An orbit has now been decided for the first permanent lunar outpost. When the lunar Gateway space station gets into position around the Moon, it will be in a highly eccentric “halo” orbit, perpendicular to Earth. This particular type of orbit is called a near rectilinear halo orbit (NRHO). It helps minimise the use
admin
Hundreds of protesters gathered at the base of a mountain in Hawaii on Monday to block the construction of a billion-dollar telescope on its peak. To Native Hawaiians, Mauna Kea is a sacred place. To astronomers, it is one of the best places on earth to observe space. Hawaiian elders, known as kupuna, sat
The giant West Antarctic Ice Sheet is at a tipping point, scientists have warned, and it’s going to take something dramatic to save it from complete collapse – something like blowing 7.4 trillion tons of artificial snow on top of it. That’s the conclusion of a new study into how the destabilisation of the
We may not know what dark matter is, but one thing we do know: it doesn’t appear to have killed anyone by slamming into them – an event that would, at the very least, result in serious injury. So you can scratch that one off your list of things to worry about in this
In 2015, David Hole was prospecting in Maryborough Regional Park near Melbourne, Australia. Armed with a metal detector, he discovered something out of the ordinary – a very heavy, reddish rock resting in some yellow clay. He took it home and tried everything to open it, sure that there was a gold nugget inside
FaceApp is the most popular free app on Google Play and Apple’s App Store thanks to an age filter that makes people in photos look much older. But while countless photos of aged celebrities and casual FaceApp users have been shared online in the past week, there are mounting concerns with how FaceApp handles user
Exhale. We are safe from the asteroid that scary headlines were warning us about in early June, according to new observations from the European Space Agency and the European Southern Observatory. The space rock is called 2006 QV89. It’s around 20 to 50 metres (65 to 164 feet) across, and its orbit around the
Your mind and computer may have gotten one step closer. Elon Musk on Tuesday announced in a livestream that his neurotechnology startup, Neuralink, hoped to begin implanting devices into human brains as early as next year. “We hope to have this aspirationally in a human patient before the end of next year,” Musk said
In a major step forward for atomic-scale quantum computing, scientists have built the first two-qubit gate between atoms in silicon, allowing qubits to communicate with each other and perform operations faster than ever before. Since a two-qubit gate is the fundamental building block of a quantum computer, this has pretty amazing implications. “A lot
In episode four of the HBO miniseries Chernobyl, Soviet officials assess the damage of a 1986 power-plant explosion, which released plumes of radioactive material into the air. The roof of the power plant, they argue, has become “the most dangerous place on Earth” – a place where two minutes of exposure would cut a
A giant human settlement dating back to the Stone Age has been discovered near Jerusalem, and researchers say it’s not just the largest of its kind in Israel, but one of the most monumental such cities ever found. The sprawling Neolithic mega-site, unearthed in the neighbourhood of Motza about 5 kilometres (3 miles) to
There may be fundamental flaws with our understanding of the Universe. The problem came to light as scientists tried to calculate and measure a value called the Hubble Constant, which represents how rapidly the Universe is expanding outward. The value was first calculated by astronomer Edwin Hubble in the 1920s. But since then, astronomers
Coral reefs are one of the most threatened ecosystems on our planet, and in the past two decades alone, half of the coral in Florida has died off completely. Global warming is known to be a deadly factor, but rising ocean temperatures are only part of the story. Thirty years of research in the
Seeing countless renewable energy records broken and milestones passed has been a constant source of encouraging news for our planet. Now, we have yet another impressive stat to celebrate: in the first half of 2019, Scotland generated enough energy from wind power to supply its homes twice over. Specifically, turbines generated 9.8 million megawatt-hours of electricity between
The plot has thickened on a huge discovery from earlier this year that appeared to prove the existence of seemingly ‘impossible’ long-lived galaxies – ones without any dark matter. According to new distance calculations, the galaxy in question is much closer than initial measurements suggested. This changes both the mass of the galaxy as
We’ve all seen footage of astronauts bouncing around on the Moon, looking like they’re having the best time ever. But getting your body to cooperate in low gravity is not that easy – and, delightfully, NASA has a footage collection of men in puffy spacesuits falling over on the lunar surface. It’s not just for
