Science

On one particular day in 2021, astronauts and cosmonauts aboard the ISS must have felt a pin-prick of fear and uncertainty. On November 15th of that year, Russia fired an anti-satellite missile at one of its own defunct military satellites, Tselina-D. The target weighed about 1,750 kilograms, and when the missile struck its target, the

The risks of harvest failures in multiple global breadbaskets have been underestimated, according to a study Tuesday that researchers said should be a “wake up call” about the threat climate change poses to our food systems. Food production is both a key source of planet-warming emissions and highly exposed to the effects of climate change,

WASHINGTON — After completing an upgrade to the International Space Station’s power system in June, NASA is moving ahead with plans to add two more solar arrays to the station. Boeing and Redwire announced June 28 that they signed a contract for a fourth pair of ISS Roll-Out Solar Arrays, or IROSA, for the station.

In a pale world of ice and snow, the last color you expect to see on the horizon is red. In 1911, during a British expedition to Antarctica, researchers were shocked to notice a glacier ‘bleeding’ from its tongue onto an ice-covered lake. The crimson drool is known as Blood Falls, and it’s taken experts

Because of a peculiar effect velocity has on the appearance of the passage of time, our observations make it seem like time ran slower when the Universe was just a baby. At least, that’s how it appears to us, at a light travel time of nearly 13 billion years away. This is called time dilation,

A new study suggests a link between past climate changes and a drop in the size of the human brain – an adaptive response that emerges in an analysis of climate records and human remains over a 50,000-year period. The research by cognitive scientist Jeff Morgan Stibel from the Natural History Museum in California adds

A little more than 650 light-years from Earth, an old, red star lies dying. A fresh prognosis on Betelgeuse‘s condition based on its pulsations gives the celebrated supergiant just a few decades before it collapses in a final flash of glory. Researchers from Tohoku University in Japan and the University of Geneva in Switzerland have

Seaweed farming is the fastest-growing force in global food production today. But while giant marine algae can produce tons of fuel and sustenance, scientists have recently pointed out that its ability to offset the climate crisis is largely unknown. To sink just 1 gigaton of carbon emissions a year, recent simulations suggest massive seaweed farms

CAPE CANAVERAL, Fla. — A European mission to unravel some of the biggest mysteries in the universe is underway thanks to a launch from an American rocket. A SpaceX Falcon 9 lifted off at 11:12 a.m. Eastern July 1 from Cape Canaveral’s Space Launch Complex 40. The rocket deployed its payload, the European Space Agency’s

Dolphins might not be the first animal you think of when it comes to putting together a battle-hardened team of warriors, but the Russian military is reportedly recruiting bottlenose dolphins to defend the Sevastopol naval base in the Black Sea. As per the UK Ministry of Defence, “trained marine mammals” are being kept in pens

A team of researchers has accurately measured power at a scale that’s a trillion times smaller than what’s possible with standard instruments. It means microwave radiation can be more precisely assessed in quantum physics experiments. Being able to measure power at ultra-low levels is helpful for scientists building quantum systems – systems that are incredibly

Printed circles that appear to move. Colors that seem different in spite of being identical. Everybody loves a good optical illusion, though precisely where the magic happens is still a mystery in many cases. A new study by University of Exeter visual ecologist Jolyon Troscianko, and neuroscientist Daniel Osorio from the University of Sussex in

A gas giant exoplanet 634 light-years away has a quirk in its atmosphere that suggests it may have swallowed a smaller world. It’s WASP-76b, and it’s already famous for being one of the hottest exoplanets in the galaxy. Whipping around its host star once every 1.8 days, WASP-76b reaches temperatures above 2,000 degrees Celsius (3,632

Many sharks are being fished to the point of extinction, and yet one of the proposed solutions – sustainable shark fisheries – has largely failed to catch on. A new paper on the sudden closure of the world’s first eco-certified shark fishery explores why that might be. In 2011, a Canadian fishery for the Pacific

Geoffrey Hinton, one of the so-called “godfathers” of artificial intelligence, urged governments on Wednesday to step in and make sure that machines do not take control of society. Hinton made headlines in May when he announced that he was quitting after a decade of work at Google to speak more freely on the dangers of

