Science

WASHINGTON — Earth observation company Planet announced June 26 it is laying off about 180 employees, or 17% of its workforce, in an effort to reduce costs. In a filing with the U.S. Securities and Exchange Commission, Planet announced the layoffs. “This action was taken consistent with the Company’s ongoing focus on aligning the Company’s

The discovery of a Neanderthal child with what appeared to be significant health complications indicative of Down syndrome has swayed debate over the origins of communal healthcare within our species. In a new study, a research team from Spain says the fact the child survived to at least age six – despite severe hearing loss

Three weeks after it lifted off from the far side of the moon, China’s Chang’e-6 spacecraft dropped off a capsule containing first-of-its-kind lunar samples for retrieval from the plains of Inner Mongolia. The gumdrop-shaped sample return capsule floated down to the ground on the end of a parachute, with the descent tracked on live television.

Scientists have discovered a new tipping point toward “runaway melting” of Antarctic ice sheets, caused by warm ocean water intruding between the ice and the land it sits on, according to a study published on Tuesday. While this type of melting has been previously studied, models used by the United Nation’s Intergovernmental Panel on Climate

WASHINGTON — A SpaceX Falcon Heavy rocket lifted off June 25 carrying the final spacecraft in a series of geostationary weather satellites that also features several firsts. The Falcon Heavy lifted off from Kennedy Space Center’s Launch Complex 39A at 5:26 p.m. Eastern, 10 minutes into a two-hour window as launch directors found favorable weather

There’s a new contender for the worst tipple handed down to us by history. In the ancient Roman necropolis of Carmo in what is now Spain, archaeologists have unearthed a jar of wine, still sealed, and still sloshing liquid after about 2,000 years. There’s just one catch. The wine was part of the grave goods

After helium leaks and thruster problems with Boeing’s Starliner capsule, NASA has been pushing back the return date from the International Space Station. On Friday, the agency announced they no longer had a planned return date. Instead, they will keep testing the capsule, trying to understand its issues, and seeing if they can make any

The haunting howls of wolves fell mostly silent across America’s West by the 1930s. Their loss to the region has been largely overlooked by humans, even in our scientific research, a new review finds, but the impact of their absence is written loudly in the missing trees. “Researchers generally agree that the loss of wolves

We urgently need to move away from fossil fuels, but electric vehicles and other green technology can put their own pressures on the environment. That pressure could be eased with a new magnet design, free from rare-earth metals, that was built with AI in just three months. Rare-earth metals are essential components in modern-day gadgets

HELSINKI — China’s Chang’e-6 spacecraft is on its way to Earth to deliver samples collected from the far side of the moon. The Chang’e-6 service module likely fired its engines for a trans-Earth injection around June 21. The spacecraft is now on the final leg of its complex, 53-day voyage involving a lunar landing, sampling,

Out-of-body experiences (OBEs) can leave a significant and lasting impression on those who go through them, and can also boost feelings of empathy towards others, according to a new survey. OBEs have been known to occur in many scenarios, including when people are near death or hypnotized. A 1982 paper reported that up to 15

Astronomers typically deal with the very, very large – big telescopes, giant galaxies, and massive exploding stars. But one of the more revolutionary astronomy tools of the decade is a mini satellite about the size of a breadbox. The satellite will act like an artificial star for astronomers to observe from the ground, allowing them

Hausjärvi, FINLAND— A Chinese launch of the joint Sino-French SVOM mission to study Gamma-ray bursts early Saturday saw toxic rocket debris fall over a populated area. A Long March 2C rocket lifted off from Xichang Satellite Launch Center at 3:00 a.m. Eastern (0700 UTC) June 22, sending the Space Variable Objects Monitor (SVOM) mission satellite

A shipwreck more than 3,000 years old with its cargo intact has been found off the northern coast of Israel, the country’s antiquities authority said Thursday. The wreck and its artefacts were discovered more than a mile deep on the bed of the Mediterranean Sea by London-listed energy firm Energean which operates off Israel. A

Will future humans use warp drives to explore the cosmos? We’re in no position to eliminate the possibility. But if our distant descendants ever do, it won’t involve dilithium crystals, and Scottish accents will have evaporated into history by then. Warp drives have their roots in one of the most popular science fiction franchises ever,

