Science

A swarm of 10 bright blue drones lifts off in a bamboo forest in China, then swerves its way between cluttered branches, bushes, and over uneven ground as it autonomously navigates the best flight path through the woods. The experiment, led by scientists at Zhejiang University, evokes scenes from science fiction – and the authors

WASHINGTON — Sierra Space says it is making good progress on its first Dream Chaser spaceplane as the company looks ahead to versions of the vehicle that can carry crews and perform national security missions. The company provided SpaceNews with images of the first Dream Chaser, named Tenacity, being assembled at its Colorado headquarters. The

Researchers have found the broken tooth of one of the largest carnivores ever to stalk the Earth. No, it isn’t T. rex. It isn’t even a dinosaur. Rather, the tooth belongs to a rare and mysterious species of giant ichthyosaur – a flesh-eating marine reptile that patrolled the world’s seas during the late Triassic period, about 205

Have you ever made a mistake that you wish you could undo? Correcting past mistakes is one of the reasons we find the concept of time travel so fascinating. As often portrayed in science fiction, with a time machine, nothing is permanent anymore – you can always go back and change it. But is time

The widely used anesthetic propofol has a dramatic effect on the oscillating waves circulating through the brain, a new primate study shows – important findings for understanding more about our bodies under anesthesia, and ensuring it remains safe to use. When we’re conscious, the brain is dominated by higher frequency waves (beta waves) – but

Early risers this month have been treated to an incredible and rare spectacle – the almost perfect alignment of four planets in the night sky. But it’s not over yet! In the early hours of 30 April 2022, we’ll have the chance to see Venus and Jupiter ‘nearly collide‘ as they appear to move incredibly

Most people have heard of a flash flood. ‘Flash droughts’, on the other hand, aren’t as familiar. Sadly, that may be about to change, as anomalous, sudden drought episodes are speeding up under the warmer conditions of climate change. A new analysis of flash droughts finds that droughts coming on suddenly seem to be striking

By exchanging a classical material for one with unique quantum properties, scientists have made a superconducting circuit that’s capable of feats long thought to be impossible. The discovery, made by researchers from Germany, the Netherlands, and the US, overturns a century of thought on the nature of superconducting circuits, and how their currents can be

WASHINGTON — The Commerce Department has hired a veteran of government and industry to be the next director of the Office of Space Commerce (OSC). Commerce Secretary Gina Raimondo announced April 27 that Richard DalBello will be the next director of the office, effective May 9. The office, located within the National Oceanic and Atmospheric

We still don’t know just how the first life emerged on Earth. One suggestion is that the building blocks arrived here from space; now, a new study of several carbon-rich meteorites has added weight to this idea. Using new, extremely sensitive analysis techniques for these meteorites, a team led by scientists from Hokkaido University in

Europe’s Large Hadron Collider has started up its proton beams again at unprecedented energy levels after going through a three-year shutdown for maintenance and upgrades. It only took a couple of days of tweaking for the pilot streams of protons to reach a record energy level of 6.8 tera electronvolts, or TeV. That exceeds the

Archaeologists in the United Kingdom have uncovered a Roman-era mercenary buried with his sword and a mysterious beheaded skeleton. The Vale of Glamorgan council in Wales hired rubicon Heritage Services to assess a road they wanted to be straightened. It led to the discovery of an extensive trove of archaeological artifacts and hundreds of graves

Compared to most places you might wander in the Solar System, Titan – the giant moon of Saturn – is in many ways strangely familiar to Earth. In fact, Titan is the only moon in the Solar System with a dense atmosphere, providing a number of quasi-Earth-like weather phenomena, such as methane rainfall, which feeds

They help us put food on our tables through pollination and nutrient recycling. They break down and dispose of organic waste, and are food for many animals.  As renowned ecologist E.O. Wilson put it, “insects are the little things that run the world”. At least 87 of humanity’s major crops depend on them, but it’s

Crises such as the covid pandemic, climate change and the war in Ukraine are fueling demand for geospatial information DENVER – Elon Musk earlier this month opened a new Tesla assembly plant in Austin, Texas, and predicted it will produce as many as 500,000 vehicles annually by next year.  To keep a closer eye on

