A 23-year-old student in Germany can shrink and enlarge his pupils on demand, according to a new case report – a feat that was previously thought to be impossible. Two tiny opposing muscles in the eye act as puppeteers of each pupil (the dark center of the eye), dilating or enlarging them in a dark environment to
Science
Our planet Earth is a mote of dust in the cosmos, carrying its precious cargo of all the life we know exists in the Universe, sailing a sea of stars. It’s easy to forget that, even when standing under a sky studded with glittering, distant fire. But a new photograph from European Space Agency (ESA)
Leave a cheap plastic bag in the sun long enough and it’ll eventually crumble into a powdery mess, its petrochemical fragments destined to be blown far and wide by the elements. Microplastic fragments – considered a major ecological hazard all on their own – might not even be the worst thing to come out of
NASA is commonly thought of as America’s space agency, but its name also emphasizes another research area. The National Aeronautics and Space Administration is also America’s civilian aerospace research organization. In that role, it has been instrumental in developing new technologies ranging from rocket engines to aircraft control systems. Part of that role is running
WASHINGTON — NASA has selected SpaceX to launch the last in a series of geostationary weather satellites that had previously been launched by United Launch Alliance. NASA announced Sept. 10 that it awarded a contract to SpaceX for the Falcon Heavy launch of the Geostationary Operational Environmental Satellite (GOES) U spacecraft. The launch is scheduled
Something strange often happens just before a severe thunderstorm produces a tornado, high winds, or hailstones: A plume of ice and water known as an Above-Anvil Cirrus Plume (AACP) billows up above the top of the storm clouds and head downwind, acting as a sort of early warning system for extreme weather events. For the
Nuclear fusion offers the tantalizing prospect of a sustainable energy source that can never be exhausted – and scientists at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT) have announced what they describe as a “watershed moment” in making the technology viable. Fusion happens when two or more atomic nuclei merge together to create larger elements, releasing
On someone’s desk, one of the little gray cubes wouldn’t raise an eyebrow. To the untrained eye, they look like paperweights. “Marie Curie‘s granddaughter has one. She uses it as a doorstop,” Miriam Hiebert, a historian and materials scientist, told Insider. The weight of the 2-inch (5 cm) objects might be surprising, though – each
Ultra-diffuse galaxies (UDGs) are something of a mystery for astronomers. They’re smaller galaxies in terms of the number of stars, but they’re still spread out over great distances, making them faint and difficult to spot. It’s not clear how they’re formed or if there’s something special about the dark matter halos that helps them form.
The vast majority of the world’s fossil fuels are effectively “unextractable” and must remain in the ground if we want even half a chance at meeting our climate goals, according to a new study. For nations like Indonesia and Australia, the world’s leading exporters in coal, that will require abandoning 95 percent of their natural
You may well have seen sci-fi movies or television shows where the protagonist asks to zoom in on an image and enhance the results – revealing a face, or a number plate, or any other key detail – and Google’s newest artificial intelligence engines, based on what’s known as diffusion models, are able to pull
Chirag Parikh said the call for nominations for the Users Advisory Group will stay open through the end of the month NATIONAL HARBOR, Md. — A notice could appear in the Federal Register as early as next week seeking nominations for the National Space Council’s industry advisory group, the council’s executive secretary Chirag Parikh said
It’s obvious that the information coming through our eyes is a fundamental way in which we navigate the world, but what’s less clear is exactly how this visual data is processed in the brain to stop us walking into walls and off the edges of cliffs. A new study looking at the behavior of fruit
Physicists sifting through old particle accelerator data have found evidence of a highly-elusive, never-before-seen process: a so-called triangle singularity. First envisioned by Russian physicist Lev Landau in the 1950s, a triangle singularity refers to a rare subatomic process where particles exchange identities before flying away from each other. In this scenario, two particles – called
As our world continues to heat up dangerously, researchers are investigating the past to see how climate change affected our species in previous eras. A new study has revealed several human migrations into Arabia over the last 400,000 years. These migrations were driven by the same type shift in climate: an increase in rainfall over
Mars is bombarded with radiation. Without a protective magnetic shield and a thick atmosphere like Earth’s, radiation from space has a nearly unimpeded path to the Martian surface. Our machines can roam around on the surface and face all that radiation with impunity. But not humans. For humans, all that radiation is a deadly hazard.
