Amber from Myanmar in Southeast Asia is turning out to be an incredibly rich resource for examining the natural world of 100 million years ago. In the last year, it’s turned up frogs, snails, a snake, weird feathers, and some pretty wacky bugs. What do all of those have in common? They’re land-dwellers. But now
Bill Nye frolicked in a ball pit to explain how the planet’s populations compete for resources. He took a chain saw to a loaf of bread, comparing it to Earth’s crust, and he was nearly blown away in a wind tunnel while shouting “science!” But he’s talking about global warming now – and he’s in
WASHINGTON (Reuters) – The moon may be dynamic and tectonically active like Earth – not the inert world some scientists had believed it to be – based on a new analysis disclosed on Monday of quakes measured by seismometers in operation on the moon from 1969 and 1977. FILE PHOTO: Astronaut James Irwin, lunar module
LightSail 2 is a private solar sail project of the Planetary Society. The Planetary Society Can sunlight be used for propulsion? The Planetary Society’s long-held wish to raise a satellite’s orbit around the Earth using sunlight could come true this summer with the confirmation that its LightSail 2 spacecraft will launch atop a SpaceX rocket on
WASHINGTON — The White House and NASA announced May 13 that they will seek an additional $1.6 billion in funding for the agency in fiscal year 2020, a “down payment” on efforts to achieve a human lunar landing by 2024. In a tweet late in the day, President Trump announced the additional funding to support
On a recent evening, Elizabeth Ewens was in the middle of an intense run workout. Her coach told her to kick it up, so she did and received encouragement from a fellow runner. She finished the workout feeling good. While Ewens’ evening workout sounds like what running groups around the world do several nights a
At the University of California, Santa Barbara, researchers with the UCSB Experimental Cosmology Group (ECG) are currently working on ways to achieve the dream of interstellar flight. Under the leadership of Philip Lubin, the group has dedicated a considerable amount of effort towards the creation of an interstellar mission consisting of directed-energy light sail and
Scientists have measured the accuracy of two-qubit operations for the first time in silicon, bringing the world a big step closer to reliable quantum computing. The great promise of quantum computers is that they will enable a vastly more powerful and faster way of making calculations than the computing power we’ve had until now. The
While cities are often seen as centers of innovation, a growing number of islands are quietly leading the way in smart technology. Islands worldwide are positioning themselves as incubators as they work towards becoming self-sufficient & reducing carbon footprints, leading to the adoption of new smart technology . Their growth has the potential to provide replicable models for
VICTORIA, British Columbia — The Canadian government has selected MDA to design, build and deliver 10 search-an- rescue repeaters for its Medium Earth Orbit Search and Rescue system to be hosted on the U.S. Air Force’s next-generation GPS satellites. The Medium Earth Orbit Search and Rescue (MEOSAR) system repeater contract is worth 39 million Canadian ($28
There’s no denying that keeping livestock has deeply benefited humanity over the millennia. But, while sheep and cows may have adapted well to farm life, there’s one animal humans like to eat that would fare poorly in farms. Octopuses, scientists have argued in a new essay, should never be farmed – not just because of
We learn about some awesome science in high school – like Einstein’s theory of relativity, the Periodic table, and DNA replication. The knowledge we pick up there sets the foundations for all the other amazing things we go on to study. But science definitely doesn’t end at high school, and it’s once you take your
Elon Musk just gave us the first look at his rocket company’s bold plan to bring ultra-high-speed internet to the entire world. Musk tweeted out an image of 60 satellites packed into SpaceX’s Falcon rocket on Saturday, along with fresh details about the global satellite networking gambit. SpaceX currently plans to launch the rocket on
Yet another alarming milestone of humanity’s damaging effect on the environment has now officially been reached – crossing a barrier into a hot, polluted future like the planet hasn’t witnessed in millions of years. This weekend, sensors in Hawaii recorded Earth’s atmospheric concentration of carbon dioxide (CO2) passing 415 parts per million (ppm) for the
Papanikolauos was born on this day in 1883. Google Monday’s Google Doodle celebrates the 136th birthday of pathologist Georgios Papanikolaou, who developed the cancer screening test we know today as a Pap smear. Moving to the U.S. in 1913 must have been a drastic change for Papanikolaou and his wife Andromachi at first. Only two
For most of us, the jump from meat-eater to vegetarian is a big one. For the giant panda, the switch was all too easy. Despite a long family history of meat-heavy meals, this large bear now feeds almost exclusively on tough bamboo – a change its ancestors made more than 2 million years ago. For
Nothing says “Happy Mother’s Day” quite like pancakes. That’s probably what IHOP had in mind when it tweeted about the holiday this morning. But things quickly got a lot weirder. “If you have pancakes in your tum tum, does that make you a pancake mum mum? Happy Mother’s Day to ALL the mums out there!”
