Science

There’s something really weird in the center of the Milky Way. The vicinity of a supermassive black hole is a pretty weird place to start with, but in 2020 astronomers found six objects orbiting Sagittarius A* that are unlike anything in the galaxy. They are so peculiar that they have been assigned a brand-new class

Across the world, rainforests are becoming savanna or farmland, savanna is drying out and turning into desert, and icy tundra is thawing. Indeed, scientific studies have now recorded “regime shifts” like these in more than 20 different types of ecosystems where tipping points have been passed. Across the world, more than 20 percent of ecosystems

WASHINGTON — Satellite manufacturer Terran Orbital has signed an agreement with French aerospace giant Safran to explore U.S.-based production of satellite propulsion systems, the companies announced June 23. Under the agreement, Safran Electronics & Defense and Terran Orbital  will investigate opportunities and prerequisites for the production of electric propulsion systems for satellites based on Safran’s

Between 1993 and 2010, humans extracted and moved so much of our planet’s groundwater that it contributed to the migration of Earth’s poles. Just the contribution of groundwater redistribution resulted in a polar shift of 80 centimeters (31.5 inches) towards the east, according to a new analysis led by geophysicist Ki-Weon Seo of Seoul National

A new quantum processor built on silicon will soon be made available to a select few universities and other institutions across the US, potentially giving more researchers an opportunity to tinker with quantum computing hardware first hand. Crafted by the computer chip manufacturer Intel, it’s hoped that the new processor – offering twice as many

A gallery of ancient cave markings determined to have been created as far back as 75,000 years ago is likely to be the handiwork of Neanderthals. The team of researchers behind an analysis of artwork found in the French cave of La Roche-Cotard argue this is the earliest unambiguous example of Neanderthal cave engravings ever

A newly discovered star just 773 light-years away belongs to one of the rarest categories in the Milky Way. J1912-4410 is a white dwarf pulsar, a type of star so rarely seen that only one other is known in the entire galaxy. Its discovery confirms that these stars exist in a class of their own,

When a hurricane hits land, the destruction can be visible for years or even decades. Less obvious, but also powerful, is the effect hurricanes have on the oceans. In a new study, we show through real-time measurements that hurricanes don’t just churn water at the surface. They can also push heat deep into the ocean

WASHINGTON — An Indian startup has raised $10 million to start development of commercial space situational awareness (SSA) capabilities that will include data from spacecraft. Bengaluru-based Digantara announced June 20 it raised the funding in a Series A1 round led by Peak XV Partners, a venture fund until recently known as Sequoia Capital India. Several

If any animal were said to be born from Earth’s belly, it might as well be the periodical cicada. The synchronized mass ‘birth’ of this incredible insect is one of the greatest unsolved mysteries of the natural world. In North America, broods of juvenile cicadas, called nymphs, quietly develop underground in the soil, suckling sap

Scientists are always looking for the next weird and wonderful material, and they’ve just found it: A bosonic correlated insulator to give it its technical name, which is both a new material and, indeed, a whole new state of matter. It’s a lattice formed from a layer of tungsten diselenide and a layer of tungsten

A smattering of ancient rock walls along the river Nile in Sudan appear to represent the oldest known hydraulics system of their kind. New findings suggest people living in the ancient empire of Nubia in northern Sudan were manipulating the river to their advantage as far back as 3,000 years ago. River ‘groynes‘ are rigid

An object orbiting a star 1,400 light-years away is seriously confronting our notions of what’s possible in the Universe. It’s a brown dwarf, the curious category of objects that straddle the gap between planets and stars, but it’s on such a close orbit with its very hot host star that its temperature exceeds a blistering

A new study identifies which parts of our airways are getting clogged with microplastics as we inhale about 16.2 bits an hour. That’s a credit card’s worth of microplastic going into our respiratory system a week. We’re also eating and drinking these plastic particles, as microplastics are now everywhere, including in our veins. They’re in

Engineers have demonstrated something marvelous. Almost any material can be used to create a device that continuously harvests energy from humid air. It’s not a development that’s ready for practical application, but it does, its creators say, transcend some of the limitations of other harvesters. All the material needs is to be pocked with nanopores