Should 80 percent of the Amazon be declared a protected area by 2025? The world’s top conservation body is on Sunday poised to decide whether its 1,400 members can vote on this controversial proposal, put forward by indigenous groups. Submitted under an emergency provision to the International Union for the Conservation of Nature (IUCN), the
Elon Musk announced a humanoid robot designed to help with those repetitive, boring tasks people hate doing. Musk suggested it could run to the grocery store for you, but presumably it would handle any number of tasks involving manual labor. Predictably, social media filled with references to a string of dystopian sci-fi movies about robots
TAMPA, Fla. — Kymeta said Sept. 7 that it successfully tested its u8 broadband terminal on OneWeb’s low-Earth-orbit constellation, achieving 200 megabits per second (Mbps) downlink speeds ahead of the network’s partial launch this year. Neville Meijers, Kymeta’s chief strategy officer, told SpaceNews that its electronically steered flat panel antenna is currently serving undisclosed customers
You wouldn’t miss one of Australia’s musk ducks if you saw it. The name comes from the musky smell the ducks waft around during the breeding season, and the males have a large, black lobe below their bill. But if the musk duck you’re hanging out with is called Ripper, the other dead giveaway is…
Poverty Point in northern Louisiana is one of the first US civilizations on record, inhabited by a community of Native Americans as early as 1700 BCE. In a new study, researchers have shown these inhabitants to be highly skilled engineers, rather than the simpler hunter-gatherers they’re often portrayed as. The massive earthen structures put up
It was only supposed to fly five times. And yet NASA’s helicopter on Mars, Ingenuity, has completed 12 flights and it isn’t ready to retire. Given its stunning and unexpected success, the US space agency has extended Ingenuity’s mission indefinitely. The tiny helicopter has become the regular travel companion of the rover Perseverance, whose core
The use of leaded petrol has been eradicated from the globe, a milestone that will prevent more than 1.2 million premature deaths and save world economies over US$2.4 trillion annually, the UN Environment Program (UNEP) said Monday. Nearly a century after doctors first issued warnings about the toxic effects of leaded petrol, Algeria – the
How satellites are stitched together needs to be at the forefront of SDA’s Transport Layer discussion The Defense Department’s Space Development Agency just issued a request for support to build 144 spacecraft. The agency’s Tranche 1 Transport Layer is expected to be one of the most complex networks the U.S. government has ever deployed in
A wild boar carried out a daring mission to free two piglets from a trap, demonstrating high levels of intelligence and empathy, a new paper published in Scientific Reports shows. The incident, which occurred in January 2020, was documented by a team of scientists from the Czech University of Life Sciences at the Voděradské Bučiny National Nature
Many home chefs know that tempering chocolate to achieve a perfect finish and a satisfying ‘snap’ is no easy feat. Small variations in the quality of ingredients, temperature, mixing and timing can all set you up to fail, even when you learn from the best. The results of a new study by food scientists from
Archaeologists have discovered some of the oldest artifacts ever found to be associated with beer, in a haul from Qiaotou in southern China dating back 9,000 years. However, it appears the ancient drinkers in question weren’t in it simply for a buzz. The find consisted of two human skeletons surrounded by scores of ceramic pots
Weird neighbors. We’ve all had ’em. And apparently that’s as true for galaxies as it is for the people in them. One of the Milky Way’s strange fellows is Centaurus A, a peculiar galaxy over 12 million light-years away. It’s one of the closest galactic neighbors we have with an active supermassive black hole in
The best case scenario for the climate crisis is looking increasingly disastrous for much of the world, especially when it comes to rising seas. Even if we can limit global warming below 2 degrees Celsius, in line with the Paris Climate Accord, by 2100 many coastal regions could be experiencing once-in-a-century sea level threats, such
LOMPOC, Calif. — The Federal Aviation Administration will not allow Virgin Galactic to resume flights of its SpaceShipTwo suborbital spaceplane until it completes an investigation into a problem on the vehicle’s previous flight in July. In a Sept. 2 statement, the FAA said it is overseeing a Virgin Galactic mishap investigation into the July 11
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