Science

We now know, to within a tenth of a percent, how long a neutron can survive outside the atomic nucleus before decaying into a proton. This is the most precise measurement yet of the lifespan of these fundamental particles, representing a more than two-fold improvement over previous measurements. This has implications for our understanding of

You may have noticed that stressful situations tend to leave a bigger imprint on our memory banks than periods of peace and contentment, and new research may have now revealed the key reason why. There had been two schools of thought about this – that these stressful memories were either stored in a significantly different

Vivid green and purple auroras swirled and danced across the entire night sky in Sweden recently. The night-time light show was captured by an all-sky camera in Kiruna, Sweden, which is part of the European Space Agency’s (ESA) Space Weather Service Network. This camera is pointed straight up, and is fitted with a fish-eye lens

If Earth’s temperature rises by a significant enough margin, we could see a major restructuring of the plankton species living in our oceans. Not only would the diversity of species radically change, but warming oceans could see plankton migrating from the tropics towards the poles, away from waters growing too warm for habitability. In fact,

The standard white cane is an essential aid for getting out and about for many visually impaired people, but to date, it hasn’t offered much in the way of affordable modern updates – which is something that a group of researchers wants to change. Borrowing technology designed for autonomous vehicles, the team has come up

WASHINGTON — Engineers are investigating why one of the two solar arrays on NASA’s Lucy spacecraft may have failed to lock into place when deployed after launch Oct. 16. In an Oct. 17 statement, NASA said that while the spacecraft is healthy, one of the two circular solar panels “may not be fully latched” after

Microalgae and special types of bacteria have the power to puff vast amounts of oxygen into the atmosphere. In fact, these organisms are thought to be the main reason our planet first began hosting oxygenated air. New research suggests that this life-giving respiration works on a much smaller scale, too. When green algae and cyanobacteria

Scientists just broke the record for the coldest temperature ever measured in a lab: They achieved the bone-chilling temperature of 38 trillionths of a degree above -273.15 Celsius by dropping magnetized gas 393 feet (120 meters) down a tower. The team of German researchers was investigating the quantum properties of a so-called fifth state of

The patterns of activity produced by our brains are unique. They’re so unique that we can use brain connectivity maps to identify individuals just as reliably as fingerprints. “An individual’s functional brain connectivity profile is both unique and reliable, similar to a fingerprint, and it is possible, with near-perfect accuracy in many cases, to identify

A high-energy neutrino traced back to a violent encounter between a black hole and a star needs a different origin story, new research has found. An analysis of radio waves emitted by the encounter, known as AT2019dsg, has shown that it was fairly ordinary, at least as far as a black hole tearing apart a

The aviation industry is necessary for the world we live in today, but it places a strain on the environment, thanks to emissions from petroleum-based fossil fuel. According to a new study, we could reduce these emissions by up to 68 percent – by switching to a sustainable aviation fuel (SAF) derived from plants. Specifically,

HUNTSVILLE, Ala. — Virgin Galactic will postpone a SpaceShipTwo suborbital spaceflight that had been scheduled for this month, electing to instead immediately begin an extended maintenance period for the spaceplane and its carrier aircraft that will further delay the start of commercial flights. The company said Oct. 14 that it decided to move directly intended

When dinosaurs went extinct, they left big shoes to fill in pretty much every ecosystem on our planet. Even without feet, snakes stepped up to the challenge. Shortly after the asteroid impact, some 66 million years ago, new models suggest several slithery survivors quickly slid into the uncontested space. The dominance of dinosaurs had come to

Scientists are getting closer to being able to spot Hawking radiation – that elusive thermal radiation thought to be produced by a black hole’s event horizon. Just understanding the concept of this radiation is tricky though, let alone finding it. A new proposal suggests creating a special kind of quantum circuit to act as a ‘black

When I wake at 3am or so, I’m prone to picking on myself. And I know I’m not the only one who does this. A friend of mine calls 3am thoughts “barbed-wire thinking”, because you can get caught in it. The thoughts are often distressing and punitive. Strikingly, these concerns vaporize in the daylight, proving

