Science

GOLDEN, Colorado — The increased amount of space hardware flying through cislunar space and around the moon is, among experts, a growing worry. Even one fragmentation event can have calamitous and far-reaching consequences for future lunar exploration, which drives the need for appropriate debris characterization tools.  That’s the view of two Purdue University researchers who

The Vikings seem to have gone to the ends of the Earth in their search for precious ivory – quite literally. The Norse were trading walrus tusks in medieval Europe that have now been traced to the very top of Greenland – well beyond the reach traditionally associated with this seafaring civilization. A genetic analysis

Tiny, ancient black holes could whizz through our Solar System as often as once a decade, according to a new study. We could spot them by watching for a wobble in the orbit of Mars – and that could help uncover dark matter. Primordial black holes (PBHs) are hypothetical objects that may have been born

TAMPA, Fla. — The Federal Communications Commission voted Sept. 26 to open up more spectrum to Starlink and other non-geostationary satellite (NGSO) operators to improve broadband speeds in the United States. The regulator unanimously voted to give NGSO operators access to frequencies in the 17.3-17.7 gigahertz band for satellite communications provided to fixed points on Earth,

Many of us will have expired foodstuffs sitting forgotten in the back of our fridges and cupboards, but nothing is going to come close to the nearly 3,600-year-old cheese samples discovered clinging to mummified bodies in northwest China. The human remains were recovered from some of hundreds of coffins found in the Xiaohe Cemetery in

The hunt is on for a second Earth, somewhere out there in the Milky Way galaxy, but a newly discovered world is not quite the thing. It comes in at around 1.9 times the mass of Earth, orbiting its star at around twice Earth’s distance from the Sun… but that star is a white dwarf,

Dominated by carbon-rich swamps and forests proliferating across Earth’s rocky surface, the Carboniferous period saw a boost in atmospheric oxygen and vast quantities of carbon dioxide trapped in what eventually became Earth’s coal deposits. Terrestrial plant and animal life flourished amid these changes. But we’ve long been missing the earliest part of that picture, with

Long after Earth’s oceans have vaporized and all its plant and animal life has turned to dust under the Sun’s slow expansion, a tiny disc of silica could continue to represent a landmark moment in human evolutionary history. Researchers at the University of Southampton in the UK have once again demonstrated the incredible storage capabilities

Without refocused federal and private funding, we risk losing our leadership in orbit. With the close of the Cold War, the West plowed headlong into 30 years marked by one tech-fueled boom after another. As if by right, the United States and its allies began to take for granted America’s technological supremacy and the seemingly inevitable expansion

In the desert of southern Peru, a mystery has been unfolding over decades. Hundreds of years ago, the people who lived nearby carved the ground with giant lines to create pictures and symbols that can only be fully appreciated from the sky. These are the Nazca glyphs, mysterious designs whose purpose has baffled archaeologists ever

Computers truly are wonderful things and powerful but only if they are programmed by a skillful mind. Check this out… there is an algorithm that mimics the growth of slime mold, but a team of researchers has adapted it to model the large-scale structure of the Universe. Since the Big Bang, the Universe has been

The world’s oceans are close to becoming too acidic to properly sustain marine life or help stabilise the climate, a new report said on Monday. The report by the Potsdam Institute for Climate Impact Research (PIK) details nine factors that are crucial for regulating the planet’s ability to sustain life. In six of these areas,

Japan already has one of the fastest supercomputers in the world with its Fugaku rig, but the country’s scientists are looking at a seriously hefty upgrade in the next few years: a Fugaku Next supercomputer that’s roughly a thousand times faster than current systems. It would be the first ‘zetta-class’ supercomputer in the world –

SAN FRANCISCO – Artificial intelligence promises to make spacecraft increasingly resilient and capable of gathering data without waiting for instructions from ground controllers. “We’ve been limited with the way we’ve done work so far,” Evana Gizzi, AI research lead at NASA’s Goddard Space Flight Center, told SpaceNews. “And there are so many things we want

Researchers have reconstructed the oldest human genomes ever found in South Africa from two people who lived around 10,000 years ago, allowing a better understanding of how the region was populated, an author of the study said Sunday. The genetic sequences were from a man and a woman whose remains were found at a rock

