Science

TAMPA, Fla. — Satellite operator Globalstar stock closed up more than 30% Nov. 1 after disclosing Apple’s plans to invest $1.5 billion in a new constellation to improve space-based communications for iPhones. Apple would take a 20% equity stake in the constellation for $400 million, if the deal closes as expected Nov. 5, and make

The discovery of a 4,000-year-old fortified town hidden in an oasis in modern-day Saudi Arabia reveals how life at the time was slowly changing from a nomadic to an urban existence, archaeologists said on Wednesday. The remains of the town, dubbed al-Natah, were long concealed by the walled oasis of Khaybar, a green and fertile

Come Ragnarök, and the end of things as we know them, according to the Norse Prose Edda, the great celestial wolf Sköll will finally catch and devour his quarry, the Sun that races daily across the sky. Far away, in another corner of the galaxy, another cosmic ‘wolf’ is performing the opposite function, in spite

In Morocco’s southeastern desert, a rare downpour has brought lakes and ponds back to life, with locals – and tourists – hailing it as a gift from the heavens. In Merzouga, an attractive tourist town some 600 kilometres (370 miles) southeast of the capital Rabat, the once-parched golden dunes are now dotted with replenished ponds

Last week, the tragic news broke that US teenager Sewell Seltzer III took his own life after forming a deep emotional attachment to an artificial intelligence (AI) chatbot on the Character.AI website. As his relationship with the companion AI became increasingly intense, the 14-year-old began withdrawing from family and friends, and was getting in trouble

WASHINGTON — A recent series of anomalies by SpaceX prompted a warning by a NASA safety panel to stay focused on safety for crewed flights. At an Oct. 31 meeting of the Aerospace Safety Advisory Panel (ASAP), Kent Rominger, a former astronaut who serves on the committee, went through a list of “recent issues” with

The dead, if you are to heed the warning of burials conducted hundreds of years ago, may not always lay so quietly in their grave. Over a span of more than 1,000 years, in different parts of Europe, burials were conducted seemingly to keep the dead safely in their graves, and not walking about causing

In May 2023, the ESA’s Exomars Trace Gas Orbiter (TGO), currently in orbit around Mars, sent a signal to Earth to simulate a possible extraterrestrial transmission. As part of the multidisciplinary art project “A Sign in Space,” the purpose was to engage citizen scientists in helping to decode it. The campaign was inspired by Cosmicomics

Greenhouse gas concentrations in the atmosphere reached new record highs in 2023, locking in future temperature increases for years to come, the United Nations warned Monday. Levels of the three main greenhouse gases – the climate-warming carbon dioxide, methane and nitrous oxide – all increased yet again last year, the UN’s weather and climate agency

SAN FRANCISCO – Southern California startup Viridian Space Corp. is developing an electric propulsion system for spacecraft in very low Earth orbit that scoops up air for plasma thrusters. The technology promises to extend the life of satellites and enable them to move around in orbit, Rostislav Spektor, Viridian CEO and former manager of the

Recent research on animal sleep behaviour has revealed that sleep is influenced by the animals around them. Olive baboons, for instance, sleep less as group sizes increase, while mice can synchronise their rapid eye movement (REM) cycles. In western society, many people expect to sleep alone, if not with a romantic partner. But as with

In the year 1181 CE, the sky exploded. Well, a part of the sky – a pinprick of nothing suddenly blossoming into visibility, a new, temporary ‘guest star’ in the constellation of Cassiopeia that astronomers in China and Japan watched and recorded for months. That star was a supernova, the violent eruption as a dead

Hurricane season seems to be rallying for a final surge of storms. AccuWeather, a world-leading weather forecasting company, predicts that November will bring one to three tropical storms strong enough to get names, and the first one could come in just a week. Florida and the Carolinas are the most at-risk states. Communities there are

HELSINKI — China’s human spaceflight agency has selected two proposals to develop spacecraft for low-cost space station resupply missions, echoing earlier moves by NASA. The China Manned Space Engineering Office (CMSEO) opened a call last year for proposals for low-cost cargo transportation systems to serve the Tiangong space station. Four proposals from 10 submissions were