Researchers may have just found the devil’s maternity ward… devil rays, that is. While taking a marine conservation field course in the Gulf of California as an undergraduate at Duke back in April 2014, Leo Chan Gaskins saw gillnets full of dead giant devil rays being hauled out of the ocean. Based out of a
WASHINGTON — An incident involving a test of parachutes for one commercial crew vehicle has heightened awareness of the challenges involved in developing those systems, as well as determining what constitutes an anomaly. During a line of questions at May 8 hearing of the House space subcommittee, a top NASA official said that the parachute
These lemon tarts have a shortbread shell, creamy lemon filling, and buttercream. Fun fact: lemons are believed to be a hybrid between a sour orange and a citron. Subscribe to Science Channel: http://bit.ly/SubscribeScience Check out SCI2 for infinitely awesome science videos. Every day. http://bit.ly/SCI2YT Download the TestTube app: http://testu.be/1ndmmMq
Almost 15 years ago, Virgin Group founder Richard Branson made a bet on launching tourists into space from the scrublands of southern New Mexico. Now, he’s about to move the headquarters of his space venture to the so-called “Land of Enchantment.” Virgin Galactic’s move into its permanent headquarters at Spaceport America, north of Las Cruces,
In recent years, it’s emerged that some dinosaurs – considered scaly and reptilian for many years – were actually wearing feathers. But a newly discovered species of scansoriopterygid dinosaur sports a different style. This tiny creature had bat-like wings: leathery, not feathery. It’s called Ambopteryx longibrachium, and it was just 33 centimetres (13 inches) long.
For 1,400 years, an underground burial chamber lay untouched in the British countryside, hiding its long-dead denizen and his royal secrets. Then, in 2003, construction workers in the town of Prittlewell (about 40 miles from London) were expanding a roadway when they stumbled upon the remarkable tomb. Over time, researchers unearthed a lyre, gold coins,
A giant sea spider (Colossendeis megalonyx) in McMurdo Sound, Antarctica. Timothy Dwyer, PolarTREC 2016 Sea spiders, or pycnogonids, are marine arthropods found in waters all around the world. In warmer environments, these animals are about the size of a pencil eraser, but in Antarctica, they can become as large as a dinner plate. Scientists call this ‘Polar
NROL-68 is the second of three missions awarded to ULA under the Launch Vehicle Production Services contract. WASHINGTON — The Air Force Space and Missile Systems Center on Thursday awarded United Launch Alliance a $149 million contract modification for a Delta 4 Heavy launch of the National Reconnaissance Office mission NROL-68, the second of three
When you’ve been surviving in all sorts of environments for billions of years, you pick up a few tricks for harvesting light as efficiently as possible – and now long-living, light-emitting microalgae could be about to help us develop the next generation of solar panels. These fluorescent algae are able to capture up to 95%
If you want to know how far radioactive particles can travel, here’s the answer: all the way to the Mariana Trench, which at 10,994 metres (36,070 ft) is the deepest natural trench in the world. A new study shows that radioactive carbon from Cold War nuclear bomb tests is still present in the crustaceans living
Numbers figure pretty high up on the list of what a computer can do well. While humans often struggle to split a restaurant bill, a modern computer can make millions of calculations in a mere second. Humans, however, have an innate and intuitive number sense that helped us, among other things, to build computers in
Share to facebook Share to twitter Share to linkedin Distinct from the more typical phenomenon of the aurora borealis and aurora australis, found near the poles, a separate optical phenomenon in the sky known as STEVE can occasionally be seen. For years, scientists were puzzled as to what caused it, but that mystery has now
FREDERICKSBURG, Virginia — The majority of Inmarsat’s shareholders voted May 10 in favor of a $3.3 billion acquisition offer by a consortium of buyers. Some 77 percent of London-based Inmarsat’s shareholders voted in favor of the takeover proposed by private equity firms Apax and Warburg Pincus and Canadian pension firms CPPIB and OTPP. Those shareholders
Today the Australian Koala Foundation announced they believe “there are no more than 80,000 koalas in Australia”, making the species “functionally extinct”. While this number is dramatically lower than the most recent academic estimates, there’s no doubt koala numbers in many places are in steep decline. It’s hard to say exactly how many koalas are
There are few things that tether us more to Earth than the food we eat and the air we breathe. Today, humans have the engineering willpower to travel to the Moon and possibly beyond, but when our planet recedes behind us and we slip beyond the reach of human aid, then what? In the absence
As the content of Earth’s atmosphere changes over time, the course of animal evolution itself might change. An international team of researchers now thinks that swinging oxygen levels somehow orchestrated the boom and bust of our planet’s fauna, like the conductor of a living symphony. For the first time, their research has linked the rapid