WASHINGTON — Operating under a veil of secrecy pierced only by the ignition of the rocket’s engines, Rocket Lab launched the first suborbital variant of its Electron vehicle June 17. The vehicle, called Hypersonic Accelerator Suborbital Test Electron (HASTE), lifted off from Launch Complex 2 at the Mid-Atlantic Regional Spaceport on Wallops Island, Virginia, at

Remains of a species of herbivorous dinosaur previously unknown in the Southern Hemisphere have been discovered in Chile, challenging long-held beliefs about the range of duck-billed dinosaurs, scientists said Friday. Measuring up to 4 meters (13 feet) in length and weighing a ton, Gonkoken nanoi lived 72 million years ago in the extreme south of

Showers of particles that erupt when cosmic rays collide with Earth’s atmosphere may have just given us a viable underground navigation system. Cosmic ray muons raining down on, and partially through, the planet’s surface have allowed scientists to calculate an individual’s position in a building’s basement, a location in which satellite global positioning systems don’t

Archaeologists in Lima, Peru, made an astonishing discovery under thousands of pounds of trash – a 3,000-year-old mummy that was likely a sacrifice. The specimen was uncovered this week by archaeologists and San Marcos University students, according to Reuters. They first spotted it thanks to its exposed hair and skull. But before examining the ancient

If a planet has an atmosphere, it’s probably leaking, some faster than others. And astronomers have just found a hum-dinger: an atmosphere so leaky it’s spurting out in giant jets. The exoplanet responsible for this activity is HAT-P-32b, a gas giant some 1.8 times the radius of Jupiter, around 923 light-years away. It’s spitting out

Ocean bays that pinch West Antarctica are home to two distinct populations of Turquet’s octopus (Pareledone turqueti). The shared secrets of their ancestors do not bode well for the future health of our planet. A recent DNA analysis of the two geographically separated octopus populations, published earlier this year ahead of peer review, indicates they

ChatGPT is proving to be a rather alluring assistant in many professions, but it’s not without risks, and some companies have banned the chatbot at work. It may seem obvious that uploading work-related information to an online artificial intelligence platform owned by another company is a potential security and privacy breach. Still, ChatGPT can be

WASHINGTON — Arianespace has postponed the final launch of the Ariane 5, potentially for several weeks, after discovering a potential problem with pyrotechnical systems on the rocket. Arianespace announced June 15 it was postponing the 117th and final launch of the Ariane 5, which had been scheduled for June 16 from Kourou, French Guiana. A

Our planet’s convoluted history of evolving life has spawned countless weird and wonderful creatures, but none excite evolutionary biologists – or divide taxonomists – quite like crabs. When researchers attempted to reconcile the evolutionary history of crabs in all their raucous glory in a study published in 2021, they arrived at the conclusion that the

Ultra-high pressure can have strange effects in physics and chemistry, and in a new study, high-pressure modeling has led to the prediction of four new compounds: compounds that don’t form in normal ways, have crystal structures we’ve never seen before, and can even act as superconductors in certain temperatures. Those compounds are Li14Cs, Li8Cs, Li7Cs,

Just over two decades ago, as the new millennium began, it seemed that tracks left by our ancient human ancestors dating back more than about 50,000 years were excessively rare. Only four sites had been reported in the whole of Africa at that time. Two were from East Africa: Laetoli in Tanzania and Koobi Fora

The new discovery of six more runaway stars in the Milky Way has landed the fastest object of this type yet detected in the galaxy. In fact, two of the stars are record-breakers, with heliocentric radial velocities faster than any ever seen for runaway stars. The star J1235 clocks in at 1,694 kilometers (1,053 miles)

Bringing your garden indoors and growing the right plants on your office wall (along with some sophisticated tech) could scrub the air of several common toxic pollutants, new research suggests. The findings come from scientists at the University of Technology Sydney (UTS) in Australia, who investigated whether a vertical wall system fitted with indoor plants

The idea of artificial intelligence overthrowing humankind has been talked about for decades – and programs such as ChatGPT have only renewed these concerns. So how likely is it that we’ll be able to control high-level computer super-intellgence? Scientists back in 2021 crunched the numbers. The answer? Almost definitely not. The catch is that controlling

NASA’s focus on human exploration beyond LEO reaching to the Moon and beyond is nothing less than thrilling. Last month, the Artemis 2 crew members were announced, and NASA has newly minted the not-too-subtly named Moon to Mars Program Office headed by Amit Kshatriya. The agency is boldly directing its energy toward true human space