Science

When it comes to its connection to the sky, Stonehenge is best known for its solar alignments. Every midsummer’s night tens of thousands of people gather at Stonehenge to celebrate and witness the rising Sun in alignment with the Heel stone standing outside of the circle. Six months later a smaller crowd congregates around the

NASA’s Voyager 1 probe – the most distant man-made object in the Universe – is returning usable information to ground control following months of spouting gibberish, the US space agency announced Monday. The spaceship stopped sending readable data back to Earth on November 14, 2023, even though controllers could tell it was still receiving their

WASHINGTON — NASA is continuing to refine its response to a decadal survey for biological and physical sciences in space, balancing ambitious science goals with limited budgets. The decadal survey, released in September, identified 11 key science questions in three themes: adapting to space, living and traveling to space, and probing phenomena hidden by gravity

Research shows the way we perceive time passing, as either fast or slow, can be shaped by all manner of things, from our heartbeat and catching someone’s eye, to the familiarity of a place. A new study has found that the way images look can also shift our perception of moments passing. What’s more, the

You may never be able to go home again, as the old proverb asserts, but for a chunk of rock sharing Earth’s orbit around the Sun, you might at long last know where it is. The provenance of asteroid Kamo’oalewa, discovered in 2016, is something of a mystery, but astronomers believe it may be a

Last year Earth warmed around 0.2 °C more than climate models predicted. While that may not seem like much in isolation, when you consider it’s a measure across an entire planet it amounts to a heck of a lot of unexplained heat. “It’s humbling, and a bit worrying, to admit that no year has confounded

WASHINGTON — The Air Force Research Laboratory awarded BlueHalo a $24.4 million contract to support the lab’s Satellite Assessment Center, an organization that models and analyzes the vulnerabilities of space systems.  BlueHalo, a defense contractor based in Arlington, Virginia, specializes in space, directed energy and autonomous systems technologies. The five-year contract was awarded by AFRL’s

The Voynich manuscript has long puzzled and fascinated historians and the public. This late-medieval document is covered in illustrations of stars and planets, plants, zodiac symbols, naked women, and blue and green fluids. But the text itself – thought to be the work of five different scribes – is enciphered and yet to be understood.

Saturn has 146 confirmed moons – more than any other planet in the Solar System – but one called Enceladus stands out. It appears to have the ingredients for life. From 2004 to 2017, Cassini – a joint mission between NASA, the European Space Agency and the Italian Space Agency – investigated Saturn, its rings,

A massive effort to ‘hand-map’ undocumented roads has revealed the staggering extent of illegal or informal thoroughfares cut through forests of Indonesia, Malaysia, and New Guinea. Using satellite imagery, researchers from Australia and Indonesia measured 1.37 million kilometers (851,000 miles) of thoroughfare – between three and seven times longer than the roads officially recorded in

WASHINGTON — Slovenia signed the Artemis Accords outlining best practices for sustainable space exploration April 19, the third European country to do so in five days. Matevž Frangež, state secretary of the ministry of the economy, tourism and sport in the Slovenian government, signed the Accords in a ceremony in Ljubljana, Slovenia. It took place

Artificial intelligence (AI) can be trained to see details in images that escape the human eye. Now an AI neural network has identified something unusual about a face in a Raphael painting: It wasn’t actually painted by Raphael. The face in question belongs to St Joseph, seen in the top left of the painting known

While details are understandably slim today, life on Earth is thought to have arisen about 4 billion years ago from a fateful blend of organic compounds popularly known as primordial soup. Just how – and where – the ingredients for this proto-biological entree were generated is still a field of debate, given the timeline and

Antarctica is a wonderland of stardust. There, amid the pristine whiteness of the ice and snow, scientists have retrieved more than 48,000 meteorites that have fallen to Earth over perhaps millions of years. But the reservoir isn’t going to last forever. New analysis suggests that warming temperatures are making the ice softer, resulting in meteorites

WASHINGTON — Spacecraft propulsion and launch vehicle company Astra Space considered filing for bankruptcy several times in recent months as the company struggled to raise cash. The company, which announced plans March 7 to go private in a deal with the company’s founders, released a delayed Form 10-K annual report with the U.S. Securities and

