Science

Dressed in an orange puffer jacket, Japanese scientist Yoshinori Iizuka stepped into a storage freezer to retrieve an ice core he hopes will help experts protect the world’s disappearing glaciers. The fist-sized sample drilled from a mountaintop is part of an ambitious international effort to understand why glaciers in Tajikistan have resisted the rapid melting

TAMPA, Fla. — Denver-based Lux Aeterna announced plans Dec. 17 to land its debut reusable satellite at the Koonibba Test Range in South Australia, shortly after launching on a SpaceX rideshare mission in early 2027. The agreement with Southern Launch also covers what would be the startup’s first reuse mission for its low Earth orbit

Sticking with a long-term life partner to rear children has long been considered a dominant mating pattern for our species, although reproductive monogamy is not universal across our many cultures and subcultures. Now, a new study by Cambridge evolutionary anthropologist Mark Dyble ranks Homo sapiens among the top 10 mammal monogamists, using sibling status (full

If you feel a thrill every time we discover something new about the cosmos, then November 25th may have been a noteworthy day to you. That’s the day that NASA completed assembly of the Nancy Grace Roman Telescope. The two main segments of the powerful space telescope were joined together in the large clean room

Thousands of glaciers will vanish each year in the coming decades, leaving only a fraction standing by the end of the century unless global warming is curbed, a study showed on Monday. Government action on climate change could determine whether the world loses 2,000 or 4,000 glaciers annually by the middle of the century, according

HELSINKI — China conducted a pair of launches in recent days, sending an experimental commercial cargo spacecraft into orbit, followed by a remote sensing satellite. A Kuaizhou-11 solid rocket lifted off at 8:08 p.m. Eastern, Dec. 12 (0108 UTC, Dec. 13) from the Jiuquan Satellite Launch Center in the Gobi Desert, quickly accelerating into a

Blinking handles essential eye maintenance, and we usually blink multiple times a minute without thinking much about it, though you might be more self-conscious about your own after the results of a new study on their connection to cognitive load. Researchers in Canada found we tend to blink less when we’re listening to someone speak,

About 880 light-years from Earth, a hot mess of an exoplanet is slowly spilling its atmosphere into space, creating two enormous tails of helium that stretch more than halfway around its star. This is the first time such a spectacle has ever been observed, according to the authors of a new study. Astronomers have seen

WASHINGTON — A Rocket Lab Electron rocket successfully launched a technology demonstration satellite for the Japan Aerospace Exploration Agency on Dec. 13 as the company reshuffles its launch manifest. The Electron lifted off from Rocket Lab’s Launch Complex 1 in New Zealand at 10:09 p.m. Eastern. The payload, JAXA’s Rapid Innovative Payload Demonstration Satellite-4, or

Despite the rapid advances in artificial intelligence in recent years, the humble human brain still has the edge over computers in its ability to transfer skills and learn across tasks. A new study reveals how we likely do this. Led by a team from Princeton University, the researchers behind the new study didn’t actually run

Jupiter is the largest planet in the Solar System. It’s also one of the largest planets in the Universe. There are planets out there with much more mass, but thanks to gravity, they are generally denser, not “bigger.” This raises an interesting question about massive exoplanets. Do they look similar to Jupiter? A new study

Step aside, Google Maps; stand down, Apple Maps. Researchers from the Technical University of Munich (TUM) in Germany have created a new online atlas that shows the location of 2.75 billion buildings in 3D. It’s a phenomenal technical achievement, and it was made possible by a vast database of satellite imagery and some clever machine-learning

WASHINGTON — SpaceX’s chief financial officer has confirmed the company is considering an initial public offering as soon as next year to raise money for lunar and Mars missions as well as orbital data centers. In a message to employees late Dec. 12, Bret Johnsen, SpaceX’s CFO, said the company is preparing for a possible

The Beatles’ song Yesterday was written in what psychologists refer to as the “hypnagogic state”. This is the twilight zone between sleep and wakefulness, when we drowsily linger in a semi-conscious state, experiencing vivid mental images and sounds. Waking up one morning in early 1965, Paul McCartney became aware of a long complex melody playing

Earth’s climate has swung between ice ages and warmer periods for millions of years, driven by subtle changes in our planet’s orbit and axial tilt. These variations, known as Milankovitch cycles, occur because Earth doesn’t orbit the Sun in isolation. The gravitational pull of other planets constantly tugs at Earth, slowly altering its orbital path,

