Science

Almost two centuries after California’s gold rush, the United States is on the brink of a lithium rush. As demand for the material skyrockets, government geologists are rushing to figure out where the precious element is hiding. In September 2023, scientists funded by a mining company reported finding what could be the largest deposit of

WASHINGTON — NASA and Boeing have once again delayed first crewed flight of the company’s CST-100 Starliner as they work to resolve a helium leak in the spacecraft’s propulsion system. In a statement late May 17, NASA announced that the Crew Flight Test (CFT) mission, previously scheduled for May 21, has been pushed back to

Scientists have discovered a long-buried branch of the Nile river that once flowed alongside more than 30 pyramids in Egypt, potentially solving the mystery of how ancient Egyptians transported the massive stone blocks to build the famous monuments. The 64-kilometre-long river branch, which ran by the iconic Giza pyramid complex among other wonders, was hidden

A solar flare measured at X8.7 on the strength scale just emerged from AR 3664, the sunspot region responsible for last weekend’s solar storms that sparked vivid auroras. That’s the most powerful solar flare of the current cycle, absolutely the most powerful since 2017, and comfortably within the top 20 solar flares ever measured. As

We could be producing concrete that’s 30 percent stronger by processing and adding charred coffee grounds to the mix, researchers in Australia discovered. Their clever recipe could solve multiple problems at the same time. Every year the world produces a staggering 10 billion kilograms (22 billion pounds) of coffee waste globally. Most ends up in

Viruses are a mysterious and poorly understood force in microbial ecosystems. Researchers know they can infect, kill and manipulate human and bacterial cells in nearly every environment, from the oceans to your gut. But scientists don’t yet have a full picture of how viruses affect their surrounding environments in large part because of their extraordinary

WASHINGTON — Lithuania has become the 40th nation to sign the Artemis Accords outlining best practices for responsible space exploration. During a May 15 ceremony in Vilnius, Aušrinė Armonaitė, Lithuania’s minister of economy and innovation, signed the accords in the presence of Kara C. McDonald, U.S. ambassador to the country. “The Lithuanian space sector has

Powerful new imaging techniques reveal humans were already crafting complex hunting weapons from wood 300,000 years ago, upending the stereotype of the Stone Age. Archeologists have previously suspected humans have been using wooden tools for at least as long as stone ones, but due to wood’s more fragile nature, most evidence has rotted away. Now,

Stars, like people, come in a dazzling array. There are stable yellow-white stars, like the Sun; there are ginormous, blazing, short-lived behemoths, and small, dim red dwarfs. At the tiniest end of the range are ultracool dwarfs: just a little bigger than Jupiter, and barely warm at all, by star standards. It’s around one of

Tree ring data confirms it’s been 2,000 years since the Northern Hemisphere had a summer as hot as last year’s. Not since the height of the Roman Empire has life on Earth experienced a summer so extreme. The new analysis suggests we’ve breached the 2015 Paris Agreement to limit warming to 1.5 °C above pre-industrial

Google on Tuesday said it would introduce AI-generated answers to online queries, in one of the biggest changes to its world leading search engine in 25 years. “I’m excited to announce that we will begin launching this fully revamped experience, ‘AI overviews,’ to everyone in the US this week,” Google chief executive Sundar Pichai said

WASHINGTON — The launch of Boeing’s CST-100 Starliner spacecraft on its first crewed flight has slipped at least four days because of a helium leak in the spacecraft. Boeing announced May 14 that the launch of the Crew Flight Test (CFT) mission, previously scheduled for May 17, has been rescheduled for no earlier than May

A centuries-old lock of hair that turned out to be from an unknown woman and advanced genomic sequencing technologies in 2023 debunked a long-running theory that German composer Ludwig van Beethoven had died from lead poisoning. Instead, on a stormy day, wracked with jaundice, the famed pianist succumbed to what is believed to be liver

I can remember when Perseverance was launched, travelled out into the Solar System and landed on Mars in February 2021. In all the time since it arrived, having clocked up 1000 days of exploration, it has collected 23 samples from different geological areas within the Jezero Crater. The area was once home to an ancient

Our reliance on plastic has become a huge problem, which is why researchers are excited about a new type of material – one that comes with built-in biodegrading capabilities, due to the bacterial spores living inside it. The new self-digesting plastic combines thermoplastic polyurethane (TPU) and Bacillus subtilis bacteria, which had to be engineered to

