GoKawiilEvidence shows that public trust in science is still high. Plus, the Vera Rubin Observatory is scanning the skies more widely than ever and paying peer reviewers seems to speed up the process.
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This huge image of the constellation Lupus demonstrates the Rubin observatory's wide view of the sky combined with the ability to detect extremely faint objects. (See a bigger version here.) (NSF–DOE Vera C. Rubin Observatory/NOIRLab/SLAC/AURA)
Yesterday, the Vera Rubin Observatory in Chile started a 10-year mission to image the sky with unprecedented breadth. In its first year, its nightly sweeps will generate more data than all previous optical telescopes combined. And this is just the beginning. “The first year of data is not going to be great for faint stuff, but as they build up the data over 10 years, it gets better and better,” says astrophysicist Aaron Romanowsky.
Science | 7 min read
Read more: Physicist Tony Tyson reflects on the Rubin Observatory — a project he first dreamt up more than 30 years ago (Nature | 5 min read)
Infographic of the week
In July 2024, the journal Biology Open trialled paying peer reviewers that turned around ‘good quality’ reports within four working days. The experiment was a success: paying reviewers led to faster first editorial decisions and improved review quality, as judged by handling editors on the basis of helpfulness in making a decision. (Nature | 6 min read)
Reference: bioRxiv preprint (not peer reviewed)
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