Science

Ions inside a compact fusion reactor barely a meter (less than 3 feet) across have been heated to the magic figure of 100 million degrees Celsius (some 180 million degrees Fahrenheit) for the first time in a monumental step towards making nuclear fusion energy a practical reality. Researchers from Tokamak Energy Ltd in the UK,

WASHINGTON — NASA and Boeing will further delay the first crewed launch of the company’s CST-100 Starliner, which had been scheduled for July, to address two newly discovered issues with the spacecraft. At a briefing June 1 announced on little more than an hour’s notice, officials said they were standing down from preparations for the

The potent cocktail of toxins in the venom of one of the world’s deadliest spiders seems to vary depending on context. A new analysis of how funnel-web spiders produce their venom shows that factors such as the spider’s heart rate and defensiveness could play a role in the proportions of chemicals delivered on the ends

Atoms may not have bones, but we still want to know how they are put together. These tiny particles are the basis on which all normal matter is built (including our bones), and understanding them helps us understand the larger Universe. We currently use high-energy X-ray light to help us understand atoms and molecules and

Compared to apes, human children are more likely to open a mystery ‘box’ over one with known contents, a new study finds. This suggests that one thing that makes us unique as a species might be our innate sense of curiosity. Children “explored the uncertain options before the alternatives were presented, showing a higher degree

For most of us, this would be a nightmare. Imagine being curled up inside a 90 centimeter (36 inch) fabric sphere with a small window and a small air tank while dangling from the Canadarm. As your tiny sphere shifts, you’d see Earth out your tiny window, then the Space Shuttle, damaged by some accident

Current policies to limit global warming will expose more than a fifth of humanity to extreme and potentially life-threatening heat by century’s end, researchers warned Monday. Earth’s surface temperature is on track to rise 2.7 degrees Celsius (4.8 degrees Fahrenheit) above preindustrial levels by 2100, pushing more than two billion people – 22 percent of

There’s a harsh, brutal reality to the poultry industry, which in 2021 alone supplied about 286 eggs per person in a growing US population: Billions of male chicks are routinely culled by being crushed alive or gassed at hen hatcheries worldwide. Chick culling arises from the fact that chicks from egg-laying hens are not typically

WASHINGTON — Greg Kuperman, program manager at the Defense Advanced Research Projects Agency’s Strategic Technology Office, worries that innovations emerging from the commercial space industry will never reach potential customers in the U.S. military.  A key reason for that, Kuperman told SpaceNews, is that discussions about next-generation technologies, particularly in the space sector, quickly veer

Parrots can get a lot out of video calls with their feathered friends just like we can from Zoom meetings with our favorite humans. Findings from a recent study by researchers from Northeastern University and MIT Media Lab in the US and the University of Glasgow in the UK could point to ways to better

A refined hunt for the extremely rare transformation of the Higgs boson has delivered results, providing the first evidence of a process that could hint at unknown particles. Reconciling the results of several years’ worth of proton crashes inside two different detectors at the European Organization for Nuclear Research’s (CERN) Large Hadron Collider (LHC), physicists

The pressure to publish or perish has led some desperate researchers to pay for fake papers to pad their resumés. Worse still, some of these sham papers are getting published in official scientific journals. A computer program designed to detect these made-up studies suggests far too many are slipping past peer review. The study was

Astronomers studying black holes have serendipitously found another rarity: A dead star rocketing away from its birth supernova, leaving a comet-like trail of radio emission in its wake. Named PSR J1914+1054g, the star is just the fourth known of its kind: a radio pulsar kicked at high velocity across space, for which astronomers have observed

Diplomats from 175 countries gathering in Paris for plastics treaty talks on Monday may want to pack an umbrella, but not just because there’s a chance of rain. France’s capital will also be showered during the five-day talks by billions of microplastic particles falling from the sky, according to the first-ever plastics pollution weather forecast.

