Science

The rarely seen moment a black hole catches and devours a star has been spotted at the closest proximity yet. In a galaxy named NGC 7392 located just 137 million light-years away, a quarter of the distance of the previous record, astronomers captured the scream of light as a supermassive black hole first pulled apart

Global temperatures are rising at an alarming rate, and that means more extreme heat waves more of the time. To better prepare for what lies ahead, researchers from across the UK have identified the countries most at risk from heat wave harm. This isn’t just countries where heat waves are expected to be likely. The

SpaceX just launched the most powerful rocket the world has ever seen – so powerful that it’s a problem. The 40-story Starship mega-rocket flew toward space for the first time on April 20. At liftoff, the rocket’s Super Heavy booster fired more than two dozen truck-sized Raptor engines at once, blasting the launchpad with up

WASHINGTON — SpaceX Chief Executive Elon Musk said the first integrated test flight of his company’s Starship vehicle met his expectations despite a cascading series of engine failures and other malfunctions that eventually caused the rocket to lose control. Musk, speaking in a subscriber-only chat April 29 on Twitter, the social media company he acquired

Despite our knack for tying knots in everything from shoelaces to laser beams, there is still a lot we humans can learn from a tiny tangle-inclined worm. Commonly known as the California blackworm, the tiny invertebrate Lumbriculus variegatus has graciously shared a few of its secrets in a new study examining the math behind its

By teaching a machine to learn a few quantum tricks, physicists have uncovered a strange new phase of hydrogen in solid form. While it’s purely theoretical for now, the discovery could help us better understand the behavior of matter from the tiniest scales to the internal mechanics of the largest planets in the Universe. This

Anemia was common in mummified ancient Egyptian children, according to a new study that analyzed child mummies in European museums. Researchers used computed tomography (CT) scans to peer non-invasively through the mummies’ dressings and discovered that one-third of them had signs of anemia; they found evidence of thalassemia in one case, too. “Our study appears

Voyager 2’s demise has been postponed after NASA found a way to hack a backup source of power to keep the probe going until 2026. Voyager 1 and 2 have provided crucial scientific information in their 45 years of spaceflight. Today, the probes are traveling in interstellar space, 12 and 14 billion miles away from

Slowly and unsurely, humanity is weaning itself off coal. That’s good because coal is the most carbon-intensive fossil fuel and a major driver of human-induced climate change. But it’s not good enough. According to a new study, humans are quitting coal too slowly to meet targets set under the Paris Agreement, the international treaty on

Sourcing human tissue samples for biological investigations isn’t always easy. While they are ethically obtained through organ donation or from tissue that’s removed during surgical procedures, scientists are finding them increasingly difficult to get hold of. And it’s not just because there’s a limited supply of human tissue samples. There’s also restricted availability of the

WASHINGTON — NASA Administrator Bill Nelson told a House committee that SpaceX’s truncated Starship test flight was not a major setback in plans to use that vehicle to land astronauts on the moon as soon as 2025. Testifying before the House Science Committee April 27 about the agency’s fiscal year 2024 budget request, Nelson said

We’re used to hearing about viruses spreading from wildlife to humans, but infection across species can go in the reverse, too. Just over 1,000 mountain gorillas are left in the world, and any mass mortality event will push this species further to the brink. For this reason, the often lethal Ebola virus – which scientists

Scientists are still getting to grips with the ins and outs of strange materials known as time crystals; structures that buzz with movement for eternity. Now a new variety might help deepen our understanding of the perplexing state of matter. Just as regular crystals are atoms and molecules that repeat over a volume of space,

Since our earliest school days, we generally accept the idea that some people learn faster than others – but, according to a new study, it turns out that we actually learn at very similar rates given the same opportunities. Researchers looked at 1.3 million “student interactions” across a variety of learning software tools used by

The Universe is swarming with galaxies, billions upon billions as far as the eye can see. And among this multitude, some galaxies really stand out in a spectacular way. These are the quasar galaxies. Powered by an active supermassive black hole guzzling material at such a tremendous rate, they blaze with some of the brightest

