It took NASA four tries to fully fuel the new Space Launch System moon rocket, and even though fresh problems cropped up during the most recent practice countdown Monday, senior managers said they were pleased with the giant booster’s performance. “We think that we had a really successful rehearsal,” Tom Whitmeyer, deputy chief of NASA … Read more
This essay is part of a series called The Big Ideas, in which writers respond to a single question: What is reality? You can read more by visiting The Big Ideas series page. When I was 8 years old, a revelation forever changed my life. The year was 1955, and newspaper headlines announced the death … Read more
In a containment lab in Wellington, New Zealand, Kat Bolstad considered the squid cube. It was the size of a keg and had been frozen solid since January, when it was hauled up during a research trawl in fishing grounds to the east of the country. The squid cube was not a cube of squids … Read more
MIT researchers have developed a method to enable quantum sensors to detect any arbitrary frequency, with no loss of their ability to measure nanometer-scale features. Quantum sensors detect the most minute variations in magnetic or electrical fields, but until now they have only been capable of detecting a few specific frequencies, limiting their usefulness. Credit: … Read more
Fireflies that light up dusky backyards on warm summer evenings use their luminescence for communication – to attract a mate, ward off predators, or lure prey. These glimmering bugs also sparked the inspiration of scientists at MIT. Taking a cue from nature, they built electroluminescent soft artificial muscles for flying, insect-scale robots. The tiny artificial … Read more
Arsenic rose to infamy centuries ago as a nearly odorless, tasteless poison that was often used by and against the ruling classes in Europe during the Middle Ages and the Renaissance. But what is the history of arsenic poisoning, and how does it kill? It turns out, an element that’s vital to life also plays … Read more
This article was originally published at The Conversation. (opens in new tab) The publication contributed the article to Space.com’s Expert Voices: Op-Ed & Insights. Marcia Rieke (opens in new tab)Regents Professor of Astronomy, University of Arizona NASA is scheduled to release the first images taken by the James Webb Space Telescope on July 12, 2022. … Read more
Science & Exploration 20/06/2022 3523 views 73 likes The ESA/JAXA BepiColombo mission is gearing up for its second close flyby of Mercury on 23 June. ESA’s spacecraft operation team is guiding BepiColombo through six gravity assists of the planet before entering orbit around it in 2025. Like its first encounter last year, this week’s flyby … Read more
The diversification of the saurichthyiform fishes (“lizard fish”) in the Middle Triassic of South China (eastern paleo-Tethys), reflecting the establishment of a complexly tiered marine ecosystem (or marine fish communities) with intensive predator-prey interactions along the food chains. Credit: Feixiang Wu Paleontologists in the UK and China have shown that the natural world bounced back … Read more
On June 8th, NASA revealed that its new powerful space observatory, the James Webb Space Telescope, is now sporting a small dimple in one of its primary mirrors after getting pelted by a larger-than-expected micrometeoroid out in deep space. The news came as a bit of a shock since the impact happened just five months … Read more