Science

Even as the community of nations on Earth fractures further into rival blocs, an effort to build greater cohesion in space is gathering momentum. The extent to which this succeeds, or not, may set the course of global peace and security for the foreseeable future. Diplomats along with military, industry, civil and academic experts are

Being able to pretend is a valuable skill throughout life – whether it’s playing make-believe as kids or feigning interest in your partner’s favorite TV show – and a new study suggests we learn the art of pretense at a very young age. Researchers in the UK quizzed 902 parents from the UK, US, and

A long, long way from home, a lonely space probe hurtles ever deeper into the darkness of space. At a distance just shy of 60 astronomical units from the Sun, New Horizons is the most advanced human-built instrument to ever make it so far. This means that we now have a spacecraft that can take

A newly developed transistor device has shown exceptional levels of resilience in tests, performing so well, in fact, that it promises to transform the electronics and gadgets we make use of each day. These tiny toggles are essential in just about every modern day electronic device, involved in storing data and processing information in a

WASHINGTON — Boeing’s CST-100 Starliner spacecraft successfully landed in New Mexico early Sept. 7, completing the Crew Flight Test (CFT) mission but without any crew on board. The Starliner spacecraft landed at White Sands Space Harbor in New Mexico at 12:01 a.m. Eastern, about six hours after undocking from the International Space Station. The spacecraft’s

Do aliens sleep? You may take sleep for granted, but research suggests many planets that could evolve life don’t have a day and night cycle. It’s hard to imagine, but there are organisms living in Earth’s lightless habitats, deep underground or at the bottom of the sea, that give us an idea what alien life

In a wild feat of biological manipulation that seems straight out of science fiction, researchers have turned parts of living mice see-through. Stanford University materials scientist Zihao Ou and colleagues developed a biologically-safe dye that makes tissues transparent by tinkering with the light scattering abilities of the cells’ surrounding fluids. It is hoped similar strategies

WASHINGTON — A SpaceX Falcon 9 rocket on Sept. 5 launched the NROL-113 mission for the National Reconnaissance Office. The rocket lifted off from Space Launch Complex-4 East at Vandenberg Space Force Base in California at 11:20 p.m. Eastern. NROL-113 was the third batch of satellites of a new imaging satellite constellation built by SpaceX

If you travel far enough away from the Sun, the Solar System becomes a lot more populated. Out past the orbit of Neptune lies the Kuiper Belt, a vast, ring-shaped field of icy rocks. This is where Pluto resides, and Arrokoth, and countless other small objects in the cold and the dark. These are known

Some of our favorite food crops around the world aren’t reaching their full potential because of fewer visits from the insects that pollinate them, a new study has found. Insects that provide the crucial service of pollination are declining en masse, and that has serious consequences for the world’s food crops, 75 percent of which

HELSINKI — Senegal’s space agency signed an agreement on cooperation on the International Lunar Research Station Thursday, swelling the ranks of the China-led project. Maram Kaire, head of the Senegalese Space Study Agency (ASES) and Li Guoping, chief engineer of the China National Space Administration (CNSA) signed the agreement on cooperation in the International Lunar

Across human history, no single animal has had a deeper impact on human societies than the horse. But when and how people domesticated horses has been an ongoing scientific mystery. Half a million years ago or more, early human ancestors hunted horses with wooden spears, the very first weapons, and used their bones for early

September offers a number of fascinating lunar occultation events worldwide. Chances are, there’s one near you this month. The Moon is certainly busy in September, as its passage covers up (occults) multiple celestial objects worldwide. If skies are clear, you may just get a chance to see one of these events listed below, as the

Nobody knows what sleeping mushrooms dream of when their vast mycelial networks flicker and pulse with electrochemical responses akin to those of our own brain cells. But given a chance, what might this web of impulses do if granted a moment of freedom? An interdisciplinary team of researchers from Cornell University in the US and

SAN FRANCISCO – Collimate Space, a new Silicon Valley startup, aims to tackle a specific problem for satellite operators. Collimate offers a tool for predicting the success of satellite downlinks, after considering space weather, terrestrial weather and the location and profile of ground-based antennas. That’s valuable because satellite operators can say to a customer, ‘I

