Science

The United Nations warned on Wednesday that there is a 70 percent chance that average warming from 2025 to 2029 would exceed the 1.5 degrees Celsius international benchmark. The planet is therefore expected to remain at historic levels of warming after the two hottest years ever recorded in 2023 and 2024, according to an annual

Imagine you are planning the funeral music for a loved one who has died. You can’t remember their favourite song, so you try to login to their Spotify account. Then you realise the account login is inaccessible, and with it has gone their personal history of Spotify playlists, annual “wrapped” analytics, and liked songs curated

WASHINGTON — Rocket Lab’s $275 million acquisition of satellite payload provider Geost is just the latest move in a broader campaign to establish itself as a serious contender for U.S. military satellite contracts. “We’re not done,” Rocket Lab CEO Peter Beck said in an interview, hinting at more acquisitions to come. The company, once focused

The human response to being tickled is really danged weird. When someone pokes another someone just so, the result is often spontaneous, uncontrollable laughter. This response is known as gargalesis, and here’s the thing: neuroscientists just have no idea why it happens – especially because, for many people, the sensation of being tickled is not

China on Thursday launched a space probe on the country’s first mission to retrieve samples from an asteroid and bring them home for research, the Xinhua state news agency reported. Beijing has ploughed billions of dollars into its space programme in recent years in an effort to achieve what President Xi Jinping describes as the

US forecasters are expecting an above-normal 2025 Atlantic hurricane season, with 13 to 19 named storms, and 6 to 10 of those becoming hurricanes. Every year, the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration and other forecasters release preseason outlooks for the Atlantic’s hurricane season, which runs June 1 through Nov. 30. So, how do they know

Beginning a chain of events that will presumably lead to the origin of our universe’s Spider-Man, researchers in Germany have created the world’s first spiders to be genetically modified using CRISPR technology. These spiders are unlikely to generate any superheroes (for now). They are not radioactive, and although their DNA has been altered, nothing has

AMSTERDAM — SpaceX’s Starship suffered a loss of attitude control after reaching space on its latest test flight May 27, leading to an uncontrolled reentry and a third consecutive failure. Starship lifted off from SpaceX’s test site at Starbase, Texas, at 7:36 p.m. Eastern. The liftoff was delayed in the final seconds of the countdown

As far back as 20,000 years ago, humans living around the Bay of Biscay were crafting a variety of whale bones into tools, new research has revealed. A careful study of artifacts that have spent years tucked away in museum collections across Europe shows that the Magdalenian culture not only worked and used the bones

Twenty years ago, the US Congress instructed NASA to find 90 percent of near-Earth asteroids threatening Earth. They’ve made progress finding these asteroids that orbit the Sun and come to within 1.3 astronomical units of Earth. However, they may have to expand their search since astronomers are now finding asteroids co-orbiting Venus that could pose

Humans love beer: worldwide, we can go through more than 187.9 million kiloliters (49.6 billion gallons) of it in just one year. But new research adds this beloved beverage to the long list of products found to contain PFAS (polyfluoroalkyl substances), aka ‘forever chemicals’. PFAS earned that nickname because they don’t readily break down in

With the rapid integration of emerging technologies, today’s defense landscape is more interconnected and complex than ever before. This reality places stress on traditional infrastructures that often fall short in providing the level of performance and resilience that emerging capabilities, such as multi-orbit, multi-network systems can. This shortfall needs urgent attention.  From cyberattacks to jamming,

An artificial island of sand dredged from Indonesia’s seafloor has accidentally revealed evidence of a long-lost sunken world, inhabited by early humans. Scattered across the newly created island, scientists have uncovered more than 6,700 fossils of fish, reptiles, and mammals dredged from the deep, including the remains of two hominin skulls. This is the first

We finally know what brought light to the dark and formless void of the early Universe. According to data from the Hubble and James Webb Space Telescopes, the origins of the free-flying photons in the early cosmic dawn were small dwarf galaxies that flared to life, clearing the fog of murky hydrogen that filled intergalactic

Antarctica’s icy wilderness is warming rapidly under the weight of human-driven climate change, yet a new study points to an unlikely ally in the fight to keep the continent cool: penguin poo. Published Thursday in Communications Earth & Environment, the research shows that ammonia wafting off penguin guano seeds extra cloud cover above coastal Antarctica,