Earth’s average global temperatures have been steadily increasing since the Industrial Revolution. According to the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Agency (NOAA), Earth has been heating up at a rate of 0.06 °C (0.11 °F) per decade since 1850 – or about 1.11 °C (2 °F) in total. Since 1982, the average annual increase has been

Almost two centuries after California’s gold rush, the United States is on the brink of a lithium rush. As demand for the material skyrockets, government geologists are rushing to figure out where the precious element is hiding. In September 2023, scientists funded by a mining company reported finding what could be the largest deposit of

WASHINGTON — An organization formed under the U.S. Space Command to harness commercial technology for space domain awareness is taking on broader responsibilities, including using commercial space systems for battlefield intelligence. “We’re expanding,” Barbara Golf, U.S. Space Force strategic advisor and head of the Joint Task Force-Space Defense Commercial Operations (JCO), told attendees Sept. 20

The discovery of artifacts associated with an ancient board game is offering clues about how humans interacted thousands of years ago. At various sites on the Abşeron Peninsula and Gobustan Reserve in Azerbaijan, archaeologists have found six designs carved into the surfaces of rocks. Dating to around 2000 BCE, they each resemble the hallmark pattern

In September 1859, the same year that Darwin published On the Origin of Species, telegraph systems across Europe and North America stopped working and started sparking, leading to fires in some cases. Just hours before, researchers had observed the first ever confirmed solar flare – an intense burst of radiation emitted from the Sun. It

It’s been 20 years since a paper in the journal Science showed the environmental accumulation of tiny plastic fragments and fibres. It named the particles “microplastics”. The paper opened an entire research field. Since then, more than 7,000 published studies have shown the prevalence of microplastics in the environment, in wildlife and in the human

TAMPA, Fla. — Executives discussing emerging space-based computing capabilities Sept. 20 called for stronger collaboration between policymakers and technology leaders to accelerate artificial intelligence’s societal benefits. Rika Nakazawa, chief of commercial innovation at Japanese telecoms giant NTT, proposed tech providers use private forums to educate policymakers and industry players about AI advancements.  This approach, she

Articles about badly behaved people and how to spot them are common. You don’t have to Google or scroll too much to find headlines such as 7 signs your boss is a psychopath or How to avoid the sociopath next door. You’ll often see the terms psychopath and sociopath used somewhat interchangeably. That applies to

Satellite swarms orbiting the Earth are leaking more radiation into protected wavelength bands than ever. In fact, the second generation of Starlink satellites – known as the v2mini and v2mini Direct-to-Cell versions – are leaking up to 32 times more radiation than their predecessor. This is a problem – because some of the radiation they’re

PARIS — SpaceX fired back at the Federal Aviation Administration over the agency’s proposed fines for launch license violations, blaming the FAA for dragging its heels on what the company considered minor changes. SpaceX released Sept. 19 a letter it sent to the leadership of the House Science Committee and the Senate Commerce Committee, the

Compared with the gregarious nature of modern humans, Neanderthal communities appear to have been surprisingly insular, according to past research, keeping to themselves more often than not. One group appears to have taken reclusivity to an extreme. A new study on genetic material lifted from the molars of a specimen named Thorin has found his

Could a long-lost moon explain the rather unusual shape of Mars, as well as the terrain on the planet’s surface? It’s an intriguing hypothesis put forward in a new paper by astronomer Michael Efroimsky from the US Naval Observatory in Washington DC. To a greater degree than any other planet in the Solar System, Mars

Earthquake scientists detected an unusual signal on monitoring stations used to detect seismic activity during September 2023. We saw it on sensors everywhere, from the Arctic to Antarctica. We were baffled – the signal was unlike any previously recorded. Instead of the frequency-rich rumble typical of earthquakes, this was a monotonous hum, containing only a

When it comes to our experience of the internet, “the times, they are a-changin’“, as Bob Dylan would say. You can’t quite recall how, but the internet certainly feels different these days. To some, it is “less fun and less informative” than it used to be. To others, online searches are made up of “cookie

The United States and India, the two largest democracies in the world, have a decades-long relationship built on cooperation in space issues. In recent years, that bond has come into stronger focus. Building on their shared core values of open and representative government, rule of law and freedom of speech. Based on the countries’ similarities