Science

Yesterday, humanity achieved a new and amazing first, 11 million kilometers (6.8 million miles) from home. After years of planning, NASA’s Double Asteroid Redirection Test (DART) finally slammed into a moonlet, Dimorphos, orbiting an asteroid, Didymos, in our first ever attempt to redirect the path of a significantly sized cosmic object. The images of the
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Lakes appearing in Alaska because of melting permafrost are “belching” methane into the atmosphere, a scientist working with NASA said. These lakes, called thermokarsts, are so full of the climate-damaging gas that it can be seen bubbling to the surface. More and more of these lakes are appearing as Alaska’s permafrost thaws with rising temperatures
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LAUREL, Md. — A NASA spacecraft collided with a moon orbiting a near Earth asteroid Sept. 26 in a demonstration of a technology that could one day be used to protect the Earth from a hazardous object. NASA’s Double Asteroid Redirection Test (DART) spacecraft hit Dimorphos, an asteroid about 160 meters across orbiting the larger
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More than eight months after the underwater volcano near Tonga erupted on Jan. 14, scientists are still analyzing the impacts of the violent blast, and they’re discovering that it could warm the planet. Recently, researchers calculated that the eruption of Hunga Tonga-Hunga Ha’apa spewed a staggering 50 million tons (45 million metric tons) of water
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A woman in labor is having a terrible time and suddenly shouts out: “Shouldn’t! Wouldn’t! Couldn’t! Didn’t! Can’t!” “Don’t worry,” says the doctor. “These are just contractions.” Until now, several theories have sought to explain what makes something funny enough to make us laugh. These include transgression (something forbidden), puncturing a sense of arrogance or
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In the wacky gravitational environment in the heart of our galaxy, astronomers have found a gas blob orbiting our supermassive black hole at superspeed. Its characteristics are helping astronomers probe the space immediately surrounding Sagittarius A* in the search for answers about why the galactic center flickers and flares across the entire electromagnetic spectrum. Their
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Burning the world’s remaining fossil fuel reserves would unleash 3.5 trillion tonnes of greenhouse gas emissions – 7 times the remaining carbon budget to cap global heating at 1.5 degrees Celsius – according to the first public inventory of hydrocarbons released Monday. ​Human activity since the Industrial Revolution, largely powered by coal, oil, and gas,
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PARIS — NASA said it completed all the objectives of a Space Launch System tanking test Sept. 21 despite the reoccurrence of liquid hydrogen leaks. The day-long test at Kennedy Space Center’s Launch Complex 39B involved filling the SLS core stage and upper stage with liquid hydrogen and liquid oxygen propellants, carrying out the “kickstart
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In 1916, Karl Schwarzchild theorized the existence of black holes as a resolution to Einstein’s field equations for his Theory of General Relativity. By the mid-20th century, astronomers began detecting black holes for the first time using indirect methods, which consisted of observing their effects on surrounding objects and space. Since the 1980s, scientists have
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Maj. Gen. Schiess: ‘We are preparing and posturing for the fight’ NATIONAL HARBOR, Md. — The U.S. Space Operations Command is assigning cybersecurity and intelligence specialists to work side-by-side with satellite operators so they’re better prepared to protect U.S. systems from electronic and physical threats, said Maj. Gen. Douglas Schiess. “We are preparing and posturing
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A core principle of Einstein’s general theory of relativity has just passed its most stringent test yet. Using a specially designed satellite, an international team of scientists measured the accelerations of pairs of free-falling objects in Earth’s orbit. Results based on five months’ worth of data indicated the accelerations didn’t differ by more than one
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