A source of powerful radio signals from distant space has deepened the mystery of fast radio bursts. An analysis of data collected on the fast radio burst source FRB121102 in 2019 has counted 1,652 flares being spat out within a span of just 47 days. Setting a record for the most activity exhibited by a

A single bad El Niño can drive almost 6 million children into severe hunger, a new study has found. This is up to three times as many children that have gone hungry due to the global pandemic, and a clear demonstration of how El Niños can directly impact human wellbeing on a massive scale.  “It’s

Maxar said it “wants to ensure that the government is following its own rules in connection with the procurement” of the Transport Layer Tranche 1 WASHINGTON — Maxar Technologies filed a protest with the Government Accountability Office Oct. 8 challenging a Space Development Agency solicitation seeking industry bids for 126 satellites.  SDA on Aug. 30

In rocky, frosty landscapes, specific patterns of stones can end up forming – it’s like human hands have formed them, but without any gardener being anywhere near them. A new study shows how these formations can be created with needle ice – spikes of ice that rise up from the earth and are formed with

When the Nobel Prize-winning US physicist Robert Hofstadter and his team fired highly energetic electrons at a small vial of hydrogen at the Stanford Linear Accelerator Center in 1956, they opened the door to a new era of physics. Until then, it was thought that protons and neutrons, which make up an atom’s nucleus, were

Pre-human history is immensely hard to untangle. There are no early writings from the Neanderthals handily summarizing all the differences between the Australopithecus and the Orrorin. While we’re finding more ancient bones all the time, they’re still very limited, making it difficult to analyze and catalogue fossil discoveries into one of the many species of Homo, Graecopithecus, and all the

Astronomers have found a collection of stars doing something unexpected. Within 160 light-years of the Solar System, four red dwarf stars that should be quiet in radio observations have been caught emitting radio signals. According to an analysis of these signals, the best explanation for this activity is the presence of unseen exoplanets. It’s not,

For now, life is flourishing on our oxygen-rich planet, but Earth wasn’t always that way – and scientists have predicted that, in the future, the atmosphere will revert back to one that’s rich in methane and low in oxygen. This probably won’t happen for another billion years or so. But when the change comes, it’s

LONG BEACH, Calif. — NASA and Boeing are targeting the first half of 2022 to launch the rescheduled test flight of the CST-100 Starliner commercial crew vehicle as engineers continue to investigate a valve problem that postponed the mission two months ago. In an Oct. 8 statement, NASA said engineers had managed to free all

A newly discovered hippo tooth reveals prehistoric hippopotamuses roamed Britain as early as 1.5 million years ago, far earlier than we thought, giving us new insights into the land’s ancient climate. “The tooth closely matches other fossils belonging to the extinct species Hippopotamus antiquus,” said University of Leicester paleobiologist Neil Adams on Twitter. Today’s Britain

The more we look into the harsh extremes of Chile’s Atacama Desert, the more we find. Phenomena both mystifying and wonderful, occasionally bordering on alien. But in this incredibly dry place, it wasn’t just the climate that was unforgiving. Its ancient human inhabitants, making do in a parched place not best suited to hosting them,

Exoplanets – planets outside our Solar System – continue to provide astronomers with fascinating glimpses of other worlds, including the one designated WASP-76b. On this inferno-like planet, almost the size of Jupiter, the daytime surface temperatures are hot enough to vaporize iron, which could fall as rain on the slightly cooler night side. Now researchers have

Communities that rely on the Colorado River are facing a water crisis. Lake Mead, the river’s largest reservoir, has fallen to levels not seen since it was created by the construction of the Hoover Dam roughly a century ago. Arizona and Nevada are facing their first-ever mandated water cuts, while water is being released from

MOUNTAIN VIEW, Calif. — Companies that have demonstrated the technical viability of broadband satellite megaconstellations now face a bigger challenge: closing the business case. In sessions at the Satellite Innovation conference here, industry executives and observers expressed continued skepticism that constellations of hundreds or thousands of low Earth orbit satellites will be able to generate