WASHINGTON — Intuitive Machines will work with Telespazio on their planned lunar satellite networks to ensure interoperability and improve performance. The companies announced Dec. 11 a strategic cooperation agreement involving their planned constellations. Intuitive Machines is developing at least five data relay satellites in lunar orbit to support NASA’s Near Space Network and other customers,

We often throw caution to the cold, dark wind of December when it comes to spending. The cost-of-living crisis may slip our minds amid the razzle-dazzle of Christmas. We just want a moment to enjoy ourselves, to forget about the winter gloom. It’s natural for us to behave this way. Our brains are wired for

December has arrived, and with it the year’s peak meteor season for the northern hemisphere. It’s during this time that two major meteor showers occur back-to-back, with the Geminids peaking in mid-December, and the Quadrantids hitting their full stride in early January. This year, the Geminid peak falls on the evening of Saturday 13 December,

Glacial earthquakes are a special type of earthquake generated in cold, icy regions. First discovered in the northern hemisphere more than 20 years ago, these quakes occur when huge chunks of ice fall from glaciers into the sea. Until now, only a very few have been found in the Antarctic. In a new study soon

TAMPA, Fla. — Other space companies are likely to move toward the public markets now that Elon Musk is openly signaling plans to pursue a SpaceX IPO next year, hoping to ride the wave of momentum behind a potentially record-breaking listing. Cape Canaveral–based Starfighters Space, which is developing a small satellite air-launch system using a

The taming of fire is credited with sparking humanity’s evolutionary journey towards our modern levels of intelligence. Fire gave early humans access to a broader range of safe foods, fueling the development of larger brains and paving the way for the birth of Homo sapiens, so the cooking hypothesis goes. A new discovery of baked

NASA has officially lost contact with a spacecraft that has been orbiting Mars since 2014. The MAVEN spacecraft – Mars Atmosphere and Volatile Evolution – abruptly lost contact with Earth on 6 December 2025 while passing behind the red planet in the normal course of its orbit. When MAVEN re-emerged from behind Mars, however, NASA

A controversial scientific paper that claimed the weed killer glyphosate (brand name Roundup) “does not pose a health risk to humans” has been formally retracted 25 years after publication due to serious ethical concerns around industry manipulation. The decision comes eight years after a 2017 court case found that employees of the chemical company Monsanto

After months of anticipation and debate, Australia’s social media ban is now in force. Young Australians under 16 must now come to grips with the new reality of being unable to have an account on some social media platforms, including Instagram, TikTok, and Facebook. Only time will tell whether this bold, world-first experiment will succeed.

HELSINKI — Two Shenzhou-21 astronauts embarked on the mission’s first spacewalk late Monday, inspecting and photographing a damaged spacecraft window which triggered an earlier emergency launch. Shenzhou-21 mission commander Zhang Lu and rookie crewmate Wu Fei began an extravehicular activity (EVA) at 9:28 p.m. Eastern, Dec. 8 (0228 UTC, Dec. 9), when Zhang opened the

A construction site dating back nearly 2,000 years to the putative demise of Pompeii in 79 CE has revealed new evidence for the secret behind Ancient Rome’s ultra-durable concrete. Last year, from under the volcanic ash that buried Pompeii, archaeologists uncovered a fully intact construction site – a rare snapshot of Roman building work frozen

For the first time, astronomers have caught the moment when a supermassive black hole flare triggers a mighty wind blasting out into space at relativistic speeds. The so-called ultrafast outflow, or UFO, was recorded reaching speeds 19 percent of the speed of light in a vacuum – about 57,000 kilometers (35,400 miles) per second. That’s

A brutal confluence of environmental change and human fishing habits left tens of thousands of adult African penguins off South Africa’s coast without enough food to survive, reducing their population by around 95 percent in just eight years, a new study reveals. “These declines are mirrored elsewhere,” says University of Exeter conservation biologist Richard Sherley,

MILAN – When the European Space Agency announced its new three-year spending plan last month, two countries stood out for the increased size of their contributions.  Poland boosted its budget from 198 million euros ($230 million) in 2022 to 735 million euros in 2025 (a 276% increase). Spain raised its contribution from 933 million euros

A treasure trove of 225 funerary figurines has been discovered inside a tomb in the ancient Egyptian capital of Tanis in the Nile Delta, a rare find that has also solved a long-running mystery. “Finding figurines in place inside a royal tomb has not happened in the Tanis necropolis since 1946,” French egyptologist Frederic Payraudeau