So much of our everyday tech runs on batteries, the importance of lithium-ion rechargeables cannot be overstated. But they are expensive to produce, with difficult-to-source materials. There is an alternative – sodium-ion batteries have the potential to be cheaper and more easily produced, if we can get past the problem of getting these batteries to
Eclipse season resumes on June 5th, with a fine penumbral lunar eclipse. Are you cursing the June Full Moon as it thwarts your dreams of deep-sky imaging this week? Fear not; said Moon is actually the first astronomical draw for June 2020, as this coming weekend’s Full Moon marks the start of the second eclipse season
Neutron stars are rising to the top of the list of the most delicious objects in the Universe. First, it was dense “nuclear pasta” beneath their crusts. Now, we have fresh evidence that the cores of the most massive neutron stars are made up of an exotic ‘soup’ of subatomic particles called quarks. Physicists
An interesting side effect of the coronavirus pandemic is the number of people who say they are having vivid dreams. Many are turning to blogs and social media to describe their experiences. While such dreams can be confusing or distressing, dreaming is normal and considered helpful in processing our waking situation, which for many
DNA research on the Dead Sea Scrolls has revealed that not all of the ancient manuscripts came from the desert landscape where they were discovered, according to a study published Tuesday. Numbering around 900, the manuscripts were found between 1947 – first by Bedouin shepherds – and 1956 in the Qumran caves above the
The last meal of a huge armour-plated dinosaur has been found 110 million years later, still in its fossilised belly, in what is now northern Alberta. First described in 2017, this thorny, 1,300-kilogram nodosaur (some 2,800 pounds) unearthed in 2011, is said to contain the best-preserved dinosaur stomach found to date. After five years
Mars – glorious, dusty, complex Mars – may once have been even more dazzling. New research provides even more evidence that a rubbly ring once circled the Red Planet. The new clue lies in Deimos, the smaller of the two Martian moons. It’s orbiting Mars at a slight tilt with respect to the planet’s equator
The Chandra X-Ray Observatory has spotted a distant black hole shooting out jets of material, at close to the speed of light. No worries, this beast is about 10,000 light years away from us. It’s more of a spectacle than a danger. But it’s a spectacle laden with scientific insights. I know what you
There are not as many of us as there used to be. Hundreds of unique, precious species of animal life vanished forever last century. This is what a mass extinction looks like, scientists warn, but that’s not even the worst part. The mass extinction phenomenon currently underway on Earth is actually accelerating, researchers now
The Universe is not a structureless mish-mash of space stuff, but there’s still a lot we don’t know about how it’s put together. Although we know that everything is connected by a vast, filamentary web, we tend to operate under the assumption that the distribution of galaxies among those filaments is somewhat random. In
An area near Yellowstone National Park has been struck by nearly a dozen earthquakes on Friday, according to the US Geological Survey. West Yellowstone in Montana reported around eleven earthquakes on Friday, with the strongest one measuring a magnitude of 3.1. The area has been hit by an additional 34 quakes in the past month,
The trope of a dog bounding to the rescue of a human is a well established one – from the helpful St. Bernard to Lassie – but does it have any scientific backing? A new study says that yes, our canine companions really do want to rescue us from harm – as long as they know
Unlike Earth, Mars doesn’t have a global magnetic field to protect it from the rigours of space weather – but it does have spots of local, induced magnetism. Now, researchers have been able to create an incredible, detailed map of the electric currents that are responsible for shaping these magnetic fields. It gives scientists
Strange, powerful signals from deep space called fast radio bursts are slippery little suckers. Most of them just flash once, a mysterious huge spike in the radio data out of nowhere, lasting just milliseconds at most. They can’t be predicted, and because they’re so brief, they’re incredibly hard to trace. Hard; but not impossible.