Your eyesight might be good enough to confidently read the tiny text at the optometrist from a few meters away. But you’re left in the dust by a new device recently demoed by researchers, which was able to scan tiny individual characters of text from a distance of 1.36 kilometers (about 0.85 miles). Intensity interferometry

WASHINGTON — The failure of SpaceX’s Starship on its most recent test flight had a different root cause than the previous failure, despite happening at about the same time. SpaceX released details May 23 about the cause of the Flight 8 mishap that took place March 6, when several Raptor engines on the Starship upper

We have all experienced boredom – that feeling of waning interest or decreased mental stimulation. Eventually we lose focus, we disengage. Time seems to pass slowly, and we may even start to feel restless. Whether it be watching a movie that disappoints, a child complaining that “there’s nothing to do”, or an adult zoning out

In the cold, distant reaches of the Solar System, far beyond Pluto, astronomers have just identified what could be a new dwarf planet. It’s called 2017 OF201, a rock that appears to be some 700 kilometers (435 miles) across, large enough to qualify as a dwarf planet. What makes it even more interesting is its

We already rely heavily on hydrogen gas as a fuel source, and it’s considered key to reaching crucial carbon-neutral goals. Now researchers have come up with a recipe for naturally forming hydrogen, which could help locate the vast reserves of the gas that are locked away in Earth’s crust. Tapping into these reserves, the researchers

Microsoft has developed an artificial intelligence (AI) model that beats current forecasting methods in tracking air quality, weather patterns, and climate-addled tropical storms, according to findings published Wednesday. Dubbed Aurora, the new system – which has not been commercialised – generated 10-day weather forecasts and predicted hurricane trajectories more accurately and faster than traditional forecasting,

WASHINGTON — The Senate is set to vote on confirming Jared Isaacman’s nomination to be NASA administrator in early June. Senate Majority Leader John Thune (R-S.D.) filed cloture on Isaacman’s nomination May 22, a procedural move that would set up a vote on the nomination in early June. The Senate is not in session the

A bedtime cuddle with your partner could make a real difference to your feelings of stress and security, according to a new study closely analyzing the relationship between physical touch and well-being in a relationship. The main takeaway: nighttime cuddles (more intimate sleeping positions) were linked to lower levels of stress in couples, which then

The JWST has done it again. The powerful space telescope has already revealed the presence of bright galaxies only several hundred million years after the Big Bang. Now, it’s sensed light from a galaxy only 280 million years after the Big Bang, the most distant galaxy ever detected. Prior to the JWST, we had no

Scientists in China have developed contact lenses that let wearers see light normally invisible to the human eye. Cooler still, the lenses work better through closed eyelids, and other versions could help correct color blindness. The human eye can see a relatively limited range of colors – light with wavelengths of between about 400 and

This is a bonus edition of Space Minds by SpaceNews. This week we’re at the US Geospatial Intelligence Foundation GEOINT Symposium in St. Louis where we’ll post episodes Monday through Wednesday. Our guest today is Devin Brande, Director, Commercial Operations, National Geospatial-Intelligence Agency. He sits down with Chief Content and Strategy Officer Mike Gruss to

South American mummies have become known for their impressive tattoos, but an analysis has found the design inked into the cheek of an approximately 800-year-old woman buried in the region is unique in many ways. While we humans have been decorating ourselves with permanent skin art for thousands of years, evidence of the artwork is

The mystery of galaxies in the early Universe just got even weirder. A team of astronomers has identified a giant spiral galaxy so well-formed that it already has a stable galactic bar; a long, straight structure filled with stars across the galaxy’s center. It was formed just 2.6 billion years after the Big Bang. It’s

Rising seas will severely test humanity’s resilience in the second half of the 21st century and beyond, even if nations defy the odds and cap global warming at the ambitious 1.5 degrees Celsius target, researchers said Tuesday. The pace at which global oceans are rising has doubled in three decades, and on current trends will

WASHINGTON — President Donald Trump has selected Space Force Gen. Michael Guetlein to lead the ambitious Golden Dome missile defense program, a massive undertaking that aims to create a comprehensive shield against advanced missile threats targeting the United States. During an Oval Office briefing May 20, Trump — flanked by Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth, Guetlein