Science

WASHINGTON — Arcfield, a U.S. defense and intelligence contractor, announced Nov. 29 it has completed the acquisition of Orion Space Solutions, a developer and manufacturer of small satellites and sensor payloads. The value of the acquisition was not disclosed. Based in Chantilly, Virginia, Arcfield is a portfolio company of the private equity firm Veritas Capital.

A BBC report about a cruise passenger who said that he was bitten by a wolf spider, which then laid eggs inside his toe, went viral on Monday. But the story has attracted criticism from experts, who say it doesn’t add up. The BBC reported that a cruise ship passenger named Colin Blake received medical

The notion of black holes is one that invokes terror and dread. They’re inescapable! They devour everything! Nothing ever comes out! The accuracy of these beliefs falls on the spectrum of debatable to incorrect. And a pair of physicists has now calculated how proverbial blood might be wrung from the black hole stone. According to

Those blissfully peaceful months we spend in the womb before being born could be where our language learning starts, according to a new study that offers fresh insights into the ease with which newborns are able to pick up listening and speaking skills. A team of researchers, led by experts at the University of Padua

Stars are gravitationally fastened to their galaxies and move in concert with their surroundings. But sometimes, something breaks the bond. If a star gets too close to a supermassive black hole, for example, the black hole can expel it out into space as a rogue star. What would happen to Earth if one of these

Green sea turtles are already an endangered species, mainly due to humans hunting them, harvesting their eggs, degrading their habitats, or entangling them in garbage of some kind. But they also face another, more insidious threat from people: the loss of male hatchlings from the species. You probably already know that this is partly caused

Quantum advantage is the milestone the field of quantum computing is fervently working toward, where a quantum computer can solve problems that are beyond the reach of the most powerful non-quantum, or classical, computers. Quantum refers to the scale of atoms and molecules where the laws of physics as we experience them break down and

WASHINGTON — Kratos Defense & Security Solutions has received an eight-year extension to a contract it has held since 2002 for technical services in support of U.S. military communications satellites’ ground systems.  The company, based in San Diego, California, was awarded an indefinite-delivery/indefinite-quantity contract worth up to $579 million, the U.S. Space Force’s Space Systems

One of the rarest mammals in the world, a black rhino, was just born in broad daylight at a zoo in England, and the footage is breathtaking. For such a large newborn, the female calf landed on the soft, sandy floor of its enclosure with surprising aplomb. In a recent press release, zookeepers at Chester

One of the most startling scientific discoveries of recent decades is that physics appears to be fine-tuned for life. This means that for life to be possible, certain numbers in physics had to fall within a certain, very narrow range. One of the examples of fine-tuning which has most baffled physicists is the strength of

In 2018, archaeologists made a staggering discovery in Swaga Swaga Game Reserve in central Tanzania: 52 previously undocumented rock shelters, deliberately painted with rock art. Weathering had mostly destroyed all but a handful; but of those that were preserved, one was an absolute enigma. The site, named Amak’hee 4, was elaborately painted with a frieze

While preparing for the threat of an asteroid strike might seem like a hypothetical exercise, it’s really not. The Solar System has calmed down a lot from earlier times when impacts were more frequent. But it is only a matter of time before an asteroid heads straight for Earth. The probability of an impact is

The global average temperature on Friday was more than two degrees Celsius hotter than pre-industrial levels for the first time on record, Europe’s Copernicus climate monitor said Monday, adding Saturday likely continued the unprecedented warming streak. ​Months of extraordinary heat are expected to make 2023 the hottest year in history, with droughts, massive wildfires and

WASHINGTON — The European Space Agency conducted a long-duration firing of an Ariane 6 prototype Nov. 23, one of the final tests before the agency is ready to set a date for the rocket’s inaugural launch. The Vulcain 2.1 engine in the core stage of the Ariane 6 test model ignited at about 3:44 p.m.

A single-celled organism with no brain or nervous system to speak of may still form memories and pass those memories on to future generations, according to new research. The ubiquitous bacterium, Escherichia coli, is one of the most well-studied life forms on Earth, and yet scientists are still discovering unexpected ways that it survives and

Defects in materials don’t always lead to a collapse. They can sometimes make them stronger. As you might imagine, it’s important for scientists to know which it’s going to be. Now a new study has provided some vital insight into the differences by tracking the speed at which tiny cracks can travel. Researchers from several

The enduring idea that men evolved to hunt and women evolved to gather is a relatively baseless assumption that is facing greater academic resistance than ever before. A new review of archaeological evidence and human physiology strongly suggests that modern gender roles have colored our reconstructions of the distant past. According to biological anthropologists Sarah

There’s a new way in which going to space could mess with the human body. A study on rats in simulated space environments suggests that being weightless and exposed to space radiation unprotected by Earth’s atmosphere could have a deleterious effect on the vascular tissues associated with erectile dysfunction. Even more than a year after

The hole in the Antarctic ozone layer has been getting deeper in mid-spring over the last two decades, despite a global ban on chemicals that deplete Earth’s shield from deadly solar radiation, new research suggested Tuesday. The ozone layer 11 to 40 kilometers (seven to 25 miles) above Earth’s surface filters out most of the

TAMPA, Fla. — Satellogic has received a remote sensing license in the United States, the Earth observation operator announced Nov. 21 as it moves operations to the country from Uruguay in search of more government business. The National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration (NOAA) license covers 36 sub-meter resolution satellites already in low Earth orbit, Satellogic

Scientists have solved the mystery of one of the animal kingdom’s most disproportionately large penises thanks to a Dutch retiree recording bat sex in a church attic. The serotine bat does not use its strangely large penis for penetration, but instead as a “copulatory arm” during mating, a European team of researchers said on Monday.

Entropy is one of those fearsomely deep concepts that form the core of entire fields of physics (in this case, thermodynamics) that is unfortunately so mathematical that it’s difficult to explain in plain language. But we will give it a try. Whenever I see the word entropy, I like to replace it with the phrase

Seen through a lens of ongoing technological and medical progress it’s easy to feel optimistic about humanity’s future prosperity. Scratch a little deeper, it soon becomes clear that our success as a species is anything but guaranteed. New research led by a team from the University of Stockholm in Sweden outlines 14 different “evolutionary traps”

Vampires may be lurking in space in the most ironic way possible – by hiding evidence of their kills in broad daylight. What’s more, just as Dracula had a diabolical assistant, these life-draining stars might be getting a little help from another nearby object. A study of some of the brightest, hottest stars in the

With the world continuing to warm up, scientists are busy working on ways of cooling buildings without using vast amounts of energy – such as the record-breaking, ultra-white cooling ceramic composite that’s been developed by researchers from the City University of Hong Kong. It’s what’s known as a passive radiative cooling (PRC) material, and it

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,

BERLIN — A year after the launch of the Artemis 1 mission, NASA is continuing to study the performance of the heat shield on the Orion spacecraft, a review that may take several more months to complete. Jim Free, NASA associate administrator for exploration systems development, said at a Nov. 17 meeting of the NASA

Close to the summit of an underwater mountain west of the Mid-Atlantic Ridge, a jagged landscape of towers rises from the gloom. Their creamy carbonate walls and columns appear ghostly blue in the light of a remotely operated vehicle sent to explore. They range in height from tiny stacks the size of toadstools to a

At 5:29 am on the morning of 16 July 1945, in the state of New Mexico, a dreadful slice of history was made. The dawn calm was torn asunder as the United States Army detonated a plutonium implosion device known as the Gadget – the world’s very first test of a nuclear bomb, known as