The creeping shadows and haunting decorations transform the everyday into something eerie at Halloween. And you might be thinking about scaring yourself with a good horror movie. Grotesque imagery, extreme violence, startling jump scares and menacing characters are common elements, making viewers feel fear, dread and disgust. We generally aim to avoid these negative emotions

Remember that amazing ‘first image’ of Sagittarius A* (Sgr A) black hole at the heart of the Milky Way? Well, it may not be completely accurate, according to researchers at the National Astronomical Observatory of Japan (NAOJ). Instead, the accretion disk around Sgr A* may be more elongated, rather than the circular shape we first

Remember that amazing ‘first image’ of Sagittarius A* (Sgr A) black hole at the heart of the Milky Way? Well, it may not be completely accurate, according to researchers at the National Astronomical Observatory of Japan (NAOJ). Instead, the accretion disk around Sgr A* may be more elongated, rather than the circular shape we first

If an explosion of gas opens a great cavity in Siberia’s permafrost, and no one is around to hear it, does it make a sound? Well, the methane gases it releases certainly send ripples around the world, and now a team from the United Kingdom and Spain has traced its source. Scientists first noticed these

Say hello to ionocaloric cooling. It’s a new way to lower temperatures with the potential to replace existing methods of chilling things with a process that is safer and better for the planet. Typical refrigeration systems transport heat away from a space via a fluid that absorbs heat as it evaporates into a gas, which

WASHINGTON — Chile and Cyprus are the latest nations to sign the Artemis Accords for sustainable space exploration, part of surge of new signatories this month. At a ceremony at NASA Headquarters Oct. 25, Aisén Etcheverry, Chile’s minister of science, technology, knowledge and innovation, signed the Accords on the behalf of that country. The ceremony was

We know that boys and girls are produced in much the same frequency. But how – and why – is this 1:1 ratio achieved? A new paper searches huge human data sets for gene variants that throw the 1:1 sex ratio off balance, and test the biological and theoretical rules of sex ratio. What produces

A comet that was predicted to become bright enough to see with the naked eye at Halloween seems to be disintegrating right before our eyes. It’s called C/2024 S1, discovered on September 27, a rare Kreutz sungrazer comet whose trajectory is due to bring it within just 1.2 million kilometers (750,000 miles) of the Sun

WASHINGTON — A member of the Crew-8 mission hospitalized for an unspecified medical issue after splashdown has been released after an overnight stay, NASA said Oct. 26. In a statement, NASA said the astronaut, whose identify has not been disclosed, was released from Ascension Sacred Heart Pensacola hospital after an overnight stay. “The crew member

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

In the constellation of Cygnus, some 7,800 light-years from Earth, lurks a real space oddity. There, a black hole in a system named V404 Cygni repeatedly engages in behavior that has simultaneously baffled and delighted scientists. Now it’s whipped a brand new trick out of its seemingly endless arsenal: an unseen binary companion, a star

WASHINGTON — SpaceX’s Super Heavy booster came within a second of aborting a “catch” landing attempt on the latest Starship test flight, according to audio posted online, apparently inadvertently, by Elon Musk. Musk posted a three-minute video Oct. 25 on X, the social media network he also owns, showing action from a video game that

A relative newcomer to the Great Internet Mersenne Prime Search (GIMPS) has broken a six-year drought in the search for the next prime oasis in a desert of boring ol’ composite numbers. At an insane 41,024,320 decimal digits in length, writing the entire number would take months to write in full. To keep things brief

A team led by researchers at MIT in the United States has discovered large molecules containing carbon in a distant interstellar cloud of gas and dust. This is exciting for those of us who keep lists of known interstellar molecules in the hope that we might work out how life arose in the Universe. But

Suspended in the relic of an ancient sea beneath southern Arkansas, there may be enough lithium for nine times the expected global demand for the element in car batteries in 2030. A collaborative national and state government research team trained a machine learning model to predict and map the lithium concentrations of salty water deep

Despite huge advances in cyber security, one weakness continues to overshadow all others: human error. Research has consistently shown human error is responsible for an overwhelming majority of successful cyber attacks. A recent report puts the figure at 68%. No matter how advanced our technological defences become, the human element is likely to remain the