Science

For centuries, people have dreamed of being driven at speed across the vast oceans of space by winds of light. As whimsical as the idea sounds, nudging reflective sails slowly towards the speed of light using nothing more than the punch of photons might be our only plausible shot at reaching another star inside of

DUBAI, U.A.E. — SpaceX has won a contract to launch an Emirati high-resolution imaging satellite on a Falcon 9 rideshare mission in 2023. The Mohammed Bin Rashid Space Centre (MBRSC) announced at an Oct. 27 press conference here, held during the 72nd International Astronautical Congress, that it selected SpaceX to launch its MBZ SAT satellite

Raging wildfires tore through Antarctica 75 million years ago, back when dinosaurs still roamed the Earth, a new study finds. During the late Cretaceous period (100 million to 66 million years ago), one of the warmest periods on Earth, Antarctica’s James Ross Island was home to a temperate forest of conifers, ferns, and flowering plants known as angiosperms,

For the first time, physicists have been able to directly measure one of the ways exploding stars forge the heaviest elements in the Universe. By probing an accelerated beam of radioactive ions, a team led by physicist Gavin Lotay of the University of Surrey in the UK observed the proton-capture process thought to occur in

You can’t see them from the surface, but they’re definitely there. Scientists have revealed the discovery of hundreds of ancient ceremonial sites, many of which belonged to the Maya civilization, hiding in plain sight just underneath the landscape of modern-day southern Mexico. The largest of these structures – called Aguada Fénix – was announced by

In December last year, the media reported an intriguing signal we at the Breakthrough Listen project found in our radio telescope data. Dubbed BLC1, the signal didn’t appear to be the result of any recognizable astrophysical activity or any familiar Earth-based interference. The trouble was, we weren’t ready to discuss it. When you’re searching for

The Arctic may no longer be the refuge it once was for migrating animals. Scientists now fear that climate change and environmental degradation have turned the yearly journey of numerous species, including birds, butterflies and ungulates, into an ecological trap. Upon reaching their destination, many animals are likely starving, being hunted or dying of disease

DUBAI, U.A.E. — An international group of elected officials is using a conference this week to build awareness about the importance of space among other politicians. The International Astronautical Federation’s 72nd International Astronautical Congress, taking place this week here, included as one of its side events the 11th International Meeting for Members of Parliaments, attracting

A tiny crab scuttled around a forest floor, in the time of dinosaurs, minding its own business, when a blob of tree goop oozed onto it. Despite its struggles – during which it may have amputated its own leg in a futile attempt at escape – the sticky tree resin hardened around it, entombing it

Almost 20 years after researchers first predicted electron quadruplets, evidence of their existence has been shown to occur in experimental setups, representing a brand new state of matter that opens up a whole new field of possibilities in physics. Technically what we’re talking about here is fermionic quadrupling, referring to the type of particles involved

A series of new psychology studies has found most people want to tax all billionaires as a group, but think that, as individuals, they deserve to keep their hard-earned fortune. It’s a paradox that seems to say something about how we find it easier to relate to a solitary person than a group. The findings

If you’ve always wanted to discover a planet for your very own, now’s your chance. Researchers are calling on the public for help in identifying exoplanets – planets orbiting stars outside of our own Solar System. The Planet Hunters Next-Generation Transit Search (NGTS), run by an international group of astronomers, has five years’ worth of

If you’re wondering just how much scientific consensus there is that humans have caused the climate of our planet to change, we can now put a number on it: 99.9 percent. That doesn’t leave much room for doubt. To get to that figure, researchers looked in detail at a total of 3,000 peer-reviewed studies randomly

WASHINGTON — SpaceX performed a static-fire test of a Starship vehicle Oct. 21 as debate continues about an environmental assessment of the company’s proposed launch operations in Texas. SpaceX performed two brief firings of a single Raptor engine mounted in a Starship vehicle called Ship 20 at its Boca Chica, Texas, test site. The tests

The mysteries to behold in the world’s vast oceans never cease to amaze us. Like this latest haul of deep-sea creatures with bulging torsos, spiky backbones, armor-like horns and eerily translucent bodies that are strangely beautiful – and perplexing. Reefed from the depths of the Gulf of Mexico, the critters are a collection of otherworldly

In attempts to understand the very nature of our reality, physicists sure have some mind-bending theories. Like what if information is a tangible and fundamental aspect of physical reality itself – alongside matter and energy? Or, alternatively, what if information is the fifth state of matter? Information is, after all, something all matter and energy

The ancestral homeland of all modern domestic horses was likely located along the steppes of Western Eurasia around 4,200 years ago, according to new genetic research. Within just 1,000 years, the powerful and docile horses raised here, in what is now modern Russia, seem to have replaced all the other breeds in Europe and Asia.

The formation of a planetary system is a somewhat messy affair. After a star has finished forming, the swirling, roiling disk of material left over from the process starts to clump together, forming the seeds of planets. The complex gravitational environment is not a kind one, however, and these bodies jostle and collide as they

Microplastics are turning up everywhere. We’ve found them in rivers, lakes, and oceans; in soil, snow and ice; in fish, whales, and us. In recent years, we’ve even started to measure these tiny particles in the very air we breathe. We still don’t know what, if anything, that’s doing to human health, but researchers in

WASHINGTON — NASA continues to stand behind Boeing as the company works to resolve a valve problem with its CST-100 Starliner that will push back operational missions of the commercial crew vehicle into 2023. NASA and Boeing officials provided an update Oct. 19 on the investigation into the stuck valves in the Starliner’s propulsion system

A grizzly bear attacked a photographer’s camera and ended up starring in a grisly photo that has won the photographer an award. Zack Clothier, a professional photographer based in Montana, set up a camera trap pointing at an elk carcass hoping to get some shots of scavenging wildlife. He returned to find his camera setup trashed and

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