Science

There are a lot of things in Earth’s night sky, and every now and again, they line up in such a way to give us all a little bit of a giggle. On the nights of Thursday 24 and Friday 25 April, just such an alignment is going to take place, just before dawn. The

An unprecedented coral bleaching episode has spread to 84 percent of the world’s reefs in an unfolding human-caused crisis that could kill off swathes of the essential ecosystems, scientists warned Wednesday. Since it began in early 2023, the global coral bleaching event has mushroomed into the biggest and most intense on record, with reefs across

In matters of national defense and credible deterrence, some capabilities are simply too vital to outsource. If they falter, armies lose battles and nations can lose wars. Today, commercial space services are more capable than ever. The U.S. military increasingly relies on them for flexibility, speed and innovation. We applaud this progress — in fact,

For the first time, humans might have glimpsed a rainbow of color that lies just beyond our sight – including a “blue-green of unprecedented saturation”. You’ve never seen it before because you can’t. It exists in a colorspace that our eyes have no access to. At least, not naturally. Researchers at the University of California,

Astronomers have discovered one of the least habitable planets ever. This tiny world is being melted by its host star, leaving a comet-like tail that stretches millions of kilometers behind it. While we’re often preoccupied with planets that might be comfy enough for liquid water to pool on the surface, the hellish landscape of BD+05

WASHINGTON — SpaceX launched the third in its series of mid-inclination dedicated rideshare missions April 21, but with very few rideshare payloads on board. A Falcon 9 lifted off from Cape Canaveral’s Space Launch Complex 40 at 8:48 p.m. Eastern on the Bandwagon-3 mission. The booster, on its third flight, touched down back at Cape

Thought to be more than 2,000 years old, the Antikythera mechanism is widely considered the first computer in history, an analog calculator that was way ahead of its time… or was it? A new study suggests the device may simply have been an elaborate toy. Researchers from the National University of Mar del Plata in

NASA’s Lucy spacecraft made a successful flyby of the second asteroid on its must-see list over the weekend, and sent back imagery documenting the elongated object’s bizarre double-lobed shape. It turns out that asteroid Donaldjohanson – which was named after the anthropologist who discovered the fossils of a human ancestor called Lucy – is what’s

WASHINGTON — DARPA is seeking proposals for a small lunar orbiter that could be used to test operations in very low orbits while prospecting for water ice. DARPA issued a program solicitation April 14 for a mission concept called Lunar Assay via Small Satellite Orbiter (LASSO). The agency is seeking proposals for design studies that

Walk into any home or workplace today, and you’re likely to find an array of indoor plants. The global market for indoor plants is growing fast – projected to reach more than US$28 billion (A$44 billion) by 2031. People keep indoor plants inside for a variety of reasons, including as decoration, to clean the air

Weather on Jupiter may have some surprising similarities to Earth phenomena, but some things it does defy easy explanation. Now, scientists have come up with one to explain the strange compositional properties of its wild clouds: during giant storms of thunder and lightning, Jupiter rains a hail of “mushballs”, huge clumps of mushy ice consisting

WASHINGTON — Following the launch of a classified mission April 20, the National Reconnaissance Office (NRO) has reached a new milestone, deploying more than 200 satellites into orbit in just over two years. The NROL-145 mission lifted off Sunday on a SpaceX Falcon 9 rocket from Vandenberg Space Force Base in California at 8:29 a.m.

With Easter around the corner, you’ll have seen chocolate Easter eggs on supermarket shelves. Maybe you’ve bought some already. But is there a difference between Easter chocolate and the everyday kind? Does Easter chocolate really taste better, as some people say? As we’ll see, any difference is less about the ingredients and more about how

One of the most spectacular galaxies in Earth’s sky is the subject of a new image release to help celebrate 35 years of Hubble operations. The Sombrero Galaxy (Messier 104), located some 31 million light-years away in the direction of the constellation Virgo, is a strange galaxy, oriented in such a way that it appears

HELSINKI — China sent six experimental Shiyan series satellites into orbit late Friday Eastern, using its Long March 6A rocket launched from Taiyuan. The Long March 6A rocket lifted off at 6:51 p.m. Eastern (2251 UTC) April 18 from Taiyuan Satellite Launch Center, northern China. The state-owned Shanghai Academy of Spaceflight Technology (SAST) announced launch