WASHINGTON — NASA and Boeing have pushed back the return of the CST-100 Starliner spacecraft from the International Space Station until at least early July to continue studies of propulsion system problems. In a statement issued late June 21, NASA announced it was no longer proceeding with plans announced three days earlier to have Starliner

The people of Rapa Nui, or Easter Island, were not the instruments of their own demise, according to new research. In a comprehensive new study, researchers found that the population of monument-carvers could not possibly have been big enough to collapse under the demands placed on their environment, as has previously been suggested. The myth

Will the shenanigans of Saturn never end? Scientists have found that the ringed planet sports a massive, seasonal energy imbalance across its globe. The discovery marks a turning point in our understanding of weather and climate on gas giant planets, their long-term evolution, and the ongoing changes. “This is the first time that a global

TAMPA, Fla. — SpaceX successfully launched Astra 1P for Luxembourg fleet operator SES June 20 toward geostationary orbit, where it is eventually due to replace four older broadcast satellites over Europe.  A Falcon 9 lifted off 5:35 p.m. Eastern from Cape Canaveral Space Force Station in Florida after twice being delayed a day because of bad

Paleontologists in South Africa said they have found the oldest known burial site in the world, containing remains of a small-brained distant relative of humans previously thought incapable of complex behavior. Led by renowned paleoanthropologist Lee Berger, researchers said in 2023 they had discovered several specimens of Homo naledi – a tree-climbing, Stone Age hominid

NASA’s Perseverance Rover has left Mount Washburn behind and arrived at its next destination, Bright Angel. It found an unusual type of rock there that scientists are calling ‘popcorn rock.’ The odd rock is more evidence that water was once present in Jezero Crater. Perseverance’s mission is centred on life on ancient Mars. Along with

Communications companies such as Starlink plan to launch tens of thousands of satellites into orbit around Earth over the next decade or so. The growing swarm is already causing problems for astronomers, but recent research has raised another question: what happens when they start to come down? When these satellites reach the end of their

In a serendipitous discovery, researchers have created a new class of materials called ‘glassy gels’ that are half liquid but hard to break. Stretchy, strangely adhesive, and able to ‘self-heal’ if cut, the surprising properties of these gels potentially make them useful for a wider range of applications than commonly-used plastics, which are either hard

WASHINGTON — The U.S. Space Force has embarked on yet another attempt to modernize ground systems used to command and control military satellites. This time, it’s turning to the commercial sector and the cloud with a program called Rapid Resilient Command and Control (R2C2). The R2C2 program started over a year ago but made headlines

One stormy Monday in March, 1827, the German composer Ludwig van Beethoven passed away after a protracted illness. Bedridden since the previous Christmas, he was attacked by jaundice, his limbs and abdomen swollen, each breath a struggle. As his associates went about the task of sorting through personal belongings, they uncovered a document Beethoven had

Jupiter‘s Great Red Spot (GRS) is one of the Solar System’s defining features. It’s a massive storm that astronomers have observed since the 1600s. However, its date of formation and longevity are up for debate. Have we been seeing the same phenomenon all this time? The GRS is a gigantic anti-cyclonic (rotating counter-clockwise) storm that’s

WASHINGTON — The governments of the United States and India announced June 17 they are moving ahead with cooperation on human spaceflight that would include flying an Indian astronaut to the International Space Station, although with few details on who would fly and when. The White House released a fact sheet regarding a meeting of

A leap in stone tool complexity in the fossil record suggests hominin knowledge underwent a sudden increase around 600,000 years ago, helping explain how modern humans and our ancestors became expecially proficient at adapting to new environments. It’s a timing that could potentially even “predate the divergence of the Neanderthal and modern humans and be

We’ve just seen concrete confirmation that galaxies could collide and grow in the early Universe. Scientists have finally caught two blazing quasars – galaxies powered by supermassive black holes – in the very act of merging together in the Cosmic Dawn just 900 million years after the Big Bang. It’s the first colliding quasar pair

A robot developed at Mitsubishi Electric Corporation has just set a new world record for solving a Rubik’s cube in the shortest time possible: it managed the feat in a mere 0.305 seconds, beating the previous record of 0.38 seconds which was also made by a robot developed by Mitsubishi. It’s a real blink-and-you’ll-miss it