Whether loved ones or strangers, wild gorillas in the forests of Rwanda and Congo appear to be fascinated by their dead. Researchers have now recorded three instances of these creatures gathering around, and sometimes even on, gorilla corpses – staring, sniffing, licking, touching, and grooming them for minutes on end. The first two sightings were
Month: April 2019
Linus Torvalds, the Linux creator who’s himself known for angry tirades, said that if he could fix one thing about the internet, it would be modern social media — a flame-spitting recrimination by the inventor of the software that keeps much of the social web running. “I absolutely detest modern media — Twitter, Facebook, Instagram,”
Orbital Atlas will be deployed at the Combined Space Operations Center at Vandenberg Air Force Base, California, and the National Space Defense Center at Schriever Air Force Base, Colorado. COLORADO SPRINGS — The Air Force Space and Missile Systems Center awarded Los Angeles-based Slingshot Aerospace a $6 million two-year contract to customize the company’s Orbital Atlas predictive
When the dinosaur-killing asteroid struck Earth, most of the impact energy was directed outwards and upwards into space. Only 1% of the force traveled down into the ground, but it was enough to ring the planet like a bell and wipeout species around the globe. Only those creatures able to seek shelter from the intense
NASA remembers Apollo 12 astronaut Alan Bean, who walked on the Moon in 1969, commanded the second Skylab crew in 1973 and went on in retirement to paint the remarkable worlds and sights he had seen like no other artist. Learn more about his life at https://www.nasa.gov/feature/alan-bean Download this video at https://images.nasa.gov/details-Remembering%20Astronaut%20Alan%20Bean%20(UPDATE_02).html
NASA on Friday announced that its Parker Solar Probe, the fastest spacecraft in history, has completed its second close approach to the Sun and is now entering the outbound phase of the second solar orbit. At 6:40pm Eastern Time on Thursday (4:10am IST, Friday), the spacecraft passed within 15 million miles (24 million kilometres) of
You might not think about it much, but water is super weird. It doesn’t behave like any other liquid. And scientists think they have figured out why – and it has to do with the strange arrangement of its molecules. One of the weirdest aspects of water is its unusual density. Normally, liquids become increasingly
Researchers have spotted a miniature stomach, duodenum, and small intestine hidden among the cells of lung tumor samples. Tumors are notoriously mixed up; cells from one part often express different genes and adopt different sizes and shapes than cells from another part of that same tumor. This discovery back in 2018 was still a surprise,
There are a lot of different ways to look at our planet’s warming climate – such as more extreme weather events, increasing levels of vegetation in the Arctic, and even shifting seasons. Now we just got a new metric showing the severity of the situation. A group of scientists have came together to discuss what
What once seemed like the moonshot vision of tech billionaires and idealistic architects could soon become a concrete solution to several of the world’s most pressing challenges. At a United Nations roundtable on Wednesday, a group of builders, engineers, and architects debuted a concept for an affordable floating city. Unlike instances in the past when
SAN FRANCISCO – HawkEye 360 unveiled RFGeo, its first radio frequency signal mapping product. Initially, RFGeo will help customers identify and geolocate maritime VHF radio channels, marine emergency distress beacons and vessel Automatic Identification System signals, the company announced April 4. “Many countries want better visibility of the oceans surrounding their territories,” Adam Bennett, Hawkeye 360 marketing director, said
WASHINGTON — SpaceX has started initial tethered tests of the first prototype of its next generation Starship launch vehicle at its South Texas test site. The vehicle, dubbed “Starhopper,” briefly fired its single Raptor engine during a test on the pad April 3, followed by a second test April 5. In both cases the engine
In the halo of the Milky Way, a tiny, ancient star called J0023+0307 drifts about, minding its business. It’s very old indeed, which isn’t uncommon for stars in the halo – but it contains no detectable carbon, which is pretty danged weird. So weird that the astronomy team who found it even said the star
“Foust Forward” appears in every issue of SpaceNews magazine. This column ran in the March 11, 2019 issue. Last spring saw a surge in activity by the administration regarding commercial space policy. Space Policy Directive (SPD) 2, signed by President Trump in May, directed a number of actions to reform launch, remote sensing and other
Up to 3 times in the past 2.4 billion years, Earth has become a desolate “snowball” with average global temperatures less than -70 degrees Fahrenheit. Only a runaway greenhouse process created by volcanic activity has saved the planet from an icy fate. | For more How the Universe Works, visit http://science.discovery.com/tv-shows/how-the-universe-works/#mkcpgn=ytsci1 Catch all new episodes
Expedition 41 Commander Max Suraev of the Russian Federal Space Agency (Roscosmos), NASA Flight Engineer Reid Wiseman and Flight Engineer Alexander Gerst of the European Space Agency landed safely on the steppe of Kazakhstan near the town of Arkalyk on Nov. 10, Kazakh time, after bidding farewell to the Expedition 42 crew members and undocking
The world, it seems, is soon to see the first picture of a black hole. On Wednesday, astronomers across the globe will hold “six major press conferences” simultaneously to announce the first results of the Event Horizon Telescope (EHT), which was designed precisely for that purpose. It has been a long wait. Of all the
Upon first glance, this fossilized sea creature looks more like the Sarlacc from Star Wars’ “Return of the Jedi” than any animal on Earth today. According to a recent study, the Daihua sanqiong – which lived 518 million years ago and was first discovered about a decade ago in southern China’s Yunnan Province – had
After five decades of intense and expensive policing, the United States’ so-called ‘war on drugs’ has only created a bigger problem, a new study has found. The research is based on a unique geographic model, called NarcoLogic, that was designed to figure out how cocaine smuggling networks have adapted to US drug interception over the years.