Humans have modified their bodies in various ways throughout history, tattooing, piercing, scarring, implanting, or even deforming parts of their anatomy. In spite of its ubiquity, it’s not always clear why. Cultural traditions are a strong factor, as are beauty standards, which vary across time and place. A new analysis of remains of individuals who

The most recognizable feature on Pluto is its “heart,” a relatively bright valentine-shaped area known as Tombaugh Regio. How that heart got started is one of the dwarf planet’s deepest mysteries – but now researchers say they’ve come up with the most likely scenario, involving a primordial collision with a planetary body that was a

Climate change caused by CO2 emissions already in the atmosphere will shrink global GDP in 2050 by about US$38 trillion, or almost a fifth, no matter how aggressively humanity cuts carbon pollution, researchers said Wednesday. But slashing greenhouse gas emissions as quickly as possible remains crucial to avoid even more devastating economic impacts after mid-century,

WASHINGTON — Astrobotic, a company that develops vehicles for space exploration missions, is making a strategic move into the defense sector with its Xogdor reusable rocket, designed to test payloads at the edge of space. Masten Space Systems, a company acquired by Astrobotic in 2022, started developing the suborbital Xogdor vehicle in 2021. The rocket,

Archaeologists have uncovered a treasure trove of evidence that humans once occupied a cave in Saudi Arabia formed by flowing lava, shedding light on the fascinating history of human life in the region. The discoveries recorded by the international team of researchers include rock art and animal bones, revealing both how people used the cave

You never really know what you might find hiding in your own backyard, especially if those things are particularly adept at escaping detection. Just 1,924 light-years from the Solar System, in the constellation of Aquila, astronomers have just discovered a black hole. And it’s not just any black hole. Named Gaia BH3, or BH3, the

The world is currently experiencing its second major coral bleaching event in 10 years, with reef systems from Australia to Florida teetering on the brink of disaster following months of record-breaking ocean heat, a US agency announced Monday. The consequences of coral bleaching are far-reaching, affecting not only the health of oceans but also the

TAMPA, Fla. — Satellite industry veteran Mark Rigolle is taking the helm of ABS after Amit Somani’s sudden departure early this year in the latest shake-up for the Dubai-based regional satellite operator, the company announced April 16. Rigolle, most recently chief operating officer for the proposed Rivada Space Networks low Earth orbit constellation (LEO), will

Furious? Incandescent with rage? Really, really angry? Take a moment, write down a description of how you’re feeling, and then dispose of the note. That could be enough to get the anger inside you to dissipate, according to a new study. Researchers from Nagoya University in Japan ran two experiments involving a total of 98

NASA bit off more than it could chew when it sent the Perseverance rover to Mars to collect samples. The US$2.4 billion mission landed the rover in Jezero Crater, the site of an ancient lake. It’s the ideal spot to search for the fossils of Martian microbes that may have existed when the planet was

We all know about the carbon in Earth’s atmosphere, and probably about the carbon contained in plants and the bodies of animals. But a substantial fraction of the carbon in the planet’s land-based ecosystems is held in something so obvious we might overlook it: soil. Even if we do think about carbon in soil, we

HELSINKI — China continued construction of a commercial constellation of remote sensing satellites early Monday with the launch of the SuperView-3 (01) satellite. A Long March 2D rocket lifted off from Jiuquan Satellite Launch Center at 12:12 a.m. Eastern, April 15 (0412 UTC). The China Aerospace Science and Technology Corporation (CASC) confirmed launch success shortly

Giving pupils math homework can sometimes do more harm than good, according to a new study – particularly when the tasks involved in the work are too complex for kids to complete even with the help of their parents. The researchers, from the University of South Australia and St Francis Xavier University in Canada, interviewed

Legend has it that 16th-century Hungarian countess Elizabeth Báthory had a gruesome method for retaining her youthful beauty. Historical records say the noblewoman was accused of and imprisoned for murdering hundreds of girls to bathe in their supposedly restorative blood. The veracity of those accusations is questionable, at best, but the notion of resorting to

The Southern Ocean is renowned for having the cleanest air on Earth. But the precise reasons why have remained a mystery, until now. There’s more to it than just a lack of human activity. Yes, there are fewer people down there using industrial chemicals and burning fossil fuels. But there are natural sources of fine