which are remnants of a collapsed star and are the smallest stars in the universe. But don’t underestimate them: they are extremely dense, with just a teaspoon of their matter weighing around a hundred million tons on Earth! When neutron

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