Science

A 2,200-year-old ceramic drinking vessel has confirmed what archaeologists have long suspected: some ancient Egyptians were tripping on hallucinogens. For the first time, scientists have discovered the organic residue of psychedelic plants within an ancient Egyptian artifact, which once held a fruity, fermented sedative, sweetened with honey, tinged with possible licorice, and deliberately imbued with

Astronomers often use the Milky Way as a standard for studying how galaxies form and evolve. Since we’re inside it, astronomers can study it in detail with advanced telescopes. By examining it in different wavelengths, astronomers and astrophysicists can understand its stellar population, its gas dynamics, and its other characteristics in far more detail than

WASHINGTON — NASA estimated it would have to cancel up to four commercial lunar lander missions and delay up to four more to fly a rover mission the agency announced in July it planned to cancel. NASA announced in July its intent to cancel the Volatiles Investigating Polar Exploration Rover (VIPER) mission, citing cost and

Venting when angry seems sensible. Conventional wisdom suggests expressing anger can help us quell it, like releasing steam from a pressure cooker. But this common metaphor is misleading, according to a recent meta-analytic review. Researchers at Ohio State University analyzed 154 studies on anger, finding little evidence that venting helps. In some cases, it could

There was water on Mars as early as 4.45 billion years ago, just a short time after the planet formed from the leftover dust of the growing Sun. The evidence? A tiny grain of zircon, smaller than the width of a human hair, with minerals trapped inside that could only have formed in the presence

WASHINGTON — Firefly Aerospace says it is planning a launch of its first lunar lander mission in January, meaning that none of the three commercial lander missions once slated to launch in the fourth quarter of this year will do so. Firefly announced Nov. 25 that it is planning to launch its Blue Ghost 1

There’s value in hitting your deadlines, a new study shows: work submitted late is often thought to be of lower quality, even if it’s on a par with work finished on time, and the perception of the worker becomes more negative too. Late submissions will get inferior rankings even if they only slightly miss the

The most powerful cosmic-ray electrons and positrons ever detected slamming into Earth’s atmosphere carry energies so high they can only have come from relatively close by, new research has revealed. We’re quite safe and protected down here on Earth’s surface, shielded by an atmospheric bubble, but our planet is under constant bombardment from cosmic rays.

Can you see three trees from your home, school or workplace? Is there tree canopy cover shading at least 30% of the surrounding neighbourhood? Can you find a park within 300 metres of the building? These three simple questions form the basis of the “3+30+300 rule” for greener, healthier, more heat tolerant cities. This simple

HELSINKI — Managing the growing threat of space debris requires greater urgency, with improved sensor capability, filling data gaps, economic incentives and new technologies all needed, according to a panel discussion on the issue. With approximately one million objects measuring between 1 cm and 10 cm orbiting Earth, according to ESA’s models, space debris is

While humans have been making their mark on the surfaces of this Earth for at least tens of thousands of years, it’s difficult to pinpoint the exact moment our impulse to record what we saw tipped into what we would consider ‘writing’. Now, a team from the University of Bologna in Italy has linked symbols

Well, the verdict is in. The Moon is not made of green cheese after all. A thorough investigation published in May 2023 found that the inner core of the Moon is, in fact, a solid ball with a density similar to that of iron. This, researchers hope, will help settle a long debate about whether

Sugar addiction is on the rise. Globally, sugar intake has quadrupled over the last 60 years, and it now makes up around 8 percent of all our calories. This sounds like sugar’s keeping us fed, but added sugars are actually empty calories – they are bereft of any nutrients like vitamins or fibres. The result

Join us December 4 at 1:00 PM EST for a webinar featuring leading experts across government, academia, and the commercial sectors to explore how space technology is transforming the way we predict and address severe weather challenges. Discover the latest advancements in satellite systems, Predictive AI, and cross-sector collaboration that are helping to protect lives

She was, for a while, the oldest known member of the human family. Fifty years after the discovery of Lucy in Ethiopia, the remarkable remains continue to yield theories and questions. In a nondescript room in the National Museum of Ethiopia, the 3.18-million-year-old bones are delicately removed from a safe and placed on a long

