NEW ORLEANS – Weather intelligence startup Tomorrow.io unveiled NextGen, a global-precipitation forecasting platform, Jan. 14 at the American Meteorological Society annual meeting here. NextGen ingests data from Boston-based Tomorrow.io satellites to provide global precipitation forecasts with a resolution of 2.5 kilometers, updated every five minutes. With NextGen, Tomorrow.io is filling “critical radar gaps worldwide” to
Science
The Bible’s lex talionis – “Eye for eye, tooth for tooth, hand for hand, foot for foot” (Exodus 21:24-27) – has captured the human imagination for millennia. This idea of fairness has been a model for ensuring justice when bodily harm is inflicted. Thanks to the work of linguists, historians, archaeologists and anthropologists, researchers know
Some 275 million light-years from the Milky Way lies a true cosmic mystery. There, in the heart of a galaxy named 1ES 1927+654, squats a supermassive black hole whose monkeyshines and hijinks have baffled astronomers for years. Now, we might finally have an explanation for at least some of its wild misbehavior: an orbiting white
Some 275 million light-years from the Milky Way lies a true cosmic mystery. There, in the heart of a galaxy named 1ES 1927+654, squats a supermassive black hole whose monkeyshines and hijinks have baffled astronomers for years. Now, we might finally have an explanation for at least some of its wild misbehavior: an orbiting white
Waves that ripple from Earth’s centre can be used to sense what it’s made of, and where those materials might be found. A team from Swiss university ETH Zurich and the California Institute of Technology has used these waves to discover chunks of Earth’s plates in places they really shouldn’t be. Earth scientists have been
HELSINKI — China launched a Jielong-3 solid rocket from a mobile sea platform late Sunday, successfully placing 10 Centispace navigation enhancement satellites into orbit. The fifth Jielong-3 (Smart Dragon-3) solid propellant rocket lifted off at 10:00 p.m. Eastern, Jan. 12 (0300 UTC, Jan. 13) from a specially converted sea barge off the coast of Haiyang
Sheets of gold have been discovered gilding the tongues of more than a dozen mummified Egyptians near modern Al-Bahansa, reflecting a practice once believed to grant the dead an ability to speak in the afterlife. Archaeologists uncovered a trove of treasures from a tomb dating back to the Ptolemaic era 305 to 30 BCE in
A very rare treat is about to grace Earth’s night skies. On the evening of 28 February 2025, all seven of the other planets in the Solar System will appear in the night sky at the same time, with Saturn, Mercury, Neptune, Venus, Uranus, Jupiter, and Mars all lining up in a neat row –
For far too long, the decline in the biodiversity of our rivers and lakes has been out of sight and out of mind. As a freshwater ecologist I have long felt frustrated as conservation and research is dominated by land and sea species, even though our rivers, lakes, ponds and other wetlands host a hugely
TAMPA, Fla. — Astranis said Jan. 10 that all four of its recently launched broadband satellites have passed early tests and begun using electric propulsion to reach geostationary orbit in the coming months. The satellites launched on a Falcon 9 rocket Dec. 29 and feature multiple upgrades over Arcturus, the San Francisco-based manufacturer’s debut spacecraft,
Music has the power to transport us to other times and places, whether it’s the neighborhood we grew up in or a moment long lost to prehistory. Researchers have now analyzed a 55-note snippet of sheet music from 16th century Scotland, recreating a sound associated with a culture for which no other music has survived.
