Science

Put the word ‘evolution’ into Google images and the results are largely variations on one theme: Ralph Zallinger’s illustration, March of Progress. Running left to right, we see a chimp-like knuckle walker gradually becoming taller and standing erect. Implicit in such images – and the title of the picture – are biases in common views

The dastardly deeds of a dead star have been discovered by an intrepid team of cosmic detectives. A white dwarf star that devoured at least a chunk of one of its planets has been betrayed by a scar of vaporized metal marring it surface – the tell-tale remnants of the planet that once orbited the

Substantial ice loss has been observed in the Antarctic region since the 1970s, but a new study suggests for at least some significant regions it actually started as far back as the 1940s, and perhaps even earlier. A research team led by the University of Houston collected sedimentary rock cores from seven locations near the

Legends about the ingenuity of the Greek inventor and mathematician Archimedes were so powerful that for centuries, many scholars have believed he was able to use mirrors to set Roman ships alight more than 2,000 years ago. A Canadian middle schooler, Brenden Sener, designed a science-fair project to see whether such a feat was possible

TAMPA, Fla. — Astranis is moving its debut satellite to a geostationary position over Asia after a malfunction last year derailed plans to beam broadband to Alaska, the Californian manufacturer said Feb. 27. Arcturus set off Feb. 1 and should arrive by the middle of March, Astranis CEO John Gedmark told SpaceNews, where it will

Violently bludgeoned to death and left in a Danish bog, the Stone Age individual known as ‘Vittrup man’ was discovered in 1915 by peat cutters in the midst of harvest. His murder – thought to have been part of a ritualized sacrifice – occurred sometime between 3300 and 3100 BCE, during the height of the

Japan’s Moon lander has produced another surprise by waking up after the two-week lunar night, the country’s space agency said Monday. The unmanned Smart Lander for Investigating Moon (SLIM) touched down last month at a wonky angle that left its solar panels facing the wrong way. As the Sun’s angle shifted, it came back to

When the Moon passes in front of the Sun in a solar eclipse, the jaw-dropping spectacle seems to change our world momentarily. However, the effects on our planet are far more profound than a few moments of darkness during the daylight hours. And one effect that might surprise you? Clouds dissipate, and quickly – from

WASHINGTON — In a departure from recent guidance, the Space Force will use cost-plus contracts for its high-priority strategic communications satellite program.  Space Force acquisition executive Frank Calvelli said Feb. 23 that the service has decided to not use fixed-price contracts for the Evolved Strategic Satellite Communications System (ESS), a critical component of the U.S.

The sex of human and other mammal babies is decided by a male-determining gene on the Y chromosome. But the human Y chromosome is degenerating and may disappear in a few million years, leading to our extinction unless we evolve a new sex gene. The good news is two branches of rodents have already lost

The solar cycle has been reasonably well understood since 1843 when Samuel Schwabe spent 17 years observing the variation of sunspots. Since then, we have regularly observed the ebb and flow of the sunspots cycle every 11 years. More recently ESA’s Solar Orbiter has taken regular images of the Sun to track the progress as

WASHINGTON — Congress is expected to decide in the next two weeks whether to extend current restrictions on regulating the safety of commercial human spaceflight occupants, and if so, for how long. House and Senate negotiators are working to finalize a new long-term Federal Aviation Administration reauthorization bill that would extend and modify existing authorities

A century or so before the pyramids graced the Egyptian horizon, around the same time as the erection of Stonehenge, hunters and gatherers half a world away were building megalithic stone structures to rival those of farmers. One of the earliest examples to date – an 18 meter (about 60 foot) wide circular plaza made

Hopes of discovering some kind of extraterrestrial life within our own Solar System have suffered a blow with a new paper suggesting Saturn‘s largest moon is likely barren. “Unfortunately, we will now need to be a little less optimistic when searching for extraterrestrial lifeforms within our own Solar System,” says University of Western Ontario astrobiologist

A chemical used in agriculture around the world is tightly regulated in the United States, but a preliminary study suggests it could be widespread in the country’s food supply anyway. Scientists at the controversial US nonprofit Environmental Working Group (EWG) found the chemical chlormequat in four out of five urine samples collected from people living

