Science

NASA administrator Bill Nelson said Wednesday the agency will reveal the “deepest image of our Universe that has ever been taken” on July 12, thanks to the newly operational James Webb Space Telescope. “If you think about that, this is farther than humanity has ever looked before,” Nelson said during a press briefing at the

On top of intensifying algal blooms and depleting oxygen, a new study reveals Earth’s bodies of freshwater are also evaporating at a greater rate than we realized. What’s more, “lake evaporation plays a larger role in the hydrological cycle than previously thought,” says ecologist Gang Zhao who was at Texas A&M University during the study.

Acquisition executive Frank Calvelli said he would be open to a different model than the current two-vendor approach WASHINGTON — The Space Force launch procurement command in Los Angeles later this year will send to the Pentagon a proposed strategy for selecting national security launch services providers for the next round of contracts expected to

Long ago, almost up until the end of the last ice age, a peculiar giant kangaroo roamed the mountainous rainforests of New Guinea. Now, research published by myself and colleagues suggests this kangaroo was not closely related to modern Australian kangaroos. Rather, it represents a previously unknown type of primitive kangaroo unique to New Guinea.

Scientists have figured out how to make platinum more affordable as a catalyst: turn it into a low-temperature liquid. It’s been known for centuries that noble metals like platinum, gold, ruthenium, and palladium make excellent catalysts for chemical reactions, because they help break the chemical bonds between atoms more efficiently than other metals. But noble

A US navy destroyer sunk during World War II has been found nearly 7,000 meters (23,000 feet) below sea level off the Philippines, making it the world’s deepest shipwreck ever located, an American exploration team said. The USS Samuel B. Roberts went down during a battle off the central island of Samar on 25 October

The search for life on Mars may have just gotten a whole lot more complicated. While rovers such as Curiosity and Perseverance scour the surface looking for traces of ancient life, new evidence reveals we may have to dig much deeper to find them. Any evidence of amino acids left over from a time when

The oceans are one of our planet’s most important carbon sinks, with currently around 39,000 gigatons of carbon dioxide locked away – that’s around 50 times more than what’s circulating in the atmosphere right now. However, we can’t rely on this carbon capture and storage to solve our climate crisis problem, because we’re producing too much

For years, computer scientists have warned of the perils artificial intelligence (AI) poses in the future, and not just in the sensational terms of machines overthrowing humanity, but in far more insidious ways too. While this cutting-edge technology is capable of wondrous breakthroughs, researchers have also observed the darker sides of machine learning systems, showing

WASHINGTON — The two companies NASA selected earlier this month to develop spacesuits for the International Space Station and Artemis lunar missions were the only companies to bid on the project, according to agency procurement documents. NASA announced June 1 it awarded contracts to teams led by Axiom Space and Collins Aerospace to develop new

A gold miner found a mummified baby woolly mammoth in the Trʼondëk Hwëchʼin Traditional Territory in Yukon, Canada.  According to a press release from the local government, the female baby mammoth has been named Nun cho ga by the First Nation Tr’ondëk Hwëch’in elders, which translates to “big baby animal” in the Hän language.  Nun cho ga

Sometimes the discovery of new physics demands insane levels of energy. Big machines. Fancy equipment. Countless hours of sifting through reams of data. And then sometimes the right combination of materials can open a doorway to invisible realms in a space little bigger than a tabletop. Take this new kind of relative to the Higgs

An overlooked archaeological site outside of Canterbury turned out to contain some of the oldest human-made tools in Britain. Many of the artifacts were found in the 1920s in the market town of Fordwich, Kent, but they were only recently properly dated. According to modern radiometric techniques, the collection of more than 330 hand axes

Is there life on Mars? Has there ever been? It’s one of the biggest questions we have about our planetary neighbor; now, research points to one particular part of the red planet that could have been able to harbor life several times across billions of years. Through a thorough study of images captured by the

In many places around the world, grocery store produce aisles are a delightful array of colors, even in the depths of winter, when it feels like not much could grow outside. But this year-round variety has a real cost on the planet, with a new study finding that ‘food miles’ account for 19 percent of

One priority for Frank Calvelli, assistant secretary of the Air Force for space acquisition and integration, is to impose discipline in procurement programs WASHINGTON — The Space Force’s new acquisition executive Frank Calvelli says there is no quick fix for problems that for years have plagued defense procurements, such as cost overruns and schedule delays. 

