Science

A new study by NASA scientists suggests that the ‘roughness’ of the Moon‘s surface, and its accompanying shadows, could be a hiding spot for water ice. Although it might look like a dried-up husk, the Moon seems to have water all over it. Our spacecraft just keep seeing (or crashing into) the icy stuff.   But

After so many smoke-filled summers and record-setting burns, residents of Western North America are no strangers to wildfires. Still, many questions are circulating about why forest fires are becoming larger and more severe – and what can be done about it. Is climate change fueling these fires? Does the long history of fighting every fire

Many fears around transitioning our societies towards a more climate-friendly future understandably revolve around job losses. While it’s true that some forms of work will no longer be available, time and time again the research has shown that such a transition will overall create a lot more work. Now, an international team of researchers has

TAMPA, Fla. — Amazon Web Services is partnering with Greece’s government on economic and technology initiatives that aim to turn the country into a regional space hub. It is the first agreement of its kind for the cloud computing giant, which is expanding its global space presence as Amazon commits $10 billion to develop the

Ever since its formation around 4.5 billion years ago, Earth’s rotation has been gradually slowing down, and its days gotten progressively longer as a result. While Earth’s slowdown is not noticeable on human timescales, it’s enough to work significant changes over eons. One of those changes, new research suggests, is perhaps the most significant of

Pure water is an almost perfect insulator. Yes, water found in nature conducts electricity – but that’s because of the impurities therein, which dissolve into free ions that allow an electric current to flow. Pure water only becomes “metallic” – electronically conductive – at extremely high pressures, beyond our current abilities to produce in a

Fans of science aren’t immune from swallowing the occasional bit of baloney. Fortunately, reminders that science values a critical eye can go a long way when it comes to sorting robust evidence from misinformation dressed in a lab coat. A study by researchers from the University of Illinois, Urbana-Champaign, and the University of Pennsylvania in

A new Russian space-station module malfunctioned after it docked on Thursday. The module, called Nauka, starting unexpectedly firing its thrusters — which moved the entire station out of position. The long-awaited science module had already encountered several technical issues on its way to the ISS, but once it docked to the space station on Thursday

It’s no secret that bottled water has more of an impact on the environment than filling up a bottle from the tap, but now researchers have crunched the numbers on just how much difference there is – and it’s a lot. Using Barcelona in Spain as a test case – home to some 1.35 million

ORLANDO — An Ariane 5 successfully launched two commercial communications satellites July 30 in the first flight of the rocket in nearly a year, and the first of two missions before it launches a NASA space telescope. The Ariane 5 lifted off at 5 p.m. Eastern time from the spaceport in Kourou, French Guiana. The

The ocean is vast, and deep, and dark, and inhospitable to us feeble land-dwelling creatures. There’s much that remains unknown or poorly understood in its roiling, seething belly. Technology is changing that. For over a century, mariners have reported an eerily beautiful phenomenon they called the “milky sea” – enormous patches of glowing water that

Particle accelerators are hugely important in the study of the matter of the Universe, but the ones we think of tend to be gigantic instruments – surrounding cities in some cases. Now scientists have made a much smaller version to power an advanced laser, a setup that could be just as useful as its larger

What makes one person more creative than another? Creativity is hard to define and perhaps even more difficult to measure, but scientists think they’ve come up with a remarkably simple way of assessing at least one aspect of it. It’s a test that you can take yourself in a couple of minutes, and it works

A network of strange features discovered underground at the south pole of Mars may not be lakes of liquid salty water after all. According to a new analysis, the strange shiny patches in radar data collected from the Mars Express orbiting probe could be resulting from frozen clay – specifically, hydrous aluminium silicates, or smectite

Polyfluoroalkyl and perfluoroalkyl substances (PFAS) are known as ‘forever chemicals’ because they don’t naturally break down in the environment. Now a new study reveals the increasing pace of Arctic ice melt is leaking more of these chemicals into the environment. PFAS don’t originate in the Arctic, but they do settle there – they’re used in