If you think your morning commute is a logjam, you should see the Mackenzie River Delta in Nunavut, Canada. Unlike logjams of idling trucks, sedans, and SUVs, this literal logjam stores carbon. Covering some 51 square kilometers (nearly 20 square miles) it’s the largest-known cumulative logjam on Earth, consisting of fallen trees that have floated

Over the past year or so, generative AI models such as ChatGPT and DALL-E have made it possible to produce vast quantities of apparently human-like, high-quality creative content from a simple series of prompts. Though highly capable – far outperforming humans in big-data pattern recognition tasks in particular – current AI systems are not intelligent

WASHINGTON — SpaceX is getting a second launch pad on the West Coast after gaining approval to lease Space Launch Complex 6 (SLC-6) at Vandenberg Space Force Base, California, a historic site previously occupied by United Launch Alliance.  Space Launch Delta 30, the Space Force unit that manages the West Coast launch ranges, announced April

We already know seahorses are among the cutest and most unique critters in the ocean, and now scientists have found out more about a clever and unusual way that they eat. Researchers from Tel Aviv University in Israel and the Rochester Institute of Technology in the US have calculated the power required of specialized anatomy

Our Sun regularly erupts in tongues of heat and fury so large, our own planet would be dwarfed by their size many times over. To better understand how they work, researchers created a version that could fit inside your lunchbox. Using an apparatus that turns powerful bursts of electricity into rope-like loops of plasma, a

The head of the Pentagon office that is reviewing reported unidentified anomalous phenomena (UAP – commonly known as UFOs, unidentified flying objects) told the US Congress this week that his office is now reviewing more than 650 incidents, but so far, none exhibited anything that was evidence of extraterrestrial activity or defied the known laws

Physicists believe most of the matter in the Universe is made up of an invisible substance that we only know about by its indirect effects on the stars and galaxies we can see. We’re not crazy! Without this ” dark matter“, the Universe as we see it would make no sense. But the nature of

Researchers have just calculated the value society gets from a common but hidden underwater resource, and found it’s way higher than we ever expected. Kelp forests have long done so much for humanity, all the while operating out of sight beneath the waves. Hugging a third of our coastlines, they provide food and homes for

Making solar cells more efficient is an obvious win for green energy. It means more electricity from the same number of panels and the same amount of sunlight – and scientists are working hard to take on the challenge. Now a team from the King Abdullah University of Science and Technology (KAUST) in Saudi Arabia

WASHINGTON — Astra Space won a task order worth $11.5 million to launch experimental payloads for the Defense Department’s Space Test Program. Astra, a small satellite launch company based in Alameda, California, was awarded the contract under the U.S. Space Force’s Orbital Services Program OSP-4, the Space Systems Command announced April 21. The OSP-4 program

Elephant seals drift downwards into the ocean in a “sleep spiral” to catch up on sleep while on months-long foraging trips but are programmed not to drown, according to a new study. The seals fall into sleep during deep dives of up to 377 meters, which is around 1,235 feet, to avoid predators. They spiral

The sense of how to shift our position on a playground swing tends to come naturally as part of growing up – a bit like learning how to ride a bike – and now scientists have put together a mathematical model for the ultimate swinging technique. In particular, the model identifies how riders adapt how

You learn from your mistakes. At least, most of us have been told so. But science shows that we often fail to learn from past errors. Instead, we are likely to keep repeating the same mistakes. What do I mean by mistakes here? I think we would all agree that we quickly learn that if

It’s the end of an era, at least for the Perseverance rover on Mars, who has lost a long-time friend. For 427 sols or days on Mars, Perseverance has been carrying around a rock in one of its wheels. We’ve been following the saga of this pet rock, which for over a year has stuck

Ambitious targets intended to slam the brakes on our current mass extinction may already be slipping out of reach barely a year after they were established, new research suggests. Data on birds and mammals reveal there’s a huge time lag between environmental change and its impact on animal populations, of up to 45 years depending