Science

Cultural warning: This article discusses the deaths of Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander peoples, including through disease and frontier violence, and features images of deceased people. It’s difficult to comprehend the scale of what happened to Australia’s Indigenous population when Britain’s First Fleet invaded in 1788. One reason for that, in the simplest terms, is

Already, spacecraft are demonstrating autonomous rendezvous, on-orbit servicing, orbital transfer, debris removal and robotic operations. But which markets will mature first? What technical standards are needed for vehicles built by different companies to work together? How should governments encourage commercial investment? This event will explore what comes next for the technologies, policies and business models

The world’s ‘doomsday’ seed banks could be a way to replant our planet after disaster, but only if their contents survive the years. Even when they are carefully frozen, they may not last as long as we thought they would. Scientists have now investigated which of our tropical crops last the longest in our seed

It’s difficult to avoid the discussions around AI at the moment – and how useful or otherwise it can be. Science and healthcare are two of the areas where the tech promises to be transformative. We’re already seeing AI used extensively in terms of analyzing scans, designing drugs, and predicting the future, but researchers led

The search is on for natural sources of hydrogen that could potentially fast-track humanity to a low-carbon energy future. As a fuel, it’s incredibly clean – but most hydrogen today is still produced using fossil fuels. Being able to tap into abundant natural reserves of hydrogen would solve that problem, and there are several geological

On 12 December 2022, an orbiter traveling 251 kilometers (156 miles) above the southern highlands of Mars photographed a hill. It should have been an unremarkable shot – one of tens of thousands NASA’s Mars Reconnaissance Orbiter HiRISE camera has captured of the Martian surface since 2006. Instead, something seemed to be looking back. Two

Our relatively stable global climate is governed by an incredibly complex set of factors, all interacting with each other in dynamic and changeable ways – but there are a couple of really big, key players in that system. The Atlantic Meridional Overturning Circulation (AMOC) is one of them.  This system of ocean currents redistributes heat

There are people who say they can leave their own bodies. Not “I was beside myself!” or “I jumped out of my skin!” but literally peeling their consciousness from their flesh and bones to observe the world from entirely different places. You’ve probably heard of it – the out-of-body experience, a strange phenomenon steeped in

For many people around the world, putting food on the table isn’t an easy thing. But as populations grow and pressure on the world’s resources intensifies, that burden is expected to only grow heavier. New projections suggest that by 2050, millions of the world’s poorest people could be spending around half their income on food

Australian Earth observation satellite company LatConnect 60 (LC60) has strengthened its position in India with two strategic agreements announced at the Bengaluru Space Expo 2026 on September 7th, spanning satellite mission infrastructure and access to India’s defence and geospatial intelligence market. The agreements with NewSpace India Limited (NSIL) and GeoSyze EO Solutions LLP establish complementary

There are more than 12,000 abandoned coal mines across China, offering vast amounts of underground space and sophisticated infrastructure that could potentially be repurposed – and researchers have an idea about how to do just that. The idea, from a team at the Shanxi Province Coal-based Resources Green and High-efficiency Development Engineering Center, is to

Changing people’s behavior can often feel nearly impossible. Especially when it comes to something with indirect benefits, like helping people far away or reducing environmental impacts.  But new research published in JAMA Network Open suggests that a small bit of information about a meal’s environmental impact could be enough to nudge people toward lower-carbon choices

In 2018, researchers from the Chinese government accidentally caused a methane leak in the South China Sea. They were trying to figure out how much natural gas might exist in marine sediments, so they drilled a 22-centimeter-wide hole in the deep seafloor. Afterward, they tried to seal the hole with heavy mud. But their attempt

You may think you made a decision to read this article, but did you, really?  What we consider to be making a decision might in fact be a different kind of brain interaction between what we perceive, and the actions we take in response – less of a step-by-step linear process, and more of a

Alone in a dried-up crater lake millions of miles from Earth, NASA’s Curiosity rover has been tirelessly exploring for 14 years. In that time, it’s seen the good, the bad, and the ugly of what Gale Crater has to offer. Surprising minerals. Interesting rock textures. Red noons and blue sunsets. Heck, even ‘eclipses’ involving Mars’s

