What’s in a gas giant? No, really. The interiors of Jupiter and Saturn are actually quite difficult to probe. But Saturn’s uniquely glorious and extensive ring system is proving to be an excellent tool for figuring out the densities deep below its thick cloud layers, right down to the core. That core, according to a
Science
Whether it’s turning forests into cropland or savannah into pastures, humanity has repurposed land over the last 60 years equivalent in area to Africa and Europe combined, researchers said Tuesday. If you count all such transitions since 1960, it adds up to about 43 million square kilometers (16.5 square miles), four times more than previous
The online world is continuously expanding – always aggregating more services, more users, and more activity. Last year, the number of websites registered on the “.com” domain surpassed 150,000,000. However, more than a quarter of a century since its first commercial use, the growth of the online world is now slowing down in some key
SAN FRANCISCO – The University of Illinois Urbana-Champaign awarded a contract to Blue Canyon Technologies to provide cubesats for a space mission sponsored by the National Science Foundation. The value of the award was not disclosed. Under the contract announced May 12, Blue Canyon Technologies, a Raytheon Technologies subsidiary, will provide a pair of six-unit
Everybody knows the physical feeling of acceleration: the surging sensation as we pick up speed while moving from one place to another. But few of us know what it might be doing to our bodies. In a new study, scientists investigated the physiological effects of acceleration in a small experiment, where participants simply drove themselves
We have precisely one data point against which to measure exoplanets for habitability: Earth. As far as we know, life has evolved only on this one pale blue dot, orbiting a single star in the middle of a spiral arm of an otherwise unremarkable galaxy. Most stars in the Milky Way, however, are not like
It might seem odd to find supporters of climate action debating the merits of a concept that science shows to be essential for halting climate change, and which is accordingly embedded at the heart of the defining global agreement. Yet that is where we find ourselves with the concept of “net zero” – the point
If you’re struggling to handle the long line of tabs open in your browser right now, you’re not alone. A small new study has found many people who browse the internet experience tab overload, saving articles to read later, leaving tasks as reminders, or burrowing down an internet hole until the stack of open web
DoD spokesman: Countries that conduct activities in space should share information about those activities, especially when they put people at risk. WASHINGTON — Less than two days after parts of an uncontrolled Chinese rocket fell into the Indian Ocean, the Pentagon said allowing a large booster to free fall toward Earth is “irresponsible behavior.” “We
A symbiotic relationship between two marine lifeforms has just been discovered thriving at the bottom of the ocean, after disappearing from the fossil record for hundreds of millions of years. Scientists have found non-skeletal corals growing from the stalks of marine animals known as crinoids, or sea lilies, on the floor of the Pacific Ocean,
Quantum entanglement is the binding together of two particles or objects, even though they may be far apart – their respective properties are linked in a way that’s not possible under the rules of classical physics. It’s a weird phenomenon that Einstein described as “spooky action at a distance“, but its weirdness is what makes
IQ tests are widely used by educational and professional organizations to assess applicants. They are also the focus of psychological studies which seek to identify the many factors that influence intelligence. Like all tests, it seems reasonable to assume that you could improve your IQ score by practicing the test many times. Is it possible to improve
A large segment of a Chinese rocket re-entered the Earth’s atmosphere and disintegrated over the Indian Ocean on Sunday, the Chinese space agency said, following fevered speculation over where the 18-tonne object would come down. Officials in Beijing had said there was little risk from the freefalling segment of the Long March-5B rocket, which had
Mexico City, the most populous metropolis in North America, has sunk too low for us to save it, according to new research. After centuries of water drainage from underground aquifers, the lake bed on which this city sits has grown increasingly dry, causing the clay sheets to compress and crack at a largely unstoppable rate.
