Science

SAN FRANCISCO – Iceye and Kongsberg Satellite Services (KSAT) announced plans Sept. 25 to extend their joint campaign to speed up access to synthetic aperture radar (SAR) data for government and commercial customers. “The newly signed contract covers further data purchases and extended operations of Iceye’s near real-time SAR processor within the KSAT ground network,

The map of the world looked very different 240 million years ago. Earth’s modern-day continents were joined together in one Pac-Man-shaped supercontinent known as Pangea, which eventually split into two fragments: Laurasia in the north and Gondwana in the south. The former became Europe, Asia, and North America. The latter dispersed to form modern-day Africa,

When two neutron stars collide, it’s not like we can just pop up there with a thermometer to measure the intense temperatures being generated at the heart of the collision. There are other observables that can help us calculate surface temperatures, but inside? That’s a little trickier. Add to that the fact that we’ve only

Many think of dogs as loyal, love-filled companions, and cats as cute beasts that tolerate us – but we might have to rethink that a little. According to new research, cats can get just as bonded to their human friends as dogs do. This may not come as a huge surprise to those who live

Venus is not a nice place, by human standards. For a world named after a Roman goddess of love and beauty, it really is quite the toxic, super-heated hellscape. But it wasn’t always this way. In a new study, scientists make the case for how ancient Venus could have once supported life alongside oceans of

It’s easy to feel hopeless about the future of our world, especially when the latest IPCC report warned that we have barely a decade left to prevent the most catastrophic climate change scenario. Meanwhile, Earth’s climate continues to smash record after record, plastic will outweigh fish in the oceans by 2050, and new species are

Here’s your dismal fact of the day: if the world’s cement industry was a country, it would sit just behind China and the US as the third leading producer of carbon pollution. It doesn’t need to be that way, though. We just might be able to change that ugly statistic by producing the ingredients for

WAILEA, Hawaii — Despite the ongoing debate about the orbital debris risks posed by proposed satellite megaconstellations, one expert believes that an even greater risk comes from clusters of objects already in orbit. In a concluding presentation at the Advanced Maui Optical and Space Surveillance Technologies, or AMOS, conference here Sept. 20, Darren McKnight of

Something mysterious happened nearly half a billion years ago that triggered one of the most important changes in the history of life on Earth. Suddenly, there was an explosion of species, with the biodiversity of invertebrate animals increasing from a very low level to something similar to what we see today. The most popular explanation

A huge experiment to pin down the mass of one of the Universe’s most perplexing particles has put a cap on how big the neutrino might actually be. Once considered massless, the particle’s mass is now thought to weigh no more than a single electronvolt. It might not be a precise answer, but it does

More than 10 years after it was released, watching Pixar’s film WALL-E today is a chilling experience. The backdrop of WALL-E and EVE’s robot love story is a dystopian society where humans have abandoned Earth to their trash and left robots to clean up while they cruise space. When the much-loved animation came out in

In the most extreme regions of the Universe, galaxies are being killed. Their star formation is being shut down and astronomers want to know why. The first ever Canadian-led large project on one of the world’s leading telescopes is hoping to do just that. The new program, called the Virgo Environment Traced in Carbon Monoxide

As it looks increasingly unlikely we’re going to meet our climate mitigation targets, scientists have been investigating more and more extreme solutions, such as geoengineering. Examples include spraying huge amounts of sunlight-reflecting particles into the atmosphere, or dumping trillions of tons of fake snow onto glaciers to stabilise them. These ideas are untested, incredibly risky,

Sounds like the Defense Advanced Research Projects Agency (DARPA) was just kicked out of mom’s basement. In an inexplicable tweet, DARPA asked for help finding “commercially managed underground urban tunnels and facilities able to host research and experimentation.” And nobody knows why. The ideal space would be a human-made underground environment spanning several city blocks w/

WAILEA, Hawaii — With satellite operators doing a poor job complying with guidelines to deorbit their satellites, incentives or even regulation may be inevitable to address concerns about orbital debris and satellite collisions. During a Sept. 19 presentation at the Advanced Maui Optical and Space Surveillance Technologies, or AMOS, conference here, Francesca Letizia, an engineer