From just 295 kilometers above Mercury‘s surface, ESA’s BepiColombo transfer probe has captured stunning close-up images while on its final flyby of the tiny, sunbaked world. The photos represent a planet in the grip of extremes, revealing detailed views of permanent darkness bordered by crater rims blasted by endless daylight. Within those shadows, it’s thought,
If Earth’s life survives the Anthropocene, it will eventually face another existential threat from space. As the Sun brightens with age, it will inevitably interfere with our planet’s finicky carbon cycle, triggering a depletion of atmospheric carbon dioxide to the point where plants will starve. Luckily, this won’t happen until at least 1.6 billion years
As geopolitical tensions escalate and new technologies reshape the nature of defense, the threat to the critical infrastructure we maintain in space is growing at an unprecedented pace. The changing landscape was underscored by United States Space Force General B. Chance Saltzman, who warned in December that adversaries are deploying hostile space capabilities at a
The ancient Rujm el-Hiri (‘Wheel of Ghosts’) site on the Golan Heights plateau in southwest Syria, is a marvel of a monument – previously thought to have originally served as an astronomical observatory of sorts. Past studies have suggested this purpose based on Rujm el-Hiri’s alignment with objects in the night sky. Now a new
Carl Sagan famously said, “We are made of star-stuff,” but even he didn’t realize just how far that star stuff traveled before it got to us. New Hubble data has shown at least some of the carbon that now makes up our bodies may once have drifted hundreds of thousands of light-years out of the
Tiny bubbles trapped in ancient Antarctic ice have revealed surges in global wildfire coinciding with signs of abrupt climate change. While temperature variations, changes in tropical rainfall, and spikes in methane are known traits of climate shifts, until now, fires had not been part of the equation. “We didn’t go into it necessarily looking for
ORLANDO, Fla. — Rocket Lab is asking the incoming administration to reconsider NASA’s plans for Mars Sample Return (MSR), arguing it can offer an approach that is faster and less expensive than the agency’s alternatives. NASA announced Jan. 7 it would spend the next year and a half studying two new architectures for MSR. One
In the cramped confines of a small cavern to the south of Paris, scientists have ‘read between the lines’ on the floor and discovered what could be the oldest surviving three-dimensional map of a hunter-gatherer territory. Around 20,000 years ago, the prehistoric people who sheltered in this cave carved and smoothed the stone floors to
There are limits to what we can see across the gulf of space and time separating us from the early Universe. Light that travels across billions of light-years emanates from sources so distant it can be challenging even to see something even as luminous as a galaxy glowing in the darkness. Human endeavor has now
SAN FRANCISCO – Japanese startup Pale Blue announced an agreement Jan. 8 with Italian transportation company D-Orbit to conduct two 2025 demonstrations of a tiny water-fueled thruster. Slightly larger than a 10-centimeter cube, the Pale Blue 1U+ Water Ion Thruster, is designed to help small satellites maneuver throughout missions, dodge space debris and de-orbit when
In Hungary, a grave worthy of Katniss Everdeen – complete with a bow and an armor-piercing arrowhead – contains what just might be a medieval female warrior. A new archeological analysis by University of Szeged bioarchaeologist Balázs Tihanyi and colleagues genetically confirmed the sex of the individual found in a medieval cemetery in eastern Hungary,
Getting a spacecraft to another star is a monumental challenge. However, that doesn’t stop people from working on it. The most visible groups currently doing so are Breakthrough Starshot and the Tau Zero Foundation, both of whom focus on a very particular type of propulsion-beamed power. A paper from the Chairman of Tau Zero’s board,
ORLANDO, Fla. — While Elon Musk suggests he is interested in going directly to Mars, NASA experts argue that lunar missions are essential before attempting any human expeditions to the Red Planet. In a Jan. 2 post on X, the social media network he owns, Musk made clear he was not interested in at least
Our species is defined by a long list of cultural and genetic traits that set us apart from our ancient counterparts. New research suggests at least some key distinctions date back earlier than previously estimated, hinting that modern and archaic humans – including our close, extinct relatives – have more in common than we ever
The love story between Pluto and Charon may have started with a kiss. A new study suggests the dwarf planet and its scarcely smaller moon likely came together in a collision that saw them conjoined for a period of time, billions of years ago, before separating into a stable, long-term orbital dance. This “kiss and
A powerful winter storm hammered the United States on Sunday, with meteorologists warning millions in the east faced blizzard conditions and some areas would see the heaviest snowfall in a decade. More than 60 million people are in the path of the dangerous storm, set to plunge the eastern half of the United States into
WASHINGTON — An upcoming European launch competition will be an early test of efforts by the European Space Agency to modify its approach to policies that link contracts to member state contributions. ESA has long used a policy known as georeturn where member states are guaranteed contracts to companies based in their countries in proportion
An incredible image of Mars has been released that captures the relentless activity of dust devils, swirling across the planet’s surface. These Martian whirlwinds form, move across the surface and dissipate before others take their place. The image was taken by the HiRISE camera aboard NASA’s Mars Reconnaissance Orbiter in September 2022 and shows part
Scientists at Cornell University have created mini virtual reality headsets for mice. These MouseGoggles aren’t just to help the critters unwind after a long day in the lab; they offer researchers a glimpse into their behavior and brain functions. A mouse wearing a tiny VR headset is an adorable mental image, but the set does