WASHINGTON — A solid rocket motor for Europe’s Vega C rocket malfunctioned during a static-fire test June 28, likely pushing back the vehicle’s return to flight to 2024. In a June 29 statement, Avio, the Italian company that is the prime contractor for the Vega, said a Zefiro 40 motor experienced an anomaly during a

The news that orcas are attacking and sinking ships off Europe’s Iberian coast has the world captivated by the strange workings of the creatures’ culture. But these aren’t the only sleek ocean swimmers that have learned to respond to the presence of humans. Scientists at the University of Queensland (UQ) in Australia suspect that bottlenose

We’ve just identified a brand new isotope of the rarest element in our planet’s crust. With 85 protons and 105 neutrons, 190astatine is the lightest isotope of astatine discovered yet, and could help physicists better understand the process of alpha decay, and the structure and limitations of atomic nuclei. “The studies of new nuclei are

Hunter-gatherer roles in human society are not nearly as gendered as anthropologists and archaeologists have traditionally believed, with narratives of ‘man the hunter’ and ‘woman the gatherer’ crumbling in the face of new evidence. In recent years, ancient sites around the world strongly suggest that women have been fishing, hunting big game, and going to

It’s official. There’s something out there shaking the stars in a way that can no longer be ascribed to chance. Several teams around the world have independently found a signal in the timing of flashing stars called pulsars that points to giant, long-wavelength gravitational waves rolling through the galaxy. It’s not quite a detection of

The currents of air that wrap around our planet are becoming unrecognizable to climate scientists. Some have even compared the chaotic pattern of the jet streams to a Van Gogh painting. The southern part of the jet stream over North America has completely broken apart and is currently trapped in a vicious revolution that has

Undeterred after three decades of looking, and with some assistance from a supercomputer, mathematicians have finally discovered a new example of a special integer called a Dedekind number. Only the ninth of its kind, or D(9), it is calculated to equal 286 386 577 668 298 411 128 469 151 667 598 498 812 366,

TAMPA, Fla. — Odin Space is preparing to start detecting tiny but potentially dangerous pieces of orbital debris in the coming weeks from a sensor on a recently launched space tug, according to the British startup’s cofounder and CEO James New. The venture announced June 27 that it had successfully powered up the demo sensor,

The body temperature of one of the mightiest predators ever to stalk Earth’s oceans may have contributed to its downfall. A new analysis of the teeth left behind by megalodon (Otodus megalodon) shows that the extinct giant shark was at least partially warm-blooded, as some sharks are today. But this trait, which would have given

Scientists have solved a decades-long mystery on whether light can be effectively trapped in a 3D forest of microscopic particles. Using a new method for crunching vast sums in a model of particle interactions, a team of physicists in the US and France revealed conditions under which a wave of light can be brought to

It’s 2023. By now, we should all be wearing jet packs, living on the Moon, and having deep conversations with our dogs through pet translation devices. Oh, and we should know how consciousness works. We don’t, of course. But a recent event coinciding with the annual meeting of the Association for the Scientific Study of

We’ve just been given a teaser of the moment everyone has been waiting for: a James Webb Space Telescope image of Saturn, in all its resplendent glory. Although the final, processed images have not yet arrived, the telescope has made its observations using its Near Infrared Spectrograph (NIRSpec) instrument, and the raw images have been

NASA has released a chilling animation showing just how far sea levels have risen in the three short decades its satellites have been monitoring them. The data visualization, released last week, is the work of Andrew J. Christensen, a data visualizer for the NASA Scientific Visualization Studio. By animating observed changes in global sea level

WASHINGTON — Defense contractor Anduril Industries acquired Adranos, a manufacturer of solid rocket motors, the companies announced June 25. The terms of the deal were not disclosed. Founded in 2015, Adranos manufactures solid rocket motors in coastal Mississippi and last year opened a fuel-production facility in Indiana. The startup invented a proprietary aluminum-lithium alloy fuel

Here, wolfie, wolfie, wolfie! Like dogs, wolves recognize and respond to the voices of familiar humans more than strangers, according to a study that has implications both for the story of canine domestication and our broader understanding of the natural world. Holly Root‑Gutteridge of the University of Lincoln, a co-author of the paper that appeared