Languages are windows into the worlds of the people who speak them – reflecting what they value and experience daily. So perhaps it’s no surprise different languages highlight different areas of vocabulary. Scholars have noted that Mongolian has many horse-related words, that Maori has many words for ferns, and Japanese has many words related to

A surprise discovery in Gale Crater is the component that was missing in the puzzle of Mars‘s climate history. There, embedded in the bedrock, the Curiosity rover has identified a mineral called siderite that can only have formed from the precipitation of carbon from the Martian atmosphere. In other words, billions of years ago, Mars

Per- and polyfluoroalkyl substances (PFAS), or ‘forever chemicals’, have spread almost everywhere on Earth, and are increasingly being linked to poor health. Now we might have a new and much-needed way of destroying them. These chemicals got their nickname because they stick around in the environment and are very difficult to get rid of, but

You may have seen ads by Apple promoting its new Clean Up feature that can be used to remove elements in a photo. When one of these ads caught my eye this weekend, I was intrigued and updated my software to try it out. The feature has been available in Australia since December for Apple

WASHINGTON — Members of a NASA safety panel said they were “deeply concerned” about the safety of the aging International Space Station, citing long-running issues and funding shortfalls. During a public meeting of the Aerospace Safety Advisory Panel (ASAP) April 17, members expressed concerns about growing risks as the station nears its projected end in

A new analysis of the sky has finally confirmed where the missing half of the Universe’s visible matter has been hiding. In the space around galaxies, it lurks as huge, invisible clouds of ionized hydrogen. Normally, this would be impossible to see – but a large international team of astronomers and astrophysicists has developed a

Researchers are closer to growing chicken nuggets in the lab, thanks to the use of tiny hollow fibers that mimic blood vessels. While cultured meat has been advancing for some time now, it’s been limited to thin strips of less than a millimeter. Creating a thicker product with a familiar appeal has so far proven

WASHINGTON — A Northrop Grumman Minotaur IV rocket successfully launched multiple classified payloads for the U.S. National Reconnaissance Office (NRO) on April 16, marking a return to Vandenberg Space Force Base for the solid-fueled launch vehicle after more than a decade. The mission, designated NROL-174, lifted off at 3:33 p.m. Eastern from Space Launch Complex

While pornography has been present throughout human history in various forms, such as ancient erotic art to more modernized motion pictures, research shows an increase in use over recent decades given the rise of technology and accessibility. Pornography, meaning any media intended to depict or describe sexual content to heighten sexual arousal or pleasure, can

Since the James Webb Space Telescope (JWST) began science operations, astronomers have observed galaxies that existed more than 13 billion years ago. It was during this period, known as the “Cosmic Dark Ages,” that the first stars and galaxies formed between 200 million and 1 billion years after the Big Bang. Unfortunately, light from this

There have been several headlines over the past week about an AI chatbot officially passing the Turing test. These news reports are based on a recent preprint study by two researchers at the University of California San Diego in which four large language models (LLMs) were put through the Turing test. One model – OpenAI’s

TAMPA, Fla. — Astranis has signed a $115 million deal to deliver Taiwan’s first dedicated communications spacecraft, the company announced April 15, amid an issue with a separate small geostationary satellite launched late last year. The Ka-band satellite for Taiwanese telco Chunghwa Telecom joins a batch of five spacecraft that SpaceX is slated to launch

A piece of parchment wrapped around a 16th century volume of property records has turned out to be a treasure beyond archivists’ wildest dreams. Folded, stitched, torn, and worn, the hand-written manuscript is a fragment of the Suite Vulgate du Merlin, a rare French sequel to the British tales of King Arthur and his court,

Much of what scientists know about the early Solar System comes from meteorites – ancient rocks that travel through space and survive a fiery plunge through Earth’s atmosphere. Among meteorites, one type – called carbonaceous chondrites – stands out as the most primitive and provides a unique glimpse into the Solar System’s infancy. The carbonaceous

“Out of sight, out of mind” is how we often treat what is flushed down our toilets. But the drugs we take, from anxiety medications to antibiotics, don’t simply vanish after leaving our bodies. Many are not fully removed by wastewater treatment systems and end up in rivers, lakes and streams, where they can linger