Scientists have gotten one step closer to a quantum internet by creating the world’s first multinode quantum network. Researchers at the QuTech research center in the Netherlands created the system, which is made up of three quantum nodes entangled by the spooky laws of quantum mechanics that govern subatomic particles. It is the first time that more than two
The United States is expected to play a supporting role in an international campaign to monitor greenhouse gas emissions from space. Through the Committee on Earth Observation Satellites, nations are coordinating efforts for space-based monitoring of air quality, greenhouse gases, the ozone layer and natural climate drivers like solar energy. China, Europe and Japan are
Using detailed fossil comparison techniques, scientists have been able to identify a giant new saber-toothed cat species, Machairodus lahayishupup, which would have prowled around the open spaces of North America between 5 and 9 million years ago. One of the biggest cats ever discovered, M. lahayishupup is estimated in this new study to have a
In a major milestone for quantum physics, thousands of molecules have been induced to share the same quantum state, dancing together in unison like one huge super molecule. This is a goal long-sought by physicists, who hope to harness complex quantum systems for technological applications – but getting a bunch of unruly molecules to work
The number of babies born in the United States took a hit last year, just like experts predicted it would. In 2020, according to initial government data, the national birth rate fell by a total of 4 percent – the largest annual decrease in 50 years. Obviously, most babies born last year were conceived before
The Pentagon has said it is tracking a chunk of a Chinese rocket that is expected to come back into the atmosphere in the coming days in an uncontrolled reentry. As of now, it does not know where the debris will land. The exact point where the rocket will enter the atmosphere will be known
River piracy, also known as stream capture, happens when melting glaciers divert the path of a river. Due to our warming planet, a major Alaskan river is under threat of being redirected in this way – stealing an essential source of water away from the ecosystems and people that rely on it. The threatened waterway is
In our efforts to rein in our overwhelming burden upon Earth’s living biosphere, every little thing adds up. Even the shape of pasta (of all things!) can make a difference in our consumption of resources. Which is why scientists have now created flat-packed pasta that’s more efficient to package and transport, but can then unfurl
WASHINGTON — A SpaceX Starship prototype successfully carried out a brief suborbital flight May 5 after four previous vehicles were destroyed during or shortly after landing. The Starship SN15 vehicle lifted off from SpaceX’s Boca Chica, Texas, test site at 6:24 p.m. Eastern. The vehicle flew to an altitude of approximately 10 kilometers before descending
Our feline friends certainly wow us with their cleverness – they can fetch things, open doors, navigate seemingly impossible obstacles, and even understand basic instructions (when they feel like it, anyway). At other times, they can be hilariously silly. Any cat lover is familiar with their quirks, such as seemingly endless joy at knocking things
Scientists have discovered a new type of uranium that is the lightest ever known. The discovery could reveal more about a weird alpha particle that gets ejected from certain radioactive elements as they decay. The newfound uranium, called uranium-214, is an isotope, or a variant of the element, with 30 more neutrons than protons, one fewer neutron
It’s called Dunbar’s number: an influential and oft-repeated theory suggesting the average person can only maintain about 150 stable social relationships with other people. Proposed by British anthropologist and evolutionary psychologist Robin Dunbar in the early 1990s, Dunbar’s number, extrapolated from research into primate brain sizes and their social groups, has since become a ubiquitous
There’s a lot we don’t understand about white dwarf stars, but one mystery may finally have a solution: how do some of these cosmic objects end up having insanely powerful magnetic fields? According to new calculations and modelling, these super-dense objects can have a magnetosphere-generating dynamo – but the strongest white dwarf magnetic fields, a
Lightning could be a much more important atmospheric cleanser than previously thought, according to a new analysis of historical measurements gathered from a storm-chasing airplane back in 2012 – data which were originally thought to be inaccurate. While some of the air-scrubbing qualities of lightning bolts are already well understood – in particular the creation
WASHINGTON — Former senator Bill Nelson formally became NASA’s 14th administrator in a short ceremony May 3. Vice President Kamala Harris gave the oath of office to Nelson at the Eisenhower Executive Office Building in Washington. Only a handful of guests and a media pool were in attendance, and the swearing-in ceremony was not broadcast
Updated 3:10 p.m. Eastern with NASA statement about stop-work order on HLS award to SpaceX. WASHINGTON — NASA should have revised its approach to the Human Landing System (HLS) program or withdrawn the solicitation entirely once it was clear the agency didn’t have the funding to support two companies, one of the losing bidders argues