Just because the Mars rovers are all the way over on the Red Planet, that doesn’t mean they don’t get to enjoy a bit of eclipse fun. And with two moons on rapid orbits, Mars sees a lot of eclipses. Now NASA’s Curiosity rover has sent home videos of Martian moons Phobos and Deimos (Fear
When it comes to the weather systems controlling rain and shine across the planet, nothing happens in isolation – everything plays into everything else. Now, for the first time, scientists have explained how volcanic eruptions can influence the formation of hurricanes. Investigating this mechanism has been tricky until now, because in the age of sophisticated
WASHINGTON (Reuters) – Scientists are expected to unveil on Wednesday the first-ever photograph of a black hole, a breakthrough in astrophysics providing insight into celestial monsters with gravitational fields so intense no matter or light can escape. FILE PHOTO: A supermassive black hole with millions to billions times the mass of our sun is seen
Invited witnesses include Acting Defense Secretary Patrick Shanahan, Air Force Secretary Heather Wilson, Chairman of the Joint Chiefs Gen. Joseph Dunford and the commander of U.S. Strategic Command Gen. John Hyten. WASHINGTON — Top defense civilian and military leaders have been asked to testify next week in front of the Senate Armed Services Committee about
The bronze weapons of the famous Terracotta Army in China have been remarkably well preserved over the last 2,000 or so years. So well preserved, in fact, that up until now there have been hypotheses that ancient China had some kind of high-tech preservation technique that kept them in such good condition. Now scientists think
This is what will happen when our Sun dies: First, the hydrogen-powered nuclear reactor in its center will run out of fuel. The Sun will expand into a red giant, swelling to 100 times its size and swallowing Mercury, Venus and perhaps even our own planet, along with all life as we know it. Next,
WASHINGTON — Small launch vehicle developer Relativity announced April 5 a contract with Telesat to launch a portion of that company’s low Earth orbit broadband satellite constellation. The contract covers the launch of an unspecified number of Telesat LEO satellites on Relativity’s Terran 1 launch vehicle, starting no earlier than 2021. The companies declined to
Welcome to Saturn, as you’ve probably never seen it. It’s always awe-inspiring to see the clockwork motion of the heavens, transpire in real time. In a slow motion Universe, occultations give us the chance to see the cosmos pull off a celestial hat-trick. This can appear as a split second-type of event – such as
WASHINGTON (Reuters) – Scientists have unearthed fossils in a coastal desert of southern Peru of a four-legged whale that thrived both in the sea and on land about 43 million years ago in a discovery that illuminates a pivotal stage in early cetacean evolution. The newly discovered early whale Peregocetus, which lived about 43 million
WASHINGTON — SpaceX has withdrawn its protest of a launch contract NASA awarded to United Launch Alliance earlier this year for a planetary science mission. SpaceX withdrew a protest April 4 that it had filed with the U.S. Government Accountability Office Feb. 11 regarding a NASA launch procurement formally known as RLSP-35. That covered a
In a race to gather top experts in the field of artificial intelligence (AI), another former Google employee, Ian Goodfellow, has been roped in by Apple to work in its intriguing “Special Project” team. Goodfellow recently updated his LinkedIn profile to note that he is now working at Apple as a Director for Machine Learning
HOW DO THEY DO IT? Mondays 9:30p on Science Baklava is the strudel’s ancestor. Phyllo dough used to make baklava is named after the greek word for “leaf” since the dough needs to be “as thin as a leaf.” Watch full episodes: http://www.sciencechannelgo.com We rarely consider many of the objects that make up the modern
By combining the visible and infrared capabilities of the Hubble and Spitzer space telescopes, astronomers and visualization specialists from NASA’s Universe of Learning program have created a spectacular, three-dimensional, fly-through movie of the magnificent Orion nebula, a nearby stellar nursery. Using actual scientific data along with Hollywood techniques, a team at the Space Telescope Science
For most animals, reproduction is straightforward: some species lay eggs, while others give birth to live babies. But our recent research uncovered a fascinating mix between the two modes of reproduction. In an Australian skink, we observed the first example of both egg-laying and live-bearing within a single litter for any backboned animal. This suggests
Only four men alive today have walked on the Moon. Last month, three of them got together in the same room. NASA’s Apollo program ran 17 missions, which are best known for putting the first people on the Moon in 1969. Humanity hasn’t set foot on the Moon since NASA’s Apollo 17 mission in December
Scientists have figured out how to genetically alter bacteria to churn out super-strong spider silk. Pound for pound, spider silk is much stronger than steel, but farming spiders is incredibly inefficient, according to a press release – so finding a way to mass produce the material could lead to super-strong fabrics and perhaps even next-generation
VIENNA (Reuters) – As carmakers push ahead with self-driving vehicles, an Austrian aerospace company and its Chinese partner showed off their pilot-less “flying taxi” for the first time in Europe on Thursday. People attend a test flight for Ehang 216, a two-seater autonomous aerial vehicle of drone maker EHang in Vienna, Austria April 4, 2019.