Many people know modern dogs evolved from the grey wolf. But did you know most of the more than 340 modern dog breeds we have today only emerged within the past 200 years? Dogs were first domesticated during the Neolithic period between 29,000 and 14,000 years ago, and have been closely linked to humans ever

The world’s largest particle collider is getting ready to smash atoms harder than ever before. Following a three-year break of scheduled maintenance, upgrades, and pandemic delays, the Large Hadron Collider (LHC) is preparing to power up for its third, and most powerful yet, experimental period. If all initial tests and checks starting this month go well, scientists

Somewhere by the banks of what is now the river Aveyron in the south of France, tens of thousands of years ago, families gathered by the light of a roaring fire to watch tiny creatures dance amid the shadow and flame. Or so we might imagine. A fresh look at more than 50 stone plaquettes

When two bodies in space are close together enough, their gravity acts as a brake, slowing them until one’s rotation ‘locks’ to match its orbit. This tidal locking means that one side of the smaller body is permanently facing the larger – it’s the reason why we only ever see one side of the Moon from

Each year on April 22 Google’s homepage marks the occasion of Earth Day. Most of the time, these interactive logos are a celebration of our planet and its ecosystems, but this year, after a particularly devastating international climate report, the Google Doodle has taken a stark turn. In 2018, the Earth Day doodle featured the

SAN FRANCISCO — Copernic Space, the latest company to bring Kevin O’Connell onto its advisory board, is unlike other ventures the former director of the U.S. Office of Space Commerce has joined. In contrast to the space situational awareness and space traffic management startups O’Connell tends to work with, Copernic Space has the lofty ambition

It’s official: after some careful data analysis, the Tonga volcano eruption of 2022 has been confirmed as the largest explosive eruption of the 21st century, and on par with the biggest eruptions ever recorded. Having ejected material around 10 cubic kilometers (more than 2 cubic miles) in volume, generating an atmospheric shock wave that circled

Scientists are hopeful that solid-state thermophotovoltaic (TPV) cells with no moving parts can achieve higher efficiencies at higher temperatures when it comes to converting heat into electricity – and lead the way to power grids based entirely on renewables. One such TPV cell has now hit a new world record of 40 percent efficiency, researchers

Many of us are familiar with imposter syndrome: feelings of doubt about our skills and intelligence, and a sense that we’re going to get exposed as frauds at any moment. It can be a debilitating mental condition, but new research has found a positive angle. It turns out that people with imposter syndrome are more

We’ve written about some truly stunning deep space pictures here on ScienceAlert, but a new Hubble snap showcasing a special collection of five galaxies has to be one of the best yet – even by our high standards. The group of galaxies is called the Hickson Compact Group 40, and they’re unusually close together at the

Clouds that form in the frosty air above Antarctica are different in the way that water and ice interact inside them, a new study reveals – and that in turn changes how much sunlight they reflect back into space, which is important for climate change models. Through a combination of modeling, satellite imagery and data

There’s never been a house call quite like this. In a first for telepresence communication, a NASA flight surgeon was ‘holoported’ to the International Space Station (ISS), appearing and conversing as a virtual presence in real time, hundreds of miles above the surface of Earth. If it sounds like Star Trek, you’re not too far

VICTORIA, British Columbia — Canada’s military will establish a new space division later this year as it further develops its capabilities and skills for space operations. Royal Canadian Air Force Brig. Gen. Michael Adamson is the services’s director general for space. Credit: Royal Canadian Air Force Royal Canadian Air Force Brig. Gen. Michael Adamson, the services’s

It’s confirmed: The hottest rock ever discovered in Earth’s crust really was super-hot.  The rock, a fist-sized piece of black glass, was discovered in 2011 and first reported in 2017, when scientists wrote in the journal Earth and Planetary Science Letters that it had been formed in temperatures reaching 4,298 degrees Fahrenheit (2,370 degrees Celsius), hotter than

One of the ways we can fully realize the potential of quantum computers is by basing them on both light and matter – this way, information can be stored and processed, but also travel at the speed of light. Scientists have just taken a step closer to this goal, by successfully producing the largest hybrid