Science

BUSAN, South Korea — NASA rolled out the second core stage for the Space Launch System rocket July 16 to ship it to Florida for the Artemis 2 mission next year. The core stage, built at the Michoud Assembly Facility in New Orleans, rolled out of the manufacturing facility there and onto the Pegasus barge

In the guts of an ancient mummified crocodile, researchers have discovered a telltale bronze hook. Up to 3,000 years ago, the 2.2-meter (7.2-foot) long crocodile died before it had even begun to digest a fish found intact around the hook in its stomach. The human-made object and state of the carefully preserved animal suggest it

NASA’s Parker Solar Probe, tasked with taking a close-up look at the Sun’s outer corona, has just equalled the record for the fastest-moving human-made object ever. The previous record holder? The Parker Solar Probe, again. The probe was recorded traveling at 635,266 kilometers (394,736 miles) per hour on June 29, the second time it’s reached

It’s well known that as far as the climate crisis goes, time is of the essence. Now a study out Monday shows that the melting of the polar ice caps is causing our planet to spin more slowly, increasing the length of days at an “unprecedented” rate. The paper, published in Proceedings of the National

WASHINGTON — The United States should harden its low Earth orbit satellites that support nuclear command and control against radiation effects from potential high-altitude nuclear detonations, according to a new report from a prominent think tank. The Atlantic Council’s Scowcroft Center for Strategy and Security released a study July 15 titled “Modernizing Space-Based Nuclear Command,

Chris Bianchi loves flying. “The fact that you can go from being on a 737 sitting on the ground to hurtling through the air at 500 miles an hour in five minutes, is just fascinating to me,” he told Business Insider. “I’m never not awestruck when I’m taking off, and on a plane. It’s just

Neutron stars are some of the most extreme objects in the universe. Formed from the collapsed cores of supergiant stars, they weigh more than our Sun and yet are compressed into a sphere the size of a city. The dense cores of these exotic stars contain matter squashed into unique states that we can’t possibly

Coastal Texas was under hurricane and storm surge warnings on Sunday, as the southern US state braced for the approach of Beryl, which was threatening to make landfall as a hurricane. The city of Galveston, southeast of Houston, had issued a voluntary evacuation order for some areas, with videos on social media showing lines of

In 1959, the famous theoretical physicist, Richard Feynman, fantasized about a future in which microrobots swam through our bloodstreams, fixing up our insides or delivering drugs as they go. Sixty-five years later, scientists are inching closer to that reality. Engineers at the University of Tokyo have now figured out a way to motorize tiny microscopic

WASHINGTON — The U.S. military is poised to award an estimated $3 billion multi-year contract for commercial data and analytics services to monitor potential threats across the Indo-Pacific region, a focal point of global geopolitics and a priority theater for the Department of Defense. The program, known as Long-Range Enterprise Intelligence, Surveillance, and Reconnaissance Activity

Being curious is a quintessential part of being human, driving us to learn and adapt to new environments. For the first time, scientists have pinpointed the spot in the brain where curiosity emerges. The discovery was made by researchers from Columbia University in the US, who used functional magnetic resonance imaging (fMRI) scans to measure

Any night now, a “new star” or nova will appear in the night sky. While it won’t set the sky ablaze, it’s a special opportunity to see a rare event that’s usually difficult to predict in advance. The star in question is T Coronae Borealis (T CrB, pronounced “T Cor Bor”). It lies in the

Less than a month into summer 2024, the vast majority of the US population has already experienced an extreme heat wave. Millions of people were under heat warnings across the western US in early July or sweating through humid heat in the East. Death Valley hit a dangerous 129 degrees Fahrenheit (53.9 C) on July

TOKYO — SpaceX says it will not be able to recover the 20 Starlink satellites left in a very low orbit after a malfunction of a Falcon 9 upper stage on a July 11 launch. In a statement July 12, the company said that the 20 satellites on the Group 9-3 launch have been unable

Performing at the absolute pinnacle of athletic endeavor can play havoc on the human body. When you push yourself beyond your limits, you can end up in a world of pain. There are the injuries, of course. And for the 14,500 or so athletes – and their staff – expected to take up residence in

NASA has invested $725,000 in a new rocket system that could solve one of the major obstacles standing in our way of sending humans to Mars: travel time. With current technology, a round-trip to the red planet would take almost two years. For astronauts, spending that much time in spaceflight comes with big health risks.