The Sun has been pretty quiet lately. Over the last few years, its flare activity has been relatively weak and infrequent… but it may be about to kick up again. On May 29, it was filmed spitting out its biggest flare since October 2017. This could be a sign that the Sun has already
NASA astronauts Bob Behnken and Doug Hurley have once again helped make history for SpaceX, the rocket company founded by Elon Musk, by docking to a football field-size laboratory above Earth. After careening into space on Saturday atop a Falcon 9 rocket, the astronauts’ spaceship – a Crew Dragon capsule they later named “Endeavour” –
We know that global warming is forcing many animals around the world to flee their normal habitats, but now, an exhaustive analysis has shown marine species are booking it for the poles six times faster than those on land. Drawing together 258 peer-reviewed studies, researchers compared over 30,000 habitat shifts in more than 12,000
SpaceX launched its most precious cargo yet into space on Saturday: two NASA astronauts and a plush, sequined dinosaur toy. At 3:22 pm ET, a Falcon 9 rocket launched from Cape Canaveral, Florida, carrying the Crew Dragon spaceship that SpaceX designed and NASA funded. It’s the first time a commercial spacecraft has carried humans into space,
While it probably won’t make it to your dining table, a new scientific achievement might be able to help in everything from radar equipment to electric cars: scientists have been able to form salt, aka sodium chloride (NaCl), in a hexagonal shape. This is work done at the smallest of scales, with researchers able to
SpaceX and NASA have successfully launched the first crewed mission into space from US soil in nine years. At 3:22 pm ET on 30 May 2020, SpaceX became the first private space company to deliver NASA astronauts to the International Space Station (ISS). The two astronauts onboard the Crew Dragon are Bob Behnken and Doug
Updated: After the launch attempt on Wednesday had to be scrubbed due to weather, SpaceX and NASA have successfully launched a truly historic mission. At 3:22 pm ET on 30 May 2020, SpaceX became the first private space company to deliver NASA astronauts to the International Space Station (ISS). This marks the first time since
Glass frogs are strange creatures – much of their body is ‘transparent’, allowing you to literally see the organs inside. And now researchers may have figured out why this is the case. According to scientists the see-through skin of glass frogs isn’t really an example of true transparency, since the ‘glass’ skin isn’t uniformly distributed
SpaceX and NASA are gearing up for a historic mission: On Saturday, they plan to launch humans in a commercial spacecraft for the first time ever and restore the US’s ability to send its own astronauts into space. If clouds don’t delay the launch again (as they did on Wednesday), NASA astronauts Bob Behnken and Doug
This summer, the clean energy company SINN Power is showcasing “the world’s first floating ocean hybrid platform” – a high-tech buoy that produces electricity from not one, not two, but three sources of renewable energy. Using waves, wind, and the sun, the SINN Power floating structure, which can supposedly withstand waves up to six
To realize its ambitious plans for sending up to 100 passengers to the Moon and Mars inside a massive Starship spacecraft, SpaceX is racing through prototypes. During its fifth static fire today, the fourth Starship prototype, called SN4, erupted in a gigantic fireball around 2:50 pm Eastern time on Friday. Thanks to a live stream,
Back in the 1970s, scientists came up with a revolutionary idea about how Earth’s deep interior works. They proposed it is slowly churning like a lava lamp, with buoyant blobs rising as plumes of hot mantle rock from near Earth’s core, where rocks are so hot they move like a fluid. According to the
Life during a global pandemic takes on a surreal quality. The ubiquitous presence of social media and a constant fire hose of depressing news can make it particularly hard if you’re already feeling anxious. So, we’ve put together a little round-up of recent science news that we find inspiring, encouraging, and worthy of note
Humans are social animals and that’s usually a good thing. But while there might be safety in numbers under some circumstances, new psychological research suggests human connection isn’t always a good thing. As social groups grow larger, in fact, humans may actually respond slower to an emerging crisis. A new psychological experiment reveals people
Scientists are constantly learning more about the tectonic plates shifting across our planet’s surface. According to new research, it turns out those plates have been around on Earth for longer than we originally thought – about a billion years longer, in fact. These giant slabs of rock sit in the Earth’s crust just above
Three boys from Bolivia let a black widow spider bite them in the hopes of gaining Spider-Man’s powers, but they ended up in hospital instead. The brothers, aged 12, 10, and 8, were herding goats in Chayanta when they found a spider, Telemundo first reported after a Ministry of Health official revealed the details at a coronavirus
Last year, an expedition hunting for the remains of a famous explorer’s ship off Antarctica’s coast instead uncovered traces of a very different kind of history, one stretching back thousands of years to the end of the last great ice age. Researchers have measured and mapped ridges on the ocean floor that represent a
Using state-of-the-art astronomical instruments, an international team of researchers has confirmed the existence of Proxima b, an Earth-like planet that’s orbiting the closest star to our Solar System, Proxima Centauri. “Confirming the existence of Proxima b was an important task, and it’s one of the most interesting planets known in the solar neighborhood,” Alejandro Suarez Mascareño,
Human pregnancy is downright curious. Today, we still don’t know why women go into labour for so long or why they face so much risk when they give birth. Progesterone is a hormone crucial to reproduction in many mammals, but for some unknown reason, it seems to act differently in humans. Research shows our
Throughout history, Earth has experienced at least five major mass extinctions that wiped out most life around the globe. Most of these events pretty clearly coincided with catastrophes such as asteroid impacts, geological activity, and volcanic eruptions. One event, however, is more of a mystery – the Late Devonian extinction 360 million years ago.