Lizzie Daly was diving Saturday off the coast of Cornwall in Britain when she saw something large in the distance and did a double take. Daly had seen a barrel jellyfish before but nothing of this size. Daly, a biologist and broadcaster, swam up to the peach-colored creature gliding through the water, as cameraman
Hidden underneath the Naryn-Kala fortress in Derbent, Russia, is a mysterious subterranean vault – a buried structure whose original purpose has been unknown for decades. Now, thanks to clever use of scanning technology, we might finally know what the building is. Researchers used a nuclear physics technology known as muon radiography. It works by tracking the
Using some of the world’s most advanced microscope technology, scientists have captured images of molecules changing their charge state in real time. To do this, they added and removed electrons, directly observing changes to the structure of four molecules. Although we’ve known for a long time that such changes occur, this marks the first
It’s not enough for humans to pump less carbon into the atmosphere. To address climate change, many experts say we’re going to need to find a way to remove some of the emissions already polluting our air. While some scientists are focusing on mechanical solutions to carbon capture, researchers at the Salk Institute’s Harnessing
In an incredible first, scientists have captured the world’s first actual photo of quantum entanglement – a phenomenon so strange Einstein famously described it as ‘spooky action at a distance’. The image was captured by physicists at the University of Glasgow in Scotland, and it’s so breathtaking we can’t stop staring. It might not look
SpaceX is about to perform its most ambitious test-launch yet of a shiny Mars rocket prototype in south Texas. Workers have descended upon the developing coastal launch site over the past 8 months to build and prepare the stout, three-legged prototype for testing. It’s built out of stainless steel, has the shape of a badminton
Something strange is happening 130 million light-years away in spiral galaxy NGC 3147: there’s a thin disc of material surrounding its small and ‘starving’ black hole that’s a complete surprise to astronomers. Discs like the one spotted in NGC 3147 – made up of gas, dust and other debris pulled into the black hole’s
The life of an asteroid is lonely. The rocks spend eons drifting through the cold vacuum of space. But on Wednesday, the asteroid Ryugu welcomed a special visitor: Japan’s Hayabusa-2 probe successfully landed on the asteroid’s surface at 21:06 ET (01:06 UTC on Thursday). The Japan Aerospace Exploration Agency (JAXA) launched Hayabusa-2 into space
A team of Russian and Norwegian scientists just made a grim, timely discovery. Just one week after a nuclear-powered Russian submarine caught fire, killing 14 sailors, researchers sent a remote submarine to collect samples around the sunken wreckage of another nuclear sub, which caught fire in 1989 leading to the deaths of 42 crew members.
In the event of a zombie apocalypse, it’s imperative that you have a plan. If you’re influenced by the movies, then you might be inclined to take your chances and head for the nearest pub or shopping mall in order to outwit a growing horde of bloodthirsty zombies. Your average shopping mall is equipped with
We already know what a wondrous material graphene can be – filtering water, dyeing hair, super-strengthening substances – but now scientists have figured out a way to produce it much more cheaply: with the help of bacteria. When mixed with oxidised graphite, which is relatively easy to produce, the bacterium Shewanella oneidensis removes most of the
When you think of loud sounds you probably imagine earsplitting screams or whole-body-vibrating booms. Not necessarily the abrupt pop that belongs to a tiny 29-millimetre marine worm (Leocratides kimuraorum). But when marine biologist Ryutaro Goto from Kyoto University and colleagues measured the sounds made by these polychaete worms they came in at a whopping
The world is about to undergo a drastic transformation that will see cities around the globe inherit the disparate climates of places hundreds of miles away, new research shows. By 2050, scientists say over three-quarters of the world’s cities will have had their climate systems rearranged as part of this rapid metamorphosis. Most concerning
Thanks to gravitational wave astronomy, we are getting a better understanding of what happens when black holes collide. But the closely orbiting black holes only generate ripples in space-time strong enough to be detected from just before they smash. What happens before then? We can only extrapolate. But a new discovery could change all
It’s been half a century since the magnificent Apollo 11 Moon landing, yet many people still don’t believe it actually happened. Conspiracy theories about the event dating back to the 1970s are in fact more popular than ever. A common theory is that film director Stanley Kubrick helped NASA fake the historic footage of
Feasts are rare on the barren landscape of the ocean depths. So researchers couldn’t believe their luck when they recently stumbled on a feeding frenzy of deep-sea sharks chowing down on a fallen swordfish off the US coast. But they never imagined they would also capture footage of one of those sharks becoming the