WASHINGTON — Rocket Lab returned its Electron rocket to flight July 29 with the successful launch of an experimental satellite for the U.S. Space Force. The Electron lifted off from the company’s Launch Complex 1 in New Zealand at 2 a.m. Eastern. The rocket’s two stages performed normally and, after a coast phase, the vehicle’s

Within the remains of 890-million-year-old microbial reefs – a world that was dominated by bacteria and algae – lie possible signs of multicellular animal life, 90 million years before there was thought to be enough oxygen in Earth’s atmosphere to sustain such life. We all personally know oxygen is vital to us as animals –

Push materials to their limits, and strange things can occur – such as the discovery of a previously unknown phase of liquid, which has been reported by scientists looking at the development of super-thin, high-density glass. These types of glass are used in a variety of ways, including in OLED displays and optical fibers, but

Once early humans figured out how to tame a wild flame – to cook food, warm the camp, extend daylight, and keep predators away – some scientists think the skill spread like wildfire. If they’re right, it means early human populations right across Africa, Europe, and Asia were trading knowledge at least 400,000 years ago.

Astronomers have discovered evidence of water vapor in the atmosphere of Jupiter’s moon Ganymede for the first time. Ganymede, the largest moon in the Solar System, is covered in an icy crust. Scientists believe Ganymede may have a liquid ocean 100 miles (161 km) beneath its surface, and that such an ocean could host aquatic

Summer 2021 will mark a turning point in how heat is seen by the public and communicated by experts. For the first time in its 167-year history, the UK’s Met Office has issued an amber warning for extreme heat for much of Wales and parts of southern, central and western England, where temperatures are expected

DoD’s John Hill: ‘The U.S. government’s view is that we should be pursuing voluntary, non-binding norms’ WASHINGTON — A set of guidelines issued by Defense Secretary Lloyd Austin for responsible space operations should be part of a wider conversation about how to maintain safety and security in space, a senior Pentagon official said July 26.

A lagoon in Argentina’s southern Patagonia region has turned bright pink in a striking, but frightful phenomenon experts and activists blame on pollution by a chemical used to preserve prawns for export. The color is caused by sodium sulfite, an anti-bacterial product used in fish factories, whose waste is blamed for contaminating the Chubut river

A newly developed method of levitating and manipulating tiny objects using sound waves could represent a major step forward for the technology. Engineers in Japan have figured out how to pick up objects from reflective surfaces using acoustic levitation. Although they can’t yet do so reliably, the advance could help unlock the full potential of

Spanish prison authorities were baffled after a prisoner who was declared dead by three separate doctors woke up in the morgue – just hours before his own autopsy was set to commence. The prisoner, then-29-year-old Gonzalo Montoya Jiménez, was found unresponsive in his cell during a morning roll call on 7 January 2018 and had

Fifty-two years after the first historical Moon landing, we’ve been given a brand new perspective of a classic Apollo-era photo. Reddit user and visual effects artist Michael Ranger, AKA rg1213, chose the iconic photo of Buzz Aldrin taken by Neil Armstrong during the Apollo 11 mission, and ‘unwrapped’ the lunar vista reflected in the astronaut’s

Space is full of hazards. The Earth, and its atmosphere, does a great job of shielding us from most of them. But sometimes those hazards are more powerful than even those protections can withstand, and potentially catastrophic events can result. Some of the most commonly known potential catastrophic events are solar flares. While normal solar

Extreme weather is striking all over the world, illustrating how vulnerable swathes of humanity are to natural disasters. Some events – like wildfires sweeping the western US – are seasonal, while others came as a total surprise. China and Western Europe were both hit by devastating floods in the past week, with a death toll

TAMPA, Fla. — A federal appeals court denied a motion from satellite operator Viasat to stop SpaceX from enlarging its Starlink megaconstellation. Viasat had requested a stay on a SpaceX license modification that allows it to continue building out the low-Earth-orbit constellation, while legal action seeking to compel a thorough environmental review of the broadband

Dig a teaspoon into your nearest clump of soil, and what you’ll emerge with will contain more microorganisms than there are people on Earth. We know this from lab studies that analyze samples of earth scooped from the microbial wild to determine which forms of microscopic life exist in the world beneath our feet. The