If you had to name a creature in the ocean with sharp teeth, you’d probably say “shark”, right? I’d be thinking shark. Obviously, the answer is shark. But what about the humble sea urchin? These strange, prickly orbs dwell on the bottom of the seabed and don’t even look like they have mouths, let alone

Water is a weird molecule, and no matter how many strange things about it we discover, it seems like there are always more unexpected surprises waiting around the corner – even after centuries of researching it. Case in point: in a new study, scientists in the US have discovered that in the right circumstances, water

It’s springtime Down Under, and along with overexuberant local football fans, that means another annual menace on Australian streets: angry birds. September is peak magpie breeding season. And like much of Australia’s native wildlife — think deadly snakes, spiders and jellyfish — the country’s magpies are meaner than those found elsewhere. Male birds defending their

Compared to our brief human lives, we tend to think of events on galactic scales as ones that happen extremely slowly. But that’s not always the case. In a spectacular fashion, six galaxies have just undergone a huge transformation in a matter of mere months. They’ve gone from relatively peaceful galaxies to active quasars –

Katharine Hayhoe often encounters people in the US and Canada who still regard climate change as an issue best left for the distant future. “That it affects future generations, not me, it affects others but not me, it affects people who live over there, but not me,” she said. “And why is that dangerous? Because

Wi-Fi just turned 6. Not in terms of years old (Wi-Fi is a lot older than that), but in terms of its version number: Wi-Fi 6 officially launched this week. What does that mean for you? Well, if you’re anything like me – meaning you spend a lot of time indoors using the internet –

Raymond: “It’s no longer good enough just to have a satellite that can survive launch and can survive initial operations. You have to have a satellite that is defendable.” NATIONAL HARBOR, Md. — In his first major address as commander of U.S. Space Command, Air Force Gen. John Raymond said his goal is to keep

It all started earlier this month. Veterinarians in Oslo, Norway were reportedly flummoxed by a rising number of sick dogs being brought to their practices. The pets appeared to be suffering from some sort of mysterious bowel disease, with similar signs of vomiting and bloody diarrhoea. What had started in the capital city soon spread

A team of researchers has just demonstrated quantum enhancement in an actual X-ray machine, achieving the desirable goal of eliminating background noise for precision detection. The relationships between photon pairs on quantum scales can be exploited to create sharper, higher-resolution images than classical optics. This emerging field is called quantum imaging, and it has some

According to new research, the dead may not always rest in peace… quite literally. For more than a year after death, corpses move around “significantly”, and this finding could be important for forensic investigations. Researchers at an Australia-based decomposition research facility – colloquially known as a “body farm”, a term some scientists find disrespectful –

In the Solar System, there are over 6,300 known comets. There are millions of asteroids. And of all those objects, only ‘Oumuamua – a red, cigar-shaped asteroid – is known to have come from elsewhere. Until now. A new discovery, revealed just last week, has astronomers excited. A comet named C/2019 Q4 (Borisov), discovered on

Reader question: I heard that carbon dioxide makes up 0.04 percent of the world’s atmosphere. Not 0.4 percent or 4 percent, but 0.04 percent! How can it be so important in global warming if it’s such a small percentage? I am often asked how carbon dioxide can have an important effect on global climate when its

Silicon has had a very good run as the material upon which all of our electronics are based, but it’s starting to reach its limits. Now there’s a new contender for running our computers and smartphones: carbon nanotubes. Scientists just made the largest working computer chip to date out of this hugely promising material. And

PARIS — The European Union’s equivalent of a foreign ministry is starting a new effort to promote the need for sustainable space operations, but that effort will not initially include any new regulation of European satellite operators. Carine Claeys, special envoy for space and head of the Space Task Force for the European External Action

Komodo dragons – the biggest, fiercest, most impressive lizards on our planet – just got that much more amazing. A new discovery shows that under their scaly skin, these animals are completely covered in mail-like armour built out of tiny bones, from nose to tail-tip. Why would something as formidable as a Komodo dragon (Varanus