Earth’s magnetic field protects and makes our planet habitable by stopping harmful high-energy particles from space, including from the Sun. The source of this magnetic field is the core at the centre of our planet. But the core is very difficult to study, partly because it starts at a depth of about 2,900 kilometres
A weird-looking foot preserved in 99 million-year-old Burmese amber has revealed a new species of ancient bird with one insanely long middle toe. The newly-named Elektorornis chenguangi is a small bird distinct from all others, either extinct or living – simply because of its hindlimb. The third digit on its foot, researchers say, is twice
More often than not, today’s academic writing is full of dry and serious jargon-heavy language. So when you find a paper that breaks all the rules and makes you laugh, you’ll want to shout it from the top of a mountain. That’s essentially what University of Western Australia obstetrics and microbiology researcher Lisa Stinson
For some people, making decisions can feel paralysing, while for others it barely even registers. New research suggests the level of stress we feel when making choices relates to what kind of decision-maker we are. As you might expect, those who veer towards a quicker and more decisive way of picking between several options
How can you know that any animal, other human beings, or anything that seems conscious, isn’t just faking it? Does it enjoy an internal subjective experience, complete with sensations and emotions like hunger, joy, or sadness? After all, the only consciousness you can know with certainty is your own. Everything else is inference. The
A compact device that uses waste heat shed by solar cells to purify water could one day change the lives of hundreds of millions of people around the globe. The new spin on old technology from King Abdullah University of Science and Technology in Saudi Arabia promises to ease increasing pressures on the nexus point
Nothing lasts forever. While we may think of the ground beneath our feet as part of an enduring landscape, the short-lived existence of a temporary island off the coast of Pakistan tells a much different story. Zalzala Koh, aka ‘Earthquake Mountain’, was birthed in 2013 during a powerful 7.7 magnitude earthquake that killed over
Denis Rebrikov wants to use CRISPR to create more gene-edited babies – and he already knows who their parents might be. In June, the Russian biologist told Nature he planned to gene-edit human embryos and then bring them to term. To date, only one person – Chinese scientist He Jiankui – has ever openly produced
You’ve heard of moonmoons – that’s what scientists want to call the satellite of a moon. But are you ready for ploonets? You’d better be, because we’re here to tell you about this hypothetical new class of cosmic objects. It is exactly what it sounds like: a sort-of cross between a moon and a
California is a land shaped by seismic activity. A history of earthquakes is written in its landscape in the form of rifts, folds, and cracks. But major tremors also tend to leave less dramatic fingerprints. While two of the most recent earthquakes to strike the state’s south damaged infrastructure and land, they also warped the
In western Antarctica, a glacier the size of Florida is losing ice faster than ever before. Sections of the Thwaites Glacier are retreating by up to 2,625 feet (800 metres) per year, contributing to 4 percent of sea-level rise worldwide. That ice loss is part of a broader trend: The entire Antarctic ice sheet is
Congratulations Mauna Loa, on the island of Hawaii: you are once more the biggest shield volcano on the planet, without even having done anything. New research suggests the previous record holder, Tamu Massif in the northwest Pacific Ocean, should be disqualified on a technicality. It all comes down to what you count as a
They’re one of the weirdest, most incongruous-looking natural phenomena you could ever see on Earth’s surface: massive dagger-shaped blades of vertically aligned ice, assembled in mysterious flocks in the middle of the desert. These strange ice spire formations – called ‘penitentes‘ due to their resemblance to penitent, praying folk – take shape at high
Not one, but two incredibly rare boat burials have been excavated in Uppsala, Sweden. One of these was still intact, with remains inside of not just a human, but also a dog and even a horse, all in good condition. According to archaeologists, it is a remarkable find, and indicates the burial of a high-status
Einstein’s theory of general relativity has been proven time and again, and is generally accepted as a solid foundation for understanding the Universe. But it’s not the only model for explaining how gravity works and galaxies form – and new research has shown a different model under which the Milky Way could have come to
Automatic landing systems using radio guidance have been a feature of commercial airliners for decades, but there’s never been a heart-in-your-mouth touchdown quite like this. In an incredible new video, researchers show a test flight in which a small four-seater plane fitted with an experimental optical positioning system successfully nails an entirely automated landing –
- 1
- 2
- 3
- …
- 93
- Next Page »