Science

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

Scientists believe that Venus once looked a lot more like Earth. How it evolved from that point to where it is today is a question with deep implications, not just for our own planet’s future, but for the search for life outside the Solar System. Now, researchers think they have solved a significant piece of

WASHINGTON — The first crewed flight of Boeing’s CST-100 Starliner will be delayed at least another week and a half to replace a faulty valve in its Atlas 5 launch vehicle. NASA announced late May 7 that the Crew Flight Test (CFT) mission, whose launch was scrubbed May 6 because of a malfunctioning valve in

Roman dodecahedra are something of an enigma: there is no known mention of these 12-sided, hollow objects in ancient Roman texts or images. First discovered in the 18th century, around 130 dodecahedra have been found across the Roman Empire, although it is interesting that the majority have been found in northern Europe and Britain, and

It’s a question that has dogged humanity since we first learned about black holes a little over a century ago: What the heck would it be like to plunge beyond the point of no return? We still don’t have an answer, but a new supercomputer simulation is the best guess we have, based on current

A team of Canadian and US researchers has demonstrated incredible results when restoring old corroded daguerreotypes (very early types of photos), via a technique known as synchrotron imaging – using X-ray beams to precisely identify material compositions. At the simplest level, the technique runs a chemical analysis to detect where the corrosion and damage on

KISSIMMEE, Fla. — The National Geospatial-Intelligence Agency is making a major push to harness commercial technology for tracking maritime threats around the world, the agency’s director said May 6. Speaking at the GEOINT Symposium, Vice Adm. Frank Whitworth announced the agency’s first-ever solicitation for commercial solutions focused specifically on maritime domain awareness. A new “Commercial

It’s no secret that sports fanatics tend to treat their favorite game as a sacred thing, but a new discovery suggests the ancient Maya took it to a whole new level. Beneath the paved floor of a plaza determined to be a court for Maya Ballgame, archaeologists have identified plants used for ceremonies. These plants

Launch day is finally here: Boeing’s Starliner capsule blasts off Monday to the International Space Station on its first crewed mission – several years after SpaceX first achieved the same milestone. The flight, a final test before Starliner takes up regular service for NASA, is critical for the US aerospace giant, whose reputation has suffered

We’ve made some significant steps forward in robotics and AI in recent years, but haven’t yet built robots that can outpace the best that nature has to offer – and new research explores the key reasons why. By reviewing and referring to more than a hundred previous studies, and pitting robots against animals in categories

ORLANDO, Fla. — SpaceX has unveiled long-awaited spacesuits intended for spacewalks that will first be used on an upcoming private spaceflight. The company revealed the design of the extravehicular activity (EVA) suit on its website and social media May 4. The suit is based on the current pressure suits worn by astronauts on Crew Dragon

Usain Bolt, the world’s fastest person, ran a 100-meter sprint at a speed of 23.35 miles per hour (37.57 kilometers per hour). That’s mind-blowingly fast for a human. It’s about the same speed as cruising in a car through your neighborhood or in a school zone. It might not seem that fast when you’re in

Few things in life are certain. But it seems highly probable that people will explore the lunar surface over the next decade or so, staying there for weeks, perhaps months, at a time. That fact bumps up against something we are certain about. When human beings spend time in low-gravity environments, it takes a toll

Brain implant technology is rapidly advancing, helping people to find their voice or beat neurological disorders. But what happens when an implant is no longer supported by its producer? Upgrading to a new model when your five-year-old smartphone can no longer support updates is hard enough – it’s another matter entirely when we’re talking about

WASHINGTON — The U.S. Air Force is gearing up for a demonstration next year of a satellite communications network that can seamlessly integrate government-owned and commercial constellations on a single, secure military terminal. The demonstration is a key milestone in the Air Force Research Laboratory’s Defense Experimentation Using Commercial Space Internet, or DEUCSI — a

Our world is riddled with fascinating, perilous, but beautiful holes into the quiet depths of the crust. To explore a cave is to meet with awe – a calm, almost alien world, far removed from the babble and busyness of the world above ground. One of the most spectacular known cave networks in the world

You’ve seen the Sun, but you’ve never seen the Sun like this. This single frame from a video captured by ESA’s Solar Orbiter mission shows the Sun looking very …. fluffy! You can see feathery, hair-like structures made of plasma following magnetic field lines in the Sun’s lower atmosphere as it transitions into the much