Without easy access to freshwater lakes, streams, and dams, roughly one out of every four humans depends on reservoirs beneath Earth’s surface for survival. By the end of the century, tens to hundreds of millions could be deprived of even this tenuous supply of moisture as rising temperatures risk turning shallow groundwater supplies into toxic

WASHINGTON — Booz Allen Hamilton, the U.S. defense and intelligence contractor, announced July 11 that its corporate venture capital arm, Booz Allen Ventures, has made a strategic investment in Quindar, an early-stage commercial space technology company.  The investment aims to support Quindar’s platform for automating satellite operations. Satellite owners use Quindar’s app to analyze, test

The mysterious, sudden abandonment of the ancient lost city of Cahokia by its inhabitants has been puzzling historians for a long time now – and experts have cast fresh doubt on one of the most popular theories to date. For several hundred prosperous years, Cahokia was the place to be in what is now the

One of the most sought-after objects in the Universe has just been detected right here in the Milky Way galaxy. At the center of a tightly packed, spherical cluster of stars named Omega Centauri around 17,000 light-years away, astronomers have found evidence of an intermediate-mass black hole, tipping the cosmic scales at a mass equivalent

A rare species of tree cactus has gone extinct in Florida, in what is believed to be the first species lost to sea level rise in the United States, researchers said Tuesday. The Key Largo tree cactus (Pilosocereus millspaughii) was restricted to a single small population in the Florida Keys, an archipelago off the southern

Harnessing energy from nuclear fusion – the combining of nuclei, which lie within atoms – could be instrumental in the shift towards a decarbonised global energy system. As issues of climate change and energy security are becoming increasingly salient, the promise of an apparently “clean”, “abundant” and “safe” energy source, such as fusion, is ever

TOKYO — A Japanese conglomerate has established a new subsidiary seeking to develop a module that could be installed on future commercial space stations. The new venture, called Japan LEO Shachu, Inc., is a wholly owned subsidiary of Mitsui & Co. that was formally established on July 1, its chief executive, Yudai Yamamoto, said in

From conveying precise instruction to evoking entire new worlds, words and their meanings are central to our existence as humans. But how the multitude of cells making up a human brain take abstract noises or symbols and convert them into something with meaning has long been a mystery. New techniques that can track brain activity

Since astronauts departed the lunar surface for the last time 52 years ago, time has ticked on by. Relative to us Earthlings, the Moon has pined for our return just a little longer – by roughly 1.1 seconds. It doesn’t sound like much, and neither does the 57 millionths (0.0000575) of a second that the

Scientists have uncovered a new source of hazardous “forever chemical” pollution: the rechargeable lithium-ion batteries found in most electric vehicles. Some lithium-ion battery technologies use a class of PFAS chemicals, or per-and polyfluoroalkyl substances, that helps make batteries less flammable and conduct electricity. Scientists found high levels of these PFAS in air, water, snow, soil,

WASHINGTON — MDA Space, the recently rebranded Canadian space technology firm, selected Belgium-based Aerospacelab to supply components for its new line of satellites, expanding its roster of international partners. Aerospacelab announced July 8 that it will provide more than 200 battery charge regulators for MDA Space’s Aurora satellites over a three-year period starting in 2026.

New research has found a link between the height of ceilings in exam halls and the performance of students, which might sound a bit crazy, but makes more and more sense as you think about it. While the shape of a room can’t compensate for your lack of revision or make you any smarter than

We finally know what brought light to the dark and formless void of the early Universe. According to data from the Hubble and James Webb Space Telescopes, the origins of the free-flying photons in the early cosmic dawn were small dwarf galaxies that flared to life, clearing the fog of murky hydrogen that filled intergalactic

Hopefully you’re already aware of the basic safety precautions required when it comes to fireworks – but what you might not know is the accompanying increase in air pollution that goes along with the loud bangs, pops, and fizzes, as outlined in a new study. The team behind a new study led by researchers from