We all have a wondrous ability to form emotional attachments to many different things, from nature and pets to romantic partners and our children. Researchers have now used brain scans to reveal how each of these different types of ‘love’ have a distinct home in our minds. Unsurprisingly, the love a parent has for their

The idea that aliens may have visited the Earth is becoming increasingly popular. Around a fifth of UK citizens believe Earth has been visited by extraterrestrials, and an estimated 7 percent believe that they have seen a UFO. The figures are even higher in the US – and rising. The number of people who believe

WASHINGTON — The European Space Agency is adjusting the trajectory of its BepiColombo mission to Mercury, delaying its insertion into orbit around the innermost planet by nearly a year to compensate for reduced performance from its electric thrusters. ESA announced Sept. 2 that the spacecraft, a joint mission with the Japanese space agency JAXA that

The genes of modern Japanese people may have been hiding a long-lost line of ancestors, who once migrated to the top of the archipelago from the northeastern mainland of Asia. The discovery supports emerging evidence, which suggests that modern Japanese people are descended from not two but three ancestral lineages. Until recently, the dominating hypothesis

Look hard enough at the roiling mist of gas and starlight that is our galaxy, and you’ll find traces of a violent upbringing. Yet the scars of our past aren’t always easy to distinguish from more mundane tides that advance cosmic evolution, leaving researchers to speculate which patterns are evidence of cataclysmic events and which

WASHINGTON — General Dynamics Mission Systems, a unit of defense contractor General Dynamics, has been awarded a $491 million contract extension by the Space Development Agency for satellite ground systems, the Pentagon announced Aug. 30. The modification nearly doubles the company’s existing contract with the Space Development Agency (SDA) to approximately $900 million through 2029.

In an old Italian crypt from the 17th century, two mummified brains have been found containing traces of cocaine. This is almost two entire centuries before the coca plant’s psychoactive compounds were isolated to produce pure cocaine – one of the most addictive substances known to humans. The burial chamber where the mummified remains were

Just outside the Milky Way Galaxy, roughly 210,000 light-years from Earth, there is the dwarf galaxy known as the Small Magellanic Cloud (SMC). Measuring about 18,900 light-years in diameter and containing roughly 3 billion stars, the SMC and its counterpart – the Large Magellanic Cloud (LMC) – orbit the Milky Way as satellite galaxies. Scientists

WASHINGTON — SpaceX resumed launches of its Falcon 9 rocket early Aug. 31 after the Federal Aviation Administration ended a brief grounding of the vehicle. One Falcon 9 lifted off from Cape Canaveral Space Force Station’s Space Launch Complex 40 at 3:43 a.m. Eastern, placing 21 Starlink satellites into orbit. It was followed at 4:48

Countries where English is the official language have a lot in common due to their shared British colonial history – but a new study has found that life expectancy varies greatly between Anglophonic nations. What’s more, one nation in particular – Australia – appears to stand head and shoulders above the rest in terms of

Warp drives have a long history of not existing, despite their ubiquitous presence in science fiction. Writer John Campbell first introduced the idea in a science fiction novel called Islands of Space. These days, thanks to Star Trek in particular, the term is very familiar. It’s almost a generic reference for superliminal travel through hyperspace.

We’ve long thought all great white sharks belonged to a single, global species of long-distance swimmers. Advances in computing and gene sequencing by an international team of researchers have now revealed groups in the north Pacific, southern Pacific and Indian Ocean, and north Atlantic and Mediterranean are surprisingly distinct. Separated from each other up to

WASHINGTON — A veteran NASA astronaut and rookie Russian cosmonaut will fly to the International Space Station in September as the downsized crew of a SpaceX Crew Dragon spacecraft, a ripple effect of problems with Boeing’s Starliner. NASA announced Aug. 30 that Nick Hague will serve as commander of Crew-9, joined by mission specialist Aleksandr

It’s every parent’s worst nightmare. During a visit to the Hecht Museum at the University of Haifa in Israel, a young boy’s father was shocked to see his son next to a shattered Bronze Age jar. The boy’s father told the BBC that he first thought, “It wasn’t my child that did it,” but then

An invisible, weak energy field wrapped around our planet Earth has finally been detected and measured. It’s called the ambipolar field, an electric field first hypothesized more than 60 years ago, and its discovery will change the way we study and understand the behavior and evolution of our beautiful, ever-changing world. “Any planet with an