Science

Not all animals are the same. Even within a species, some are bolder and better at solving problems than others. We have found this to be true in the case of the critically endangered Bali myna, a rare bird found only on the island of Bali in Indonesia. Fewer than 50 adult Bali mynas remain

One very persistent story about the mid-20th century space race involves the development of the space pen. When humans left the surface of Earth for the weightless environment of space for the first time in the 1960s, they quickly found that ballpoint pens designed for the gravity environment of Earth were not quite so effective

Greenhouse gas emissions are at an all-time high, with yearly emissions equivalent to 54 billion tonnes of carbon dioxide. Humanity has caused surface temperatures to warm by 1.14 °C since the late 1800s – and this warming is increasing at an unprecedented rate of over 0.2 °C per decade. The highest temperatures recorded over land

She’s out there somewhere, lurking in a parallel universe of possibilities. All you have to do to summon her into being is type the right prompt into an AI image generator. Like a digital incantation, the words will reveal the eerie face of a middle-aged woman with dead eyes, a vacant stare, and a disturbing

[embedded content] SAN FRANCISCO — A new Astroscale video shows how the End of Life Services by Astroscale-Multiple mission, ELSA-M, will capture and deorbit a OneWeb communications satellite. “ELSA-M will be the world’s first commercial removal of a client’s inactive spacecraft,” Alex Godfrey, Astroscale business development manager, told SpaceNews. In 2025, Astroscale plans to send

There are a lot of ways that scientists can figure out what’s going on beneath Earth’s surface – like measuring seismic waves as they travel underground – but perhaps nothing beats a really, really, really deep hole. As per China’s state-run Xinhua news agency, work is now underway to dig a 11,100-meter (36,417-foot) borehole in

Paleontologists in South Africa said Monday they have found the oldest known burial site in the world, containing remains of a small-brained distant relative of humans previously thought incapable of complex behaviour. Led by renowned palaeoanthropologist Lee Berger, researchers said they discovered several specimens of Homo naledi – a tree-climbing, Stone Age hominid – buried

Wind that blows from close to the surface of the Sun has now been traced back to its source by a daredevil solar probe rivaling Icarus in its audacity. In November 2021, the Parker Solar Probe skimmed within a more-than-hair-singeing 8.5 million kilometers (5.3 million miles) of the Sun, a feat enabling it to detect

A single injection of an experimental gene therapy treatment may be all that is required to permanently stop a female cat from reproducing, according to a small, proof-of-concept study. Of the more than 600 million-some domestic felines that wander our planet, an astounding 80 percent are believed to be strays, void of owners or homes.

Apple recently unveiled its Vision Pro headset at the Worldwide Developers Conference in California. With it, Apple is venturing into a market of head-mounted devices (HMDs) – which are usually just displays, but in this case is more of a complete computer attached to your head – as well as the worlds of virtual reality

CHANTILLY, Va. —  With a ceremonial ribbon cutting, the Space Systems Command on June 6 marked the opening of its new office and conference center dedicated to doing business with the commercial space industry. The command named the facility COSMIC, short for Commercial Space Marketplace for Innovation and Collaboration.  The Space Systems Command, which is

Fruit flies can be truly annoying when they are buzzing around your living room or landing in your wine. But we have much to thank these tiny nuisances for – they revolutionized biological and medical science. Flies and mosquitoes both belong to Diptera, the group of insects that have only two wings (from the Greek

Physicists have long puzzled over why there is more matter in the Universe than its flipped twin, antimatter. Without this imbalance, the two types of material would have canceled out, leaving nothing but a boring glow in the vast emptiness of space. Somehow, at some point, something changed in the way the Universe works on

Science is founded on hard evidence, but ironically, many of the stories we tell about scientists and their experiments are not based on much truth. An apple falling on Newton’s head didn’t suddenly stimulate his idea of gravity; Darwin’s theory of evolution wasn’t founded on the beaks of finches. And Benjamin Franklin certainly didn’t discover

Say you’re an alien civilization with advanced technology looking to communicate with other civilizations throughout the Milky Way galaxy. Where would you be setting up your beacon? Probably close to home, right? The galactic center – that crowded, fascinating region around supermassive black hole Sagittarius A* – is one of the best spots in the