Evidence is growing that Mars was once sloshy and wet, draped with lakes and oceans, which lapped at shorelines and deposited sediments that are, even as you read these words, being scrutinized by robots rolling across the now dry and dusty surface. Water was there. We know it was. But piecing together when and how,

The West Coast’s rainy season has arrived in force, as an atmospheric river carrying moisture from the tropics joins a bomb cyclone off the Pacific Northwest coast. Heavy, wet snow began falling in the mountains on Nov. 19, 2024, and bursts of rain have been blasting the Oregon and Northern California coasts. These storms are

NEW YORK — Commercial space station developers are questioning whether NASA’s reconsideration of continuous human presence in low Earth orbit risks holding back International Space Station alternatives. Pam Melroy, NASA Deputy Administrator, last month said the agency was reassessing whether it needed a “continuous heartbeat or a continuous capability” while transitioning to commercial alternatives after

You share a lot more than just meals and hobbies with your family and friends: you also give each other gut microbes, meaning your personal flora can serve as a detailed profile of your social life. A new study has found just how much face-to-face social interactions impact the human gut microbiome. The study, led

A star more than 160,000 light-years from Earth has just become the epic subject of the first close-up portrait of a star in another galaxy. It’s called WOH G64, a red supergiant star ensconced in the Large Magellanic Cloud dwarf galaxy orbiting the Milky Way. It’s so large that it has, for some years, been

In September 1933, American meteorologist Joseph Kincer asked a simple question: is the climate changing? So began the effort to understand the scope of humanity’s interference with the climate. By examining trends in measured temperatures at many different locations around the world, Kincer concluded that the world was getting warmer, but did not suggest a

NEW YORK — Investors are preparing for the incoming Trump administration to expand the defense budgets driving the space industry’s growth. “I think that it’s going to bring more investment into the space market,” Mark Boggett, CEO and managing partner at British early-stage space investor Seraphim, said Nov. 20 during the Deutsche Bank Global Space

An unprecedented glimpse of the human brain as it leaves the womb and enters the outside world has revealed an explosive growth spurt. Within the first few months of a newborn’s life, brain scans suggest, a sudden influx of sensory information triggers the formation of billions of new neural connections that did not exist in

The mathematics Albert Einstein devised to describe the gravitational workings of the physical Universe in the early 20th century is still holding strong. In one of the biggest tests of general relativity to date, a huge team of astronomers has mapped the distribution of nearly 6 million galaxies across 11 billion years of the Universe’s

Parts of the Great Barrer Reef have suffered the highest coral mortality on record, Australian research showed Tuesday, with scientists fearing the rest of it has suffered a similar fate. The Australian Institute of Marine Science said surveys of 12 reefs found up to 72 percent coral mortality, thanks to a summer of mass bleaching,

WASHINGTON — A congressional advisory body is calling for urgent measures to counter China’s rapid advancements in artificial intelligence, quantum computing, biotechnology, and space technologies. The U.S.-China Economic and Security Review Commission in its annual report released Nov. 19 highlights the Chinese government’s state-led investments and “techno-nationalist” strategies as key drivers behind its progress in

Ranging from a threatening hiss to a blood-curdling scream, the sound of the Aztec death whistle is as creepy as the skull-like appearance of the instrument that produces it. Brain scans suggest the whistle’s tones may do more than create a scary ambience. Swiss and Norwegian researchers found hearing them activates a variety of higher

If you were lucky enough to observe a total eclipse, you are certain to remember the halo of brilliant light around the Moon during totality. It’s known as the corona, and it is the diffuse outer atmosphere of the Sun. Although it is so thin we’d consider it a vacuum on Earth, it has a

Extreme weather events and rising seas are putting precious heritage sites around the world in harm’s way. A stunning example of this phenomenon in 2024 was a stone pyramid in Mexico succumbing to an increasingly chaotic global climate. On the night of July 29, the 15-meter-high (roughly 50-foot-high) square monument located in the state of

As efficient as electronic data storage systems can be, they’ve got nothing on nature’s own version – DNA. A new technique for writing data to DNA works like a printing press and makes it easy enough that anyone could do it. Writing data to DNA usually involves synthesizing strands one letter at a time, like