Can a computer learn from the past and anticipate what will happen next, like a human? You might not be surprised to hear that some cutting-edge AI models could achieve this feat, but what about a computer that looks a little different – more like a tank of water? We have built a small proof-of-concept

WASHINGTON — NASA and Boeing said May 26 they are still working towards a July launch of the CST-100 Starliner on a crewed test flight despite “emerging issues” and concerns raised by a safety panel. In a statement issued just before the close of business ahead of a holiday weekend, the two organizations said they

Ask anyone living in a coastal area of the UK and they’ll confirm that seagulls can be a nuisance. These birds’ pilfering of food knows no bounds, and no one is safe from one of their thieving attacks. For many people, this behavior is the result of the gulls’ inherent aggression. But in reality, gulls

A reconstruction of oral microflora genomes spanning a whopping 100,000-year period of human history may have revealed a surprising shift in the kinds of bacteria that like to call our mouths home. Researchers from across Germany and the US teamed up to decode DNA extracted from the dental plaque of human and Neanderthal remains, using

Uranus takes 84 years to orbit the Sun, and so that last time that planet’s north polar region was pointed at Earth, radio telescope technology was in its infancy. But now, scientists have been using radio telescopes like the Very Large Array (VLA) the past few years as Uranus has slowly revealed more and more

Fungi pose a significant threat to crops worldwide, scientists warn in a new commentary, with increasingly “devastating” effects on our food supply. We tend to worry more about pathogens that sicken humans directly, especially viruses and bacteria. But while corn smut and stem rust might not scare us like Ebola or E. coli, maybe they

WASHINGTON — The chair of a NASA safety panel urged the agency not to rush into a crewed test flight of Boeing’s CST-100 Starliner vehicle, calling for an independent “deep look” at technical issues with the spacecraft. Speaking at a May 25 public meeting of the Aerospace Safety Advisory Panel, Patricia Sanders, chair of the

New research reveals that mushrooms and other fungi can keep themselves cooler than their surroundings. The discovery could tell us more about these organisms’ evolution and how they might respond to continued global warming. Like some of the best scientific discoveries, this temperature regulation was discovered accidentally, as one of the researchers was testing out

Scientists using ultraviolet photography say they have found an old version of a chapter of the Bible that was hidden underneath a different section of text for more than 1,500 years. Historian Grigory Kessel of the Austrian Academy of Sciences announced the discovery in an article in the journal, New Testament Studies, earlier this year.

We don’t know what the first stars in the Universe were like. Peering into the distant reaches of the early Universe, we’ve seen only traces of their presence. But a new line of evidence traced in images from the James Webb Space Telescope seems to agree with a recent idea that is gaining traction: that

A decades-old global environmental pact has averted huge amounts of sea ice loss in the Arctic, new research shows. Banning ozone-depleting gases under the historic 1987 Montreal Protocol has delayed the first, feared ice-free Arctic summer by as much as 15 years, the study found – once again demonstrating that global treaties can work to

ST. LOUIS — The National Geospatial-Intelligence Agency is planning a new procurement of commercial services to monitor activities from space.  “We’re preparing for commercial advancements in analytics through our upcoming Luno contract,” NGA’s director Vice Adm. Frank Whitworth said May 22 at the GEOINT 2023 symposium. Luno is the follow-on to NGA’s economic indicator monitoring

Nurturing a forest ecosystem back to life after it’s been logged is not always easy. It can take a lot of hard work and careful monitoring to ensure biodiversity thrives again. But monitoring biodiversity can be costly, intrusive, and resource-intensive. That’s where ecological acoustic survey methods, or “ecoacoustics”, come into play. Indeed, the planet sings.

The delicious way that champagne bubbles tickle the tongue is based on how ‘soapy’ the wine is, according to new research. When poured into a glass, carbonated drinks don’t all fizz the same way. Sparkling water creates a firework-like display of popping bubbles, bursting forth across the entire surface of a glass. Beer has bubbles

The next time you whisper sweet-nothings into someone’s ear, you might want to target their left side. Neuroscientists at the Swiss Federal Institute of Technology Lausanne (EPFL), Lausanne University Hospital and the University of Lausanne in Switzerland have discovered a strange bias in our perception of pleasing voices. According to the brain scans of 13