WASHINGTON — NASA and the Japanese space agency JAXA plan to operate an instrument on an X-ray astronomy satellite as-is for at least the next year and a half despite an issue affecting one of its instruments. JAXA launched the X-ray Imaging and Spectroscopy Mission (XRISM) in September 2023 and the spacecraft, whose instruments were

The gym can be a discouraging place. Puffed and exhausted, it’s never wise to sneak a peek at the clock. A 10-minute session on the bike might sound like an achievable goal before the timer starts, but when your body gets going, those seconds are about to feel longer than normal, according to a series

A colossal structure in the distant Universe is defying our understanding of how the Universe evolved. In light that has traveled for 6.9 billion years to reach us, astronomers have found a giant, almost perfect ring of galaxies, some 1.3 billion light-years in diameter. It doesn’t match any known structure or formation mechanism. The Big

Around five and half millenia ago, northern Africa went through a dramatic transformation. The Sahara desert expanded and grasslands, forests and lakes favoured by humans disappeared. Humans were forced to retreat to the mountains, the oases, and the Nile valley and delta. As a relatively large and dispersed population was squeezed into smaller and more

A ‘cage of cages’ is how scientists have described a new type of porous material, unique in its molecular structure, that could be used to trap carbon dioxide and another, more potent greenhouse gas. Synthesized in the lab by researchers in the UK and China, the material is made in two steps, with reactions assembling

WASHINGTON — An agreement between the United States and Japan on contributions for the Artemis lunar exploration campaign could create additional opportunities for a Japanese lunar lander developer. Tokyo-based ispace cited the April 10 agreement between NASA and the Japanese government regarding roles in Artemis as a potential new market for the company. Under the

AI chatbots are springing to life the world over, and as conversations with a whole variety of robots become possible, several companies are offering users a chance to chat with a ‘simulation‘ of their deceased loved ones for prices as low as US$10. Some who have already bought into the tech take comfort in the

There’s something poetic about humanity’s attempt to detect other civilizations somewhere in the Milky Way’s expanse. There’s also something futile about it. But we’re not going to stop. There’s little doubt about that. One group of scientists thinks that we may already have detected technosignatures from a technological civilization’s Dyson spheres, but the detection is

You probably know to take everything an artificial intelligence (AI) chatbot says with a grain of salt, since they are often just scraping data indiscriminately, without the nous to determine its veracity. But there may be reason to be even more cautious. Many AI systems, new research has found, have already developed the ability to

WASHINGTON — With Ariane 6 yet to begin launches and Vega C still grounded, Avio is relying on its growing defense propulsion business to pick up the slack. The company reported May 8 net revenues of 78.8 million euros ($85 million) in the first quarter of 2024, up from 59.8 million euros in the first

A nanoscale project represents a giant leap forward in understanding the human brain. With more than 1.4 petabytes of electron microscopy imaging data, a team of scientists has reconstructed a teeny-tiny cubic segment of the human brain. It’s just a millimeter on each side – but 57,000 cells, 150 million synapses, and 230 millimeters of

The very lowest frequencies of the radio Universe have just been revealed in spectacular clarity. A team of astronomers has used a new calibration technique to give us the first sharp images of the radio Universe in the frequency range of 16-30 megahertz – an achievement previously thought impossible, due to the turbulent interference generated

April marked another “remarkable” month of record-breaking global air and sea surface temperature averages, according to a new report by the EU’s climate monitor published on Wednesday. The abnormally warm conditions came despite the continued weakening of the El Nino weather phenomenon that contributes to increased heat, said the EU’s Copernicus Climate Change Service, pointing

WASHINGTON — More than 40 House members have signed a letter asking for a significant increase in NASA’s science budget for 2025, a request that will be challenging to fulfill given spending caps. The May 1 letter to the chair and ranking member of the House Appropriations Committee’s commerce, justice and science (CJS) subcommittee, signed

To keep our bodies properly oriented, our brains perform impressive feats of calculation that track our stumbling meat sack through a mental map of our surrounds. While a lot of research has focussed on the mapping, little has managed to determine how our neurological wiring monitors our direction within it. A team of researchers from