Science

Researchers peering back through 800 years of history have concluded that Mayapan – the capital of culture and politics for the Maya people of the Yucatán Peninsula in the 13th and 14th century CE – may well have been undone by drought. That drought would have led to civil conflict, which would, in turn, have

Roscosmos cosmonaut Oleg Kononenko has officially become the human being with the most time logged in space, Roscosmos has announced. As of 4 February 2024, at 08:30:08 UTC, the Russian crew member had cumulatively logged more than 878 days aboard the International Space Station, and counting, over multiple missions since 2008. The previous record holder,

Land hermit crabs have been using bottle tops, parts of old light bulbs and broken glass bottles, instead of shells. New research by Polish researchers studied 386 images of hermit crabs occupying these artificial shells. The photos had been uploaded by users to online platforms, then analyzed by scientists using a research approach known as

HELSINKI — A pair of Chinese rockets launched 11 mobility services satellites for an automaker and nine further, diverse satellites into orbit late Friday. A Long March 2C rocket lifted off from Xichang Satellite Launch Center in southwestern China at 6:37 p.m. Eastern (2337 UTC) Feb. 2, followed hours later by a Jielong-3 solid rocket

If you’re fascinated by Nature, these images of spiral galaxies won’t help you escape your fascination. These images show incredible detail in 19 spirals, imaged face-on by the JWST. The galactic arms with their multitudes of stars are lit up in infrared light, as are the dense galactic cores, where supermassive black holes reside. The

Based on satellite imagery, geologists have determined major cities on the U.S. Atlantic coast are sinking, some areas as much as 2 to 5 millimeters (.08-0.2 inches) per year. Called subsidence, this sinking of land is happening at a faster rate than was estimated just a year ago. In a new paper published in the

Elon Musk on Monday claimed in a post on X that a Neuralink brain implant has, for the first time, been inserted into a human patient’s brain. “The first human received an implant from @Neuralink yesterday and is recovering well,” Musk wrote. “Initial results show promising neuron spike detection.” The first product is called Telepathy,

ORLANDO, Fla. — The emergent on-orbit servicing market faces a case of misaligned expectations. On one side, companies developing technologies to provide satellite maintenance, repair and other on-orbit services seek an early government commitment to bring about private investment.  A flagship customer for these services, the U.S. Space Force, has funded development projects and demonstrations,

Balmy summer nights alive with the sounds of cicadas are so relaxing, until all manner of unruly insects swarm your lights. As much of a nuisance as this may be to us, what’s happening to them is far worse. Imperial College London zoologist Samuel Fabian and colleagues used advanced videography techniques to discover centuries of

Time’s inexorable march might well wait for no one, but a new experiment by researchers at the Technical University of Darmstadt in Germany and Roskilde University in Denmark shows how in some materials it might occasionally shuffle. An investigation into the way substances like glass age has uncovered the first physical evidence of a material-based

Archaeologists discovered human remains ceremonially adorned with buckets on their feet and rings around their necks in a 1,000-year-old cemetery, reports say. Archaeologists discovered the mass grave holding over 107 skeletons in what is believed to have been a pagan-era cemetery near Kyiv, Ukraine. The mysterious burial site provided a glimpse into the Dark Ages,

If signs of life really do exist on Mars, there’s a chance the Perseverance rover has already rolled over them. Underground radar images suggest it is searching in the perfect spot for fossilized microbial life. As the robotic explorer, nicknamed Percy, wheels across a three-billion-year-old landscape, its instruments have confirmed that at least one Martian

Climate scientists don’t like surprises. It means our deep understanding of how the climate works isn’t quite as complete as we need. But unfortunately, as climate change worsens, surprises and unprecedented events keep happening. In March 2022, Antarctica experienced an extraordinary heatwave. Large swathes of East Antarctica experienced temperatures up to 40°C (72°F) above normal,

WASHINGTON — A Cygnus cargo spacecraft is set to launch on a Falcon 9 rocket for the first time, a combination that required more changes to the rocket than to the spacecraft. NASA announced at a Jan. 26 briefing that it was targeting Jan. 30 at 12:07 p.m. Eastern for the launch of the NG-20

Were dinosaurs already on their way out when an asteroid hit Earth 66 million years ago, ending the Cretaceous, the geologic period that started about 145 million years ago? It’s a question that has vexed paleontologists like us for more than 40 years. In the late 1970s, debate began about whether dinosaurs were at their

