Science

Fourteen years after receiving the official go-ahead, scientists on Tuesday began assembling a giant machine in southern France designed to demonstrate that nuclear fusion, the process which powers the Sun, can be a safe and viable energy source on Earth. The groundbreaking multinational experiment, known as the International Thermonuclear Experimental Reactor (ITER), has seen components arrive in

The moon is again the object of competition between major space powers. These powers aim — perhaps even in this decade — to establish a permanent human presence on the moon’s surface and in its orbit, and exploit lunar resources for economic benefit. This renewed competition for the moon is the basis for the rise

Victoria Falls is said to be the largest waterfall on Earth, and Angel Falls the highest, but no matter how impressive they might look to us, both these natural wonders fall far short of the true victors. The largest and most powerful waterfalls we know of are actually surrounded by water, deep beneath the lapping

Here’s the story – our protagonist rewinds history, locates baby Hitler, and averts global war by putting him on a path to peace … but, oh noes! This sets off a domino chain of events that stops our hero from being born, or worse, kicks off the apocalypse. Unintended ‘butterfly effect‘-style consequences of time travel might be

Stonehenge, a Neolithic wonder in southern England, has vexed historians and archaeologists for centuries with its many mysteries: How was it built? What purpose did it serve? Where did its towering sandstone boulders come from? That last question may finally have an answer after a study published Wednesday found that most of the giant stones

NASA astronauts Bob Behnken and Doug Hurley, who made spaceflight history on May 30 by becoming the first people to launch to orbit aboard a SpaceX vehicle, might see their weekend homecoming plans thrown to the wind. After docking SpaceX’s Crew Dragon Endeavour ship to the International Space Station and spending two months there, the men are preparing to

It’s not just honeybees that pollinate our crops and put food on our plates. In North America alone there are roughly 4,000 species of native bee, and new research has calculated these wild insects provide over US$1.5 billion each year from pollinating just a handful of crops. Analysing the production of 131 commercial farms in

WASHINGTON — NASA’s most sophisticated Mars rover yet is on its way to the red planet after a successful launch July 30. A United Launch Alliance Atlas 5 rocket lifted off from Space Launch Complex 41 at Cape Canaveral Air Force Station at 7:50 a.m. Eastern. The liftoff took place on schedule with no issues

Researchers have successfully revived tiny microbes trapped dormant in a seemingly lifeless zone of the seabed for more than 100 million years. A team of scientists from Japan and America were looking to see whether microscopic life survives in the less-than-hospitable conditions beneath the seafloor of the Pacific Ocean. “We wanted to know how long

Nearly a century after experiments confirmed that atoms, matter’s smallest building blocks, have ethereal, wave-like characteristics, physicists have just found a new way to show how mammoth-sized molecules ripple with the same uncertainty. Researchers from the University of Vienna and the University of Duisburg-Essen, Germany, put a new spin on a classic experiment to create

Dozens of US states have reported mysterious seeds showing up in packages from China and are warning citizens not to plant them because they could be an invasive species. The US Department of Agriculture said Tuesday that it was investigating the unsolicited packages of seeds reported by at least 27 states and urged anyone who

For the first time, scientists have observed that ‘megaripples’ on Mars – huge sand waves seen on the Martian surface – are moving structures, and not ancient relics stuck in place since the Red Planet’s distant past. Megaripples, which also occur in deserts on Earth, are generally larger than smaller sand ripples, and are composed

Norway’s Arctic archipelago Svalbard on Saturday recorded its highest-ever temperature, the country’s meteorological institute reported. According to scientific study, global warming in the Arctic is happening twice as fast as for the rest of the planet. For the second day in a row, the archipelago registered 21.2 degrees Celsius (70.2 Fahrenheit) in the afternoon, just

One of the narratives in the report is that the United States is at risk of being displaced by China as the world’s space superpower. WASHINGTON — A group of more than 120 experts from the U.S. military, government space agencies and the private sector issued a report July 28 calling for investments in technology

Many expecting fathers claim they’d love to take on the aching back, cramped organs, and painful contractions of their partner’s pregnancy. But so far, the male seahorse is the only vertebrate to make good on such a swap. These remarkable fish can hold more than 1,000 embryos in a ‘brood pouch’ for up to a