On the evening of Wednesday 27 May, residents of northern Turkey were treated to a spectacular light show. Videos on social media show what appears to be a meteor streaking across the sky, before exploding in the air with a thunderous boom. Turkish news website Daily Sabah reports that a “ball of light” was
Dormant “zombie fires” scattered across the Arctic region – remnants of record blazes last year – may be coming to life after an unusually warm and dry spring, scientists warned Wednesday. “We have seen satellite observations of active fires that hint that ‘zombie’ fires might have reignited,” said Mark Parrington, a senior scientist and wildfire expert
SpaceX was set to launch astronauts for the first time on Wednesday, thereby restoring NASA’s human spaceflight program. But then storm clouds rolled in. The rocket was fuelled and sitting on the launchpad. Officials had conducted final reviews to make sure everything was ready for liftoff, which was scheduled for 4:33 pm ET. NASA astronauts
Today is the day. At 4:33 pm ET, SpaceX is on track to become the first private space company to deliver NASA astronauts to the International Space Station (ISS). The final launch preparations for the Demo-2 mission are currently taking place at Cape Canaveral, Florida, and we’re here to bring you a live blog of
On Wednesday at 4:33 pm ET, SpaceX plans to rocket its first people into orbit since Elon Musk founded the company 18 years ago. If successful, the historic mission would also resurrect NASA’s ability to launch its astronauts to the International Space Station (ISS). The US space agency flew its last space shuttle in July 2011 and has relied on
Some of our weirdest and most wonderful species are likely next in line for the sixth mass extinction during the current human-fuelled crisis. From butt-breathing, punk-haired Mary River turtles (Elusor macrurus) to big-eyed aye-ayes (Daubentonia madagascariensis) with their strange extra thumbs, our activities are decimating many remarkable living beings. “These are some of the most
One of the biggest cosmic mysteries has just been used to investigate another huge mystery. Astronomers used powerful bursts of radio waves traced back to distant galaxies to probe the space between the stars – and revealed where the Universe’s missing matter has been hiding. In the vast chasms that yawn between galaxies, gas
Eating one’s own kind might be considered poor taste to us humans, but it’s a remarkably common survival tactic among other animals. Which is why we shouldn’t be surprised that dinosaurs also turned to cannibalism on occasion. A haul of fossils from over 150 million years ago has provided palaeontologists with a rare glimpse
This much we knew: some 66 million years ago an asteroid roughly twice the diameter of Paris crashed into Earth, wiping out all land-dwelling dinosaurs and 75 percent of life on the planet. What remained a mystery was whether it was a direct hit or more of a glancing blow, and which would be
Rats are growing increasingly aggressive in their hunt for food as restaurants across the US remain shuttered to slow the spread of the coronavirus, the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) has warned. With many restaurants now only open for takeout services, the bins that used to be filled with scraps and refuse
The way chimpanzees smack their lips together has a similar rhythm to human speech, and a new study suggests this could be a clue to where our ancestors got their knack for language. The evolution of human speech is a mystery to us all, and there are few hints of it in non-human primates.
A federal judge ruled this week that a salvage company can go forward with a plan to recover the telegraph that the Titanic used to send out distress calls as it sank. RMS Titanic, Inc., the court-designated salvage company for the Titanic, plans to send a remote operated vehicle (ROV) into the Marconi suite, the
Space Exploration Technologies Corp. – commonly known as SpaceX – is slated to send two astronauts into space on Wednesday. Despite not yet being 20 years old, the company has already developed a creation myth: on 28 September 2008, its first rocket Falcon 1 launched for the fourth time. ”I messed up the first
Planet Nine is a theoretical, undiscovered giant planet in the mysterious far reaches of our Solar System. The presence of Planet Nine has been hypothesized to explain everything from the tilt of the Sun’s spin axis to the apparent clustering in the orbits of small, icy asteroids beyond Neptune. But does Planet Nine actually
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