Science

Finally, after what was arguably the worst summer on record for glaciers, snow has begun to fall in the European Alps. It is much needed. Over the 19 years that I have visited and studied the glaciers in Switzerland, I have not seen a summer like 2022. The scale of change is staggering. Glaciologists like

Laser-vision star tracker, docking system, and desert landing proven as practical space applications of the future Boeing’s CST-100 Starliner docks with the International Space Station on May 20, 2022, completing an important objective of the uncrewed Orbital Flight Test-2. Credit: NASA One day after launching May 19 from Florida’s Space Coast on a United Launch

The smartphones in our pockets have changed our lives in a multitude of ways – not least because we always have a camera to hand to capture special occasions, strange events, and perhaps the occasional rare wildlife sighting. On 29 August 2020, near the town of Whitehorse in Yukon, Canada, Thomas Jung – a wildlife

Decades of reinforcing neural connections can make the adult brain stubbornly resistant to rapid changes. Should our brain’s structure trap us in cycles of dark moods and thoughts, disorders like chronic depression can be extremely hard to shake. According to new research, some patients with major depressive disorder (MDD) can have their brains ‘rewired’ within

The lost star catalog of Hipparchus – regarded as the earliest known attempt to map the entire night sky – may have just been discovered on parchment preserved at St Catherine’s Monastery on Egypt’s Sinai Peninsula. In 2012, the student of leading biblical scholar Peter Williams noticed something curious behind the lettering of the Christian

The ocean covers most of our planet’s surface, accounts for the majority of our oxygen production, and provides a significant amount of resources by way of food, minerals, and energy. Yet our oceans are shockingly underrepresented when it comes to environmental conventions on an international scale. The deep blue yonder is often reduced to footnotes

You might suppose Hollywood is good at predicting the future. Indeed, Robert Wallace, head of the CIA’s Office of Technical Service and the US equivalent of MI6’s fictional Q, has recounted how Russian spies would watch the latest Bond movie to see what technologies might be coming their way. Hollywood’s continuing obsession with killer robots

Three upcoming launches and a crew handover will complete T-shaped orbital outpost HELSINKI — China is preparing to launch the final missions to complete its three-module Tiangong space station which it plans to keep constantly occupied for at least a decade. A Long March 5B is being assembled and tested at Wenchang Satellite Launch Center

Like all planets, Earth is the product of gravity. Bit by bit, the growing mass of dust and rock drew in sufficient material to become a swollen sphere of mineral we now call home. Still today gravity continues to mould our planet from within, in far more delicate ways than we might imagine. A new

Quantum entanglement is the binding together of two particles or objects, even though they may be far apart – their respective properties are linked in a way that’s not possible under the rules of classical physics. It’s a weird phenomenon that Einstein described as “spooky action at a distance“, but its weirdness is what makes

Paleolithic cuisine was anything but lean and green, according to a study on the diets of our Pleistocene ancestors. For a good 2 million years, Homo sapiens and their ancestors ditched the salad and dined heavily on meat, putting them at the top of the food chain. It’s not quite the balanced diet of berries,

Here is an idea that likely never crossed the mind of most space enthusiasts – a gas emitted from broccoli (and other plants) is one of the most indicative signs of the existence of life on a planet. At least according to a new study from researchers at the University of California Riverside. That gas,

Deputy press secretary Singh: ‘We are continuing to talk to SpaceX and other companies about satcom capabilities’ WASHINGTON — The Pentagon on Friday said it is looking at options to provide satellite communications services for Ukraine’s military forces following Elon Musk’s warning that SpaceX will suspend Starlink internet services in Ukraine unless the U.S. government

How you ‘parent’ your pooch has an impact on the kind of dog it grows up to be, a new study shows. An owner who’s highly responsive to a dog’s behavior and needs tends to lead to a more social, secure, and smart canine. Parenting styles and choices are known to influence the way that