This stunning image captured last year by physicists at the University of Glasgow in Scotland is the first-ever photo of quantum entanglement – a phenomenon so strange, physicist Albert Einstein famously described it as ‘spooky action at a distance’. It might not look like much, but just stop and think about it for a second:

Living in the present can be a present in itself, but during a global pandemic, when the world is in crisis, reflecting only on the ‘now’ might not be your best tactic.  If we want to get through this tragedy stronger than ever, psychologist Jennifer Aaker and Szu-chi Huang from Stanford University argue we need

A stunning flash of ultraviolet light from an exploding white dwarf has been detected by astronomers for only the second time, and could give researchers important clues about what spurs the demise of these ancient, spent stars. Researchers became aware of this unusual supernova – called SN2019yvq – last December, only a day after the

As plants begin to spread across melting permafrost, scientists are growing ever more worried their roots will stir microbes into unleashing vast stores of carbon. To scientists, roots are known as rhizomes, and when these tendrils extend deeper into the soil, it accelerates microbial decomposition by up to fourfold, potentially ‘priming’ the frozen ground for

US officials and scientists have begun laying the groundwork for a more secure “virtually unhackable” internet based on quantum computing technology. At a presentation Thursday, Department of Energy (DOE) officials issued a report that lays out a blueprint strategy for the development of a national quantum internet, using laws of quantum mechanics to transmit information

HELSINKI — China launched three satellites on a Long March 4B late Friday for remote sensing, novel lobster eye x-ray astronomy and commercial data acquisition. The Long March 4B rocket lifted off from the Taiyuan Satellite Launch Center at 11:13 p.m. Eastern Friday. The China Aerospace Science and Technology Corp., the country’s main space contractor,

Our collective pandemic experience has made us keenly aware that bats have an uncanny ability to carry around deadly viruses, but somehow still survive. There is a lot we don’t yet know about this enviable virus resistance – along with other bat abilities, such as extreme longevity – but new highly-detailed genome sequences may provide

Spiral galaxies look nice and tidy, with most of their stars and gas confined to a disc neatly arranged in swirling spiral arms. But there’s a lot more to a galaxy than what we can see, as a new image of invisible phenomena adroitly demonstrates. The image shows a galaxy called NGC 4217, around 67

Scientists have, for the first time, discovered an active leak of methane gas from the sea floor in Antarctica. It is a process that’s likely to accelerate the process of global heating. The finding was published in the peer-reviewed Proceedings of the Royal Society B scientific journal on Tuesday. Methane is powerful greenhouse gas that accelerates climate

The 21st Space Wing; the 50th Space Wing and the 460th Space Wing have been deactivated and new units have been stood up in their place. WASHINGTON — The U.S. Space Force announced on July 24 that three former U.S. Air Force space wings have been deactivated and replaced with “Space Deltas” and “Garrison” commands.

A massive survey of the world’s coral reefs has turned up a shocking decline in the populations of reef sharks. Over a three year period, almost no sharks at all were recorded at 19 percent of the reefs being monitored, meaning the predators are “functionally extinct” in up to eight nations. The cause is likely

China launched a rover to Mars on Thursday, a journey coinciding with a similar US mission as the powers take their rivalry into deep space. The two countries are taking advantage of a period when Earth and Mars are favourably aligned for a short journey, with the US spacecraft due to lift off on July

If doomsday comes, know this: precautions have been taken. On an isolated Arctic archipelago, the Svalbard Global Seed Vault – aka Norway’s ‘Doomsday Vault’ – holds over 1 million seed samples in a fortress-like bunker designed to be the most invulnerable seed bank in the world. Svalbard protects more than just seeds, though. On the

Hyvinkää, FINLAND — China’s Tianwen-1 Mars mission launched successfully Thursday, initiating a phase of deep space and interplanetary exploration. A Long March 5 rocket launched the Tianwen-1 orbiter and rover from Wenchang Satellite Launch Center at 12:41 a.m. Eastern.  Successful Trans-Mars injection was confirmed around 40 minutes later by the China Aerospace Science and Technology

Dogs have an enviable sense of direction. Even in a completely unfamiliar place, our pets have an uncanny way of tracking down a shortcut. For the first time, Czech scientists have found evidence that canines can sense and navigate using Earth’s weak magnetic field.  Exactly how they do this and to what extent is still