China should get rid of the 996–a work schedule of 12 hours a day from 9 am to 9 pm, six days a week (72 hours in total) — and replace it with a new work system where people work smarter, not harder. There was a time China was a poor country. Its people had
WASHINGTON — The European Space Agency’s April launcher agreement that convinced ArianeGroup to start mass production of the Ariane 6 also provided missions for the Avio-led Vega C rocket. Giulio Ranzo, CEO of Avio, the Colleferro, Italy, company that builds the Vega and future Vega C, said the ESA council session included missions for both
#MythBusters | Wednesdays at 9/8c Full Episodes Streaming FREE on Science GO: https://www.sciencechannelgo.com/mythbusters-on-science/ The gang puts three different cars through rounds of performance tests. The catch? They’re running on moonshine instead of gasoline. More MythBusters! http://www.sciencechannel.com/tv-shows/mythbusters/ Subscribe to Science Channel: http://bit.ly/SubscribeScience Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/ScienceChannel Twitter: https://twitter.com/ScienceChannel
In her final days as Commander of the International Space Station, Sunita Williams of NASA recorded an extensive tour of the orbital laboratory and downlinked the video on Nov. 18, just hours before she, cosmonaut Yuri Malenchenko and Flight Engineer Aki Hoshide of the Japan Aerospace Exploration Agency departed in their Soyuz TMA-05M spacecraft for
Most of the debris generated from the anti-satellite test India conducted in March have decayed and rest of it will dissipate in a “short period of time”, Defence Research and Development Organisation’s Chairman G Satheesh Reddy said Friday. He said this in response to a question after delivering a talk on ‘Technology for National Security’
Today, an unexpected twist in the whale tale that’s captured the world’s attention: In April, a group of fishermen in Norway discovered an unusually tame beluga whale wearing a harness seemingly meant to hold a camera. Written on the harness? The words “Equipment of St. Petersburg.” Enter speculation that the whale was a Russian spy.
Our first picture of a black hole was a huge moment for science. But we can’t stop there. We need better pictures that deliver more information. That’s how we’ll learn even more about these strange, rule-breaking behemoths. Now a group of astronomers from the Radboud University in the city of Nijmegen, Netherlands, along with the European Space
With major flooding and severe weather events increasingly impacting the low-lying areas that make up most of Florida, the state is one of the most vulnerable to changes in the climate and rising sea levels. The Sunshine State has long acknowledged the issues relating to severe weather events, and the state’s decision-makers have been actively
“Foust Forward” appears in every issue of SpaceNews magazine. This column ran in the May 6, 2019 issue. After a little more than a year in office, NASA Administrator Jim Bridenstine has demonstrated his willingness to talk about the agency to diverse audiences. Over the course of a few days in late April, for example,
In the mountainous cloud forests of Borneo, nothing goes to waste, and that includes waste itself. Here, the largest carnivorous plant on Earth has evolved to become a sort of customised outhouse for local tree shrews (Tupaia montana). With a toilet seat perfectly contoured to the mammal’s backside, this huge, jug-shaped pitcher plant (Nepenthes rajah)
The quantum fluctuations that occur during inflation get stretched across the Universe, and when inflation ends, they become density fluctuations. This leads, over time, to the large-scale structure in the Universe today, as well as the fluctuations in temperature observed in the CMB. These new predictions are essential for demonstrating the validity of a fine-tuning
SAN FRANCISCO – Virgin Galactic plans to move its spaceship, carrier aircraft and flight operations personnel this summer from Mojave, California, to New Mexico’s Spaceport America, company executives announced May 10. The move will occur after The Spaceship Company, a firm owned by Virgin Galactic, completes the cabin interior for the SpaceShipTwo vehicle VSS Unity,
Here’s a question for you. If A is greater than B, and B is greater than C, then is A greater than C? It’s a simple puzzle, something children can solve. In fact, even animals have demonstrated the form of reasoning – called transitive inference – that we use to answer this kind of problem.
On Thursday, Amazon CEO Jeff Bezos’ space company Blue Origin presented its plans to reach the Moon, including a brand new design for its “Blue Moon” lander. SpaceX CEO Elon Musk then took to Twitter to crudely imply that Bezos was building unwarranted hype for a plan that wasn’t going anywhere — a move that
Another shipment has come, and you watch as the boats are boarded and searched. You notice specks of blood in the corners of the vessel and wonder just what is waiting inside the freezers and fridges. As you walk into a fridge, you are stunned to see it lined from the floor to the ceiling
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