The fun of splashing at the beach or exploring a creek is an iconic part of childhood for countless kids around the world. It may also be a valuable investment in lifelong mental health, according to a new study. Spending time in nature can significantly reduce stress, improve mood, and offer other mental health benefits,

Originally predicted by Einstein’s Theory of General Relativity, black holes are the most extreme object in the known Universe. These objects form when stars reach the end of their life cycle, blow off their outer layers, and are so gravitationally powerful that nothing (not even light) can escape their surfaces. They are also of interest

On 26 September 2022, leaks were discovered in the underwater Nord Stream 1 and 2 gas pipelines, located near Denmark and Sweden. Both pipelines are owned by Russia and were built to transport natural gas from Russia to Germany through the Baltic Sea. Officials have said the leaks were caused by deliberate action, not accidents,

How many brain cells does it take to play a video game? No, really. That’s not a joke, and there isn’t a punchline. Instead, there’s a real actual answer, thanks to a neural network system called DishBrain. If that game is Pong, the number of brain cells is around 800,000. While their slow-moving, one-sided strategy

Two years ago, I left my engineering position at Iceye to join a pre-seed space startup consisting of two people, one of which was me. As a newly minted CTO at a startup lacking capital, I was thrust into the fundraising game — with no deeper understanding of finance or business strategy than you’d expect

The least studied penguins in the world lay two eggs each breeding season, only to abandon the first one. Most of the time, the initial egg laid by erect-crested penguins (Eudyptes sclateri) simply rolls away. But sometimes, the female will purposefully ditch their first born, going so far as to push it out of the

The latest in nanoscale 3D scanning techniques have been used to reveal some of the finest secrets of a medieval material known as Zwischgold (part-gold): an ultra-thin metal foil consisting of a gold top layer and a silver base, used to gild sculptures. Up until now, only 2D cross-sections of the materials had been studied,

Observatories around the world have just detected a colossal flare of extremely energetic radiation described as “record-breaking“. The event, first detected on October 9, was so bright that it was initially confused for an event closer to home. Initially dubbed Swift J1913.1+1946, it was thought to be a brief flash of X-rays from a not-too-distant

William Shatner has made headlines this week with the announcement that his trip into space wasn’t the celebration or high note he thought it would be – instead, it felt like a “funeral for planet Earth”. In an excerpt of his new book Boldly Go published exclusively by Variety, the former Star Trek star reveals

TAMPA, Fla. — SpaceX Oct. 8 successfully deployed the first two of seven satellites Intelsat needs to clear C-band spectrum in the United States, keeping the operator on course to launch all but one of them before the end of this year. A Falcon 9 carrying Galaxy 33 and Galaxy 34 lifted off at 7:05

Without urgent and major interventions, America’s Great Salt Lake could experience ecosystem collapse in the next few years. In a worst-case scenario, according to findings presented at the Geological Society of America’s 2022 Connects Conference in Colorado this past weekend, the world-famous body of salt-water has just a few months before ecological recovery is significantly

The question of how precisely protons move through water in an electric field has fascinated scientists for centuries. Now, more than 200 years after the last major insight into the phenomenon, scientists have some clarity. In 1806, Theodor Grotthuss put forward a hypothesis, which came to be known as the Grotthuss mechanism for ‘proton jumping’,

The pandemic fueled a rise in first-time pet owners and people adopting puppies and kittens. While even inexperienced owners expect a new puppy will need some training, people rarely think the same applies to kittens. But just like dogs, cats need support to adjust to living alongside us. Simple forms of training can be good

An astrophotographer has captured a hauntingly beautiful image of a massive plume of plasma shooting out of the Sun. The fiery filament, known as a coronal mass ejection (CME), extended into space to a distance of more than 1 million miles (1.6 million kilometers) from the solar surface, according to the photographer. The image was

Hidden valleys buried beneath the ocean bottom in the North Sea were rapidly carved out during the “death throes” of an ancient ice sheet toward the end of the last ice age around 20,000 years ago, a new study shows. The surprising subterranean structures could yield clues as to how modern ice sheets will react