The colorful chaos of a wildflower meadow is a much ‘greener’ alternative to a perfectly manicured patch of grass, a team of researchers led by the University of Cambridge says. Cultivating a lawn is a highly popular, centuries-old tradition in much of the Western world. Yet as great as these uniform blankets of green are

Since its founding in 2016, Elon Musk‘s neurotechnology company Neuralink has had the ambitious mission to build a next-generation brain implant with at least 100 times more brain connections than devices currently approved by the US Food and Drug Administration (FDA). The company has now reached a significant milestone, having received FDA approval to begin

WASHINGTON — The United Arab Emirates has released new details about its planned mission to the main asteroid belt, one that is similar to an ongoing NASA mission. The UAE Space Agency said its Emirates Mission to the Asteroid Belt (EMA) is scheduled to launch in March 2028, flying by six asteroids in the main

Much like symbolically walking a mile in someone else’s shoes, visual perspective-taking is ‘seeing’ through someone else’s eyes: We follow someone’s gaze to learn what caught their attention, or we may even try and work out what someone else is seeing if our view is blocked. A new study by cognitive zoologists from Lund University

In addition to everything else that winemakers have to consider in the production of a perfect bottle is the smell of the drink: In certain types of winemaking processes, that smell can end up being rather undesirable. Aromas that you might describe as “rotten eggs”, “rubber” and “canned corn” are often termed as ‘reductive’ and

The sex of human and other mammal babies is decided by a male-determining gene on the Y chromosome. But the human Y chromosome is degenerating and may disappear in a few million years, leading to our extinction unless we evolve a new sex gene. The good news is two branches of rodents have already lost

An investigation into the mystery filaments hanging in space around the heart of the Milky Way has turned up an entirely new population of them, aligned along the galactic plane and pointing in the direction of the galactic center. The magnetized strands are likely the remnants of an outflow from the supermassive black hole Sagittarius

In spite of advances in making laboratory-cultured meat products taste like the real deal, we’re yet to see a single factory pumping chicken nuggets out of a vat. That might not be such a bad thing, according to a recent study by researchers from the University of California, Davis (UCD), and the University of California,

Ions inside a compact fusion reactor barely a meter (less than 3 feet) across have been heated to the magic figure of 100 million degrees Celsius (some 180 million degrees Fahrenheit) for the first time in a monumental step towards making nuclear fusion energy a practical reality. Researchers from Tokamak Energy Ltd in the UK,

WASHINGTON — NASA and Boeing will further delay the first crewed launch of the company’s CST-100 Starliner, which had been scheduled for July, to address two newly discovered issues with the spacecraft. At a briefing June 1 announced on little more than an hour’s notice, officials said they were standing down from preparations for the

The potent cocktail of toxins in the venom of one of the world’s deadliest spiders seems to vary depending on context. A new analysis of how funnel-web spiders produce their venom shows that factors such as the spider’s heart rate and defensiveness could play a role in the proportions of chemicals delivered on the ends

Atoms may not have bones, but we still want to know how they are put together. These tiny particles are the basis on which all normal matter is built (including our bones), and understanding them helps us understand the larger Universe. We currently use high-energy X-ray light to help us understand atoms and molecules and

Compared to apes, human children are more likely to open a mystery ‘box’ over one with known contents, a new study finds. This suggests that one thing that makes us unique as a species might be our innate sense of curiosity. Children “explored the uncertain options before the alternatives were presented, showing a higher degree

For most of us, this would be a nightmare. Imagine being curled up inside a 90 centimeter (36 inch) fabric sphere with a small window and a small air tank while dangling from the Canadarm. As your tiny sphere shifts, you’d see Earth out your tiny window, then the Space Shuttle, damaged by some accident

Current policies to limit global warming will expose more than a fifth of humanity to extreme and potentially life-threatening heat by century’s end, researchers warned Monday. Earth’s surface temperature is on track to rise 2.7 degrees Celsius (4.8 degrees Fahrenheit) above preindustrial levels by 2100, pushing more than two billion people – 22 percent of