Human behaviour is an enigma that fascinates many scientists. And there has been much discussion over the role of probability in explaining how our minds work. Probability is a mathematical framework designed to tell us how likely an event is to occur – and works well for many everyday situations. For example, it describes the

Underneath a temple in the ancient ruined city of Taposiris Magna on the Egyptian coast, archaeologists uncovered a vast, spectacular tunnel that experts are referring to as a “geometric miracle”. During ongoing excavations and exploration of the temple, Kathleen Martinez of the University of Santo Domingo in the Dominican Republic and colleagues uncovered the structure

Erosion isn’t a thing on the Moon like it is on Earth. With no atmosphere or tectonic plates, the lunar surface remains scarred with impact craters and covered in dust – dust that could hold clues to our lunar companion’s magnetic history. A team of scientists has just discovered some oddly reflective dust-covered boulders in

What we don’t know can still hurt us very much indeed. 2023’s climate is a testament to that fact. Climate scientists were always expecting last year to break heat records. One analysis predicted there was a 99 percent chance that 2023 would be the hottest year since records began. But the reality turned out to

WASHINGTON — Northrop Grumman has taken another charge on its contract to build a module for NASA’s lunar Gateway, bringing its losses for the year on that program to $100 million. In its fourth quarter and full year 2023 earnings release Jan. 25, the company disclosed a $42 million “unfavorable EAC [estimate at completion] adjustment”

Dense thickets of ghostly corals shelter myriads of unfamiliar sea creatures have been found covering a vast area of the deep Atlantic, breaking records to become the largest known deep sea reef. “It’s eye-opening – it’s breathtaking in scale,” says Scripps Institution of Oceanography marine biologist Stuart Sandin. We barely have a clue what these

Albert Einstein was one smart cookie; there’s no doubt about it. But even he knew his general theory of relativity – the 21st century’s answer to Newton’s universal theory of gravity – wasn’t perfect. Like the second-hand car you bought using your first paycheck, it does the job for day-to-day errands. Push it too hard

The popular Paleo diet is based on the belief that we are better off eating like our ancestors by sticking to a largely meat-heavy diet. But a new study suggests that some of our ancestors didn’t gorge on meat at all, but preferred a diet that was largely made up of plants. “Conventional wisdom holds

We finally have the first high-res images of the contents of NASA’s precious Bennu asteroid sampler container, more than 3.5 months since the OSIRIS-REx returned them to Earth. The delay is due to two pesky fasteners that were holding the sampler lid in place, and were finally opened on January 10. On January 19, NASA

Urban agriculture is expected to be an important feature of 21st century sustainability and can have many benefits for communities and cities, including providing fresh produce in neighborhoods with few other options. Among those benefits, growing food in backyards, community gardens or urban farms can shrink the distance fruits and vegetables have to travel between

The term space plane conjures up all sorts of images and NASA, with their new X-59 (even the name sounds mysterious) they have definitely not disappointed. Their new quiet supersonic aircraft has been designed to minimize the sonic boom it creates when it crosses the speed of sound. It will fly at 1.4 times the

TAMPA, Fla. — It will become increasingly challenging to protect national interests during treaty-level talks over how radio waves should be allocated for satellite connectivity, according to the ambassador who led U.S. efforts at the 2023 World Radiocommunication Conference (WRC-23). “We’re going to see, I think, a lot more satellite-related issues,” Deputy Assistant Secretary of

As Earth turns, so does our physiological clock. Daylight keeps cascades of timekeeping molecules in sync as they perform regulatory dances throughout our bodies, sometimes partnering with sex hormones, sometimes waltzing alone, but always leading the way. A surprising study led by the University of California, Davis has now discovered timekeeping molecules that dance to

Scientists have accidentally tied the smallest and tightest knot ever, overtaking the top spot in the Guinness Book of World Records. The remarkable microscopic tangle contains just 54 atoms that twist around three times into an interlacing loop called a ‘trefoil’ knot, with no loose ends. This ‘three-leaf clover’ shape is the simplest of nontrivial

Women tend to live longer than men, but a global review of mortality data from 1990 to 2010 suggests the gender gap in life expectancy is narrowing. The study is based on a statistical analysis of United Nations data, which grouped 194 countries into ‘clusters’ of similarity based on measurable factors that influence mortality. Compared