Concrete is, quite literally, the foundation of the modern world. Almost every construction project in the world uses the material in some form. There’s just one problem, and that’s a big one: Making one of its central ingredients – cement – is horrendously bad for the environment. The act of heating and processing limestone to

As the world gets hotter, many of its driest regions are expected to get even drier. When this happens, the boundaries of arid regions are expected to creep forward, transforming landscapes and killing off plant life no longer able to cope. Amidst the changes, projections suggest Earth’s drylands could grow to cover over 40 percent

Scientists have to follow the data, even if it doesn’t make sense. This is the situation that researchers recently found themselves in when analyzing the flow of rivers in the Canadian High Arctic. Scientists from Simon Fraser University and the University of British Columbia in Canada were investigating river erosion. Their starting point was the

Some seven centuries ago, a man in Scotland had a terrible, horrible, no-good, very bad day indeed. There he was, going about the business of living, when something interrupted. Something that slammed into him from behind with such tremendous force that it shattered his skeleton in more than 160 places. Now, scientists think they know

Decades after offshore oil and gas projects are decommissioned, the underwater pipelines that are left behind continue to shed microplastics into the ocean. On the United Kingdom continental shelf alone, scientists estimate these abandoned, degrading pipelines and umbilicals (such as hoses and cables) are generating around 500 metric tons (~550 US tons) of microplastics each

PHOENIX, AZ — August 24, 2026 — Spirit Electronics, a value‑added distributor of high‑reliability electronics focused on performance‑driven program requirements, announced that space‑grade and high‑reliability components from Texas Instruments and Microchip Technology are now available directly through its online store at spiritelectronics.com. The announcement coincides with the SmallSat Conference in Salt Lake City, where Spirit

“It’s great to have great sex and hot-fudge sundaes,” says cognitive scientist Laurie Santos, who studies the science of well-being at Yale University.   “But ultimately, true happiness probably comes from what we do with others and building a broader good life.”  The source of a “good life” has been a focus of philosophical thought for

The world runs on metals, and not (just) the kind produced by long-haired musicians with monochromatic wardrobes. Our modern technologies, industries, and infrastructure would not be possible without 17 invaluable metals known as rare earth elements (REEs), which are used in computers, planes, cars, and more. Unfaithful to their name, REEs aren’t that rare, but

DURANGO, Colo. — Sept. 2, 2026 — Agile Space Industries celebrated the completion of a 20,500-square-foot expansion of its Durango headquarters with a ribbon-cutting ceremony on August 26, joined by U.S. Senator John Hickenlooper, local leaders, community members and Agile employees. The expansion brings Agile’s headquarters at 820 Airport Road to approximately 40,000 square feet of combined

When we picture glaciers, it’s easy to imagine vast expanses of white ice gleaming under the sky. But not all glaciers take that form. The world is covered in a different kind, called rock glaciers – landforms in mountain regions where masses of ice and rock coexist, hidden under a hard surface of rock and

European optical payload company’s imager enables wide-ranging hyperspectral imaging missions for commercial, civil and defence customers Deal speaks to rising demand for advanced EO technology and the growth of Canada’s small satellite leader HyperScape100 imager delivers 32 user-selectable spectral brands from a library of 400, allowing the user to customise and optimise the camera for

One of the most special treasure collections in the world has been stolen. At 5.16 am on the morning of August 27, an alarm rang out at a sports center in the Spanish city of Villena, drawing attention to the site. Just minutes later, another alarm sounded at the Villena Museum (MUVI), some 2 kilometers

Saturn, apparently, has been hiding its talents. For decades, humanity has puzzled over the gas giant’s enormous hexagon swirling around its north pole – a six-sided atmospheric structure unlike anything else known in the Solar System. Now, it seems, that bizarre feature is not an isolated incident – and Saturn may have a propensity for

A floating island loaded with green, healthy-looking trees has been spotted drifting around Williston Lake in Canada, and we’ve never seen anything like it. Rocky Avery, a British Columbia local resident and boater, shared a video of the strange floating ‘island’ on social media. Technically, it’s more like a raft than an island, with trees

I have spent much of my career looking at the defense industrial base from different vantage points: as a warfighter, inside major defense companies, and now leading a company whose electronics sit deep within many of the systems our customers ultimately deliver. Those perspectives have reinforced a simple lesson: you cannot accelerate the top of