Late last week, OpenAI announced a new generative AI system named Sora, which produces short videos from text prompts. While Sora is not yet available to the public, the high quality of the sample outputs published so far has provoked both excited and concerned reactions. The sample videos published by OpenAI, which the company says

The purpose of the webinar was to explore how today’s SmallSat leaders are employing automation in satellite operations and manufacturing. Among the questions the webinar addressed: How is automation changing the way satellites are being designed, built, deployed and operated? What level of automation is necessary to keep smallsats competitive? Is the smallsat sector ready

Amidst a cache of glittering golden treasures from the Iberian Bronze Age, a pair of corroded objects might be the most precious of all. A dull bracelet and a rusted hollow hemisphere decorated with gold are forged, researchers have found, not out of metal from beneath the ground, but with iron from meteorites that fell

For over a century, people have dreamed of the day when humanity (as a species) would venture into space. In recent decades, that dream has moved much closer to realization, thanks to the rise of the commercial space industry (NewSpace), renewed interest in space exploration, and long-term plans to establish habitats in Low Earth Orbit

Tiny fragments of plastic aren’t only finding their way into animals, remote ice caps, oceans, and even the depths of our bodies. They’re also seeping through layers of rock, making the emergence of plastics in the geological record a poor marker for the dawn of the human age. In a new study, sediment samples from

Our rapidly increasing need for data storage capacity isn’t going to change anytime soon (thanks, AI!). Thankfully new research is exploring an innovative method for packing a lot more bytes into the same physical space on an optical disc. The approach is based on the same light-based optical data storage (ODS) approach used to write

WASHINGTON — The impending reentry of a defunct European satellite serves as a reminder of the hazards posed by existing objects even as agencies work to mitigate the growth of orbital debris. The European Space Agency’s European Remote Sensing (ERS) 2 satellite is expected to reenter on Feb. 21 after nearly two decades in orbit.

Researchers on the hunt to settle a long-standing debate ended up rewriting the timeline of ancient human history in the process. For years, archaeologists have argued over an ancient culture with the unwieldy title: the Lincombian-Ranisian-Jerzmanowician technocomplex. Even scientists know that’s a mouthful, so they call it the LRJ for short. The LRJ is characterized

Gazing out upon the apparently unchanging sea of stars around us, it’s tempting to think of the Milky Way galaxy as static and everything within it as fixed and immutable. While the timescales on which our galaxy moves often defies human experience, move it does indeed. Not all of these dynamic processes are easy to

WASHINGTON — A United Nations committee will study the interference risks that satellite constellations pose to astronomy, a year after rejecting a similar proposal to do so. At the conclusion of the meeting earlier this month of its scientific and technical subcommittee, the U.N.’s Committee on the Peaceful Uses of Outer Space (COPUOS) agreed to

Scientists are investigating whether an oral drug sprinkled with gold nanoparticles could one day treat neurodegenerative diseases like Parkinson’s and multiple sclerosis. The experimental medicine, called CNM-Au8, has now shown success in boosting the brain’s metabolism in phase II clinical trials. Research on the safety and efficacy of the daily drug is still ongoing, but

If you thought you had a voracious appetite, you’ve got nothing on a newly discovered supermassive black hole. The black hole at the center of a quasar galaxy called J0529-4351 is guzzling down so much material it basically swallows about a Sun’s worth of gas and dust a day, onto a black hole that is

WASHINGTON — The IM-1 mission by Intuitive Machines is on track to attempt a landing on the moon later this week after performing an in-flight test of its main engine. The company announced late Feb. 16 that it fired the main engine of its Nova-C lander in a commissioning maneuver. The test was the first

The rise of farming in late Stone Age Europe was no smooth transition from hunter-gatherer lifestyles but a bloody takeover that saw nomadic populations wiped out by farmer-settlers in a few generations, a new study has found. In fact, twice in just a thousand years, the population of southern Scandinavia was entirely replaced by newcomers

Does life appear independently on different planets in the galaxy? Or does it spread from world to world? Or does it do both? New research shows how life could spread via a basic, simple pathway: cosmic dust. One thing scientists have learned in the past few decades is that life on Earth might have had