WASHINGTON — European launch provider Arianespace completed SES’s first-generation O3b constellation April 4 with the Soyuz launch of four satellites. The rocket lifted off at 1:04 p.m. Eastern from Europe’s Guiana Space Centre near Kourou, French Guiana. The 700-kilogram satellites, designed for broadband connectivity services, separated from the Russian-built rocket two at a time, the
Whales belong in the ocean, right? That may be true today, but cetaceans (whales, dolphins, porpoises) actually descended from four legged mammals that once lived on land. New research published in Current Biology reports the discovery in Peru of an entirely new species of ancestral whale that straddled land and sea, providing insight into the
The scientific method cannot be bought. But that hasn’t stopped some publishers from trying. By preying on up-and-coming scientists who are desperate to publish or perish, these so-called predatory journals will print just anything for the right price. It’s a modern threat to the reliability of scientific research, and the US Federal Trade Commission (FTC) is
The year 2019 is here. With it, we’ve been promised a splendid moment in astronomy. For years, the Event Horizon Telescope has been working to bring us the first ever telescopic photograph of the event horizon of a black hole. Indeed, for all their popularity in public imagination, we have never actually seen a black
President Donald Trump of the United States of America has made quite the interesting claim. At the National Republican Congressional Committee fundraising dinner earlier this week, he took a tilt at windmills. “If you have a windmill anywhere near your house, congratulations, your house just went down 75 percent in value,” he said. “And they
WASHINGTON — Amazon is joining the list of companies planning a constellation of thousands of satellites for broadband internet connectivity. The internet shopping giant has asked international spectrum regulators to provide access to airwaves for a constellation of 3,236 satellites. Amazon’s constellation is filed under the name Kuiper Systems with the International Telecommunication Union. Amazon
Before there was life, ribonucleic acid (RNA) ruled the primordial soup. Or so the story goes, according to what’s known as the RNA World hypothesis. But it seems we may have been too hasty in leaving out RNA’s more complex cousin, deoxyribonucleic acid (DNA). Chemists from the UK and the US have shown how both
(Reuters) – For decades, scientists have been perplexed by the marvelous preservation of bronze weapons associated with China’s famed Terracotta Warriors, retaining shiny, almost pristine surfaces and sharp blades after being buried for more than two millennia. FILE PHOTO: Terracotta warriors and horses, which were unearthed during the first excavation from 1978 to 1984, stand
WASHINGTON — SpaceIL announced April 4 that its Beresheet spacecraft has entered orbit around the moon, setting the stage for a landing attempt in a week. The lander fired its main engine for six minutes starting at 10:18 a.m. Eastern time, slowing the spacecraft down by about 1,000 kilometers per hour, enough for it to
The Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT) said on Wednesday it has halted collaborations with Huawei Technologies and ZTE over US federal investigations of the Chinese technology companies’ alleged violations of sanctions. “MIT is not accepting new engagements or renewing existing ones with Huawei and ZTE or their respective subsidiaries due to federal investigations regarding violations of sanction
#HowItsMade http://www.sciencechannelgo.com In the early 19th century, an English nobleman hired two chemists to recreate a sauce he tasted while traveling through India. The resulting concoction was unpalatable, so the chemists left it in a basement only to be discovered years later. Over time, the sauce had matured and became delicious. Over 170 years later,
The NASA Evolutionary Xenon Thruster or NEXT is an advanced Ion propulsion system developed at Glenn Research Center. Its unmatched fuel efficiency could give a real boost to future deep space exploration missions — extending the reach of NASA science missions and yielding a higher return on scientific research.
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