Once again, life has been found in an environment that would be deeply inhospitable to most organisms living on this planet. Fed by waters that pass through 600 meters (1,970 ft) of permafrost, the sub-zero, salty, virtually oxygen-free Lost Hammer Spring in the Canadian Arctic is one of the harshest places on Earth. Even here, however,

Australian scientists have created the world’s first-ever quantum computer circuit – one that contains all the essential components found on a classical computer chip but at the quantum scale.  The landmark discovery, published in Nature today, was nine years in the making.  “This is the most exciting discovery of my career,” senior author and quantum

Scientists have identified the traits that may make a person more likely to claim they hear the voices of the dead. According to research published in 2021, a predisposition to high levels of absorption in tasks, unusual auditory experiences in childhood, and a high susceptibility to auditory hallucinations all occur more strongly in self-described clairaudient

Pluto’s life partner, Charon, has a disarming red ‘cap’. Ever since New Horizons snapped the moon‘s rust-tinted north pole on its 2015 flyby, scientists have pondered the planetary processes responsible for leaving such a bold landmark. Scientists initially suspected the iron-colored smear (nicknamed Mordor Macula) was methane captured from Pluto’s surface, its red color the

These days, peeing on your food plants may be considered a gross and wacky gardening hack, despite the practice having been proven beneficial for thousands of years. But our modern squeamishness has meant gardeners and farmers alike must resort to expensive fertilizers to provide their crops with the much-needed nutrients found free in our pee.

To keep peace on Earth, we must keep peace in space. The time has come for America to confront the reality that space has been weaponized by our adversaries. Space has long been a peaceful environment for research and commerce on Earth with conditions that deny tyrants the luxury of concealment, the advantage of surprise,

A fisherman on the Mekong river in Cambodia has hooked the biggest freshwater fish ever recorded, scientists said – a 300-kilogram stingray. The giant freshwater stingray, which measured four meters (13 feet) from snout to tail, was caught last week and released back into the wild after being fitted with a tag to track its

A new breakthrough has allowed physicists to create a beam of atoms that behaves the same way as a laser, and that can theoretically stay on “forever”. This might finally mean the technology is on its way to practical application, although significant limitations still apply. Nevertheless, this is a huge step forward for what is

As people age, their immune systems naturally begin to decline. This aging of the immune system, called immunosenescence, may be an important part of such age-related health problems as cancer and cardiovascular disease, as well as older people’s less effective response to vaccines. But not all immune systems age at the same rate. In our

When a star dies, what happens to its planets? Well, if that star is a certain white dwarf 86 light-years away, those planets are currently in the process of being torn apart and eaten by the star, like some grotesque cosmic performance of Kronos devouring his children. This is not entirely unusual for white dwarfs.

A historic drought affecting Italy’s largest river has brought a World War II-era shipwreck to light. The Po River runs 405 miles (651.8 km) from the Cottian Alps to empty into the Adriatic Sea. It’s currently facing its worst drought in 70 years, which has caused a decades-old sunken ship to resurface. The Zibello, a

The National Space Intelligence Center will be run by a new Space Force unit, Space Delta 18 WASHINGTON — The U.S. Space Force on June 24 plans to formally establish the National Space Intelligence Center at Wright-Patterson Air Force Base, Ohio.  The NSIC will be run by a new Space Force unit, Space Delta 18,

Up to 12 feet (3.7 meters) in length and with a fierce, aggressive attitude, two new species of giant dwarf crocodile that have just been identified by scientists are not ones you would have wanted to encounter during the Early and Middle Miocene. These beasts would have roamed parts of Africa between 15 and 18

A few years ago, deep beneath the Apennine Mountains in Italy, a team of physicists hunted for flashes of light that just might suggest human consciousness is the product of gravitational forces. The fact they came up empty-handed doesn’t mean we’re all meat computers with no free will; it does make the quest for a suitable