There are an awful lot of insects. It’s hard to say exactly how many because 80 percent haven’t yet been described by taxonomists, but there are probably about 5.5 million species. Put that number together with other kinds of animals with exoskeletons and jointed legs, known collectively as arthropods – this includes mites, spiders and
The Universe just got a little more crowded with the discovery of more than 300,000 potential galaxies in a tiny corner of the northern sky. A release of data gathered by the Low Frequency Array (LOFAR) telescope network in Europe has added extraordinary new levels of detail to the map of radio waves across the
A group of computer scientists once backed by Elon Musk has caused some alarm by developing an advanced artificial intelligence (AI) they say is too dangerous to release to the public. OpenAI, a research non-profit based in San Francisco, says its “chameleon-like” language prediction system, called GPT–2, will only ever see a limited release in
Mirror image is a tricky thing, but it’s pretty clear when you look at words in a reflection, that mirrors flip things horizontally rather than vertically. Or, at least it seems that that’s the case. For example, when you hold up a sign saying “Food” in the mirror”, it flips reads a backwards “dooF”, but
As the satellite industry booms, a Japan-based venture is working to prevent space-debris collisions that could paralyse transportation, defence and telecommunications systems. Astroscale Holdings is preparing to rendezvous with, capture and dock a test satellite early next year to show how its technology can help clear orbiting junk, Miki Ito, 36, general manager of Astroscale’s Japan
MOSCOW (Reuters) – Two astronauts who survived a midair rocket failure in October said on Thursday they had received counseling following their brush with death and felt ready to fly again next month. International Space Station (ISS) crew members Aleksey Ovchinin of Russia and Nick Hague of the U.S., along with Christina Koch of the
An ice shelf in Antarctica is about to give birth to a baby. This baby is a giant, spawned by growing cracks in the Brunt Ice Shelf. It’s not clear what this’ll mean to the scientific infrastructure in the area, and to the human presence, which were both established in the 1950s. The Brunt Ice
Earth might have a dizzying array of life forms, but our biology ultimately remains a solitary data point – we simply don’t have a reference for life based on DNA different from our own. Now, scientists have taken matters into their hands to push the boundaries on what life could be like. Research funded by
Neptune, it seems, has been keeping a few secrets. A teeny tiny moon has been found in orbit around the enigmatic outermost known planet – previously undetected, even though it’s right here in our Solar System. It’s been named Hippocamp, after the half-fish, half-horse of Greek mythology (in keeping with Neptune’s sea theme), and it’s
After January’s Super Blood Moon, stargazers are getting ready for yet another stunning sight tonight as a Super Snow Moon or Hunger Moon will grace the skies. February’s full moon is going to be the biggest Super Moon of the year. Super Moon is a term used with a full moon that occurs when the Moon
If you really want to teach someone something, starting with a misconception and working backwards is one of the best techniques. A new video from Veritasium does just that. In the episode, host Derek Muller debunks one of the most common misconceptions about science – namely, that science is simply a steady, gradual way of
NASA Television shares this inspiring production by Italian videomaker, Giacomo Sardelli, about the International Space Station, its inhabitants, and its role in space exploration. Sardelli writes of the video, “I’m not the first one to use NASA’s pictures taken from the International Space Station to craft a Timelapse video. You can find many of them
SEATTLE (Reuters) – NASA has warned SpaceX and Boeing Co of design and safety concerns for their competing astronaut launch systems, according to industry sources and a new government report, threatening the U.S. bid to revive its human spaceflight program later this year. One of Boeing Co’s CST-100 Starliner astronaut capsules is seen at a
WASHINGTON — As NASA selects payloads it plans to fly on commercial lunar landers, companies developing those spacecraft are skeptical any landers will be ready to fly this year, as the agency desires. NASA announced Feb. 21 that it has identified a dozen science and technology demonstration payloads from within the agency that will be
Diving to the bottom of the ocean is arguably harder than rocketing into space. Hundreds of astronauts have left Earth, but you can count the people who’ve visited the very bottom of the ocean on one hand: James Cameron, Jacques Piccard, and Don Walsh. Because of that, we don’t know much about what goes on
A new optical instrument that can detect plant-based organisms from kilometres away due to the unique way living things reflect light could one day help in the search for life beyond this planet, new research suggests. The working prototype device – called the TreePol spectropolarimeter – is the result of years of research by Dutch
And now for the weather on Mars: NASA’s newest lander is offering daily reports on the red planet’s frigid winter. Starting Tuesday, NASA’s Jet Propulsion Laboratory is posting the highs and lows online, along with wind speed and atmospheric pressure from the InSight lander. On Sunday, InSight recorded a high of 2 degrees Fahrenheit (minus
Last week, we reported on a mysterious new website, ThisPersonDoesNotExist.com, that shows you a new human face, generated by an AI, every time you hit the refresh button. It’s a growing trend: more copycat websites like ThisAirbnbDoesNotExist.comand ThisWaifuDoesNotExist.net have also cropped up in its wake. And now, ThisCatDoesNotExist.com takes the trend to its logical conclusion:
Okay, time to stop everything and nut out a brain teaser: if Earth is spinning to the east at 1,180 km/h (733 mph), and we’re in a plane flying west, shouldn’t we get to our destination quicker, seeing as it’s literally spinning towards us? The short answer is no, because our plane is also affected
WASHINGTON — SpaceShipTwo successfully flew to the edge of space for the second time Feb. 22, carrying three people for the first time as the company moved closer to beginning commercial operations of the suborbital spaceplane. VSS Unity, as the second SpaceShipTwo vehicle is named, was released from its WhiteKnightTwo carrier aircraft at 11:53 a.m.
A SpaceX Falcon 9 rocket carrying Israel’s first spacecraft designed to land on the moon is prepared for launch on the first privately-funded lunar mission at the Cape Canaveral Air Force Station in Cape Canaveral, Florida, U.S., February 21, 2019. REUTERS/Joe Skipper CAPE CANAVERAL, Fla. (Reuters) – A SpaceX Falcon 9 rocket blasted off from
Over the past few months, Elon Musk has been revealing new details about SpaceX’s upcoming launch system, called Starship. Musk has said the new launch vehicle, which he and engineers recently redesigned, will eventually replace all the company’s rockets. It will be fully reusable and extremely cheap to launch, the thinking goes – perhaps reducing
Around 252 million years ago, Earth experienced catastrophic devastation – an extinction event so severe that it wiped out almost all of the life on Earth. Up to 70 percent of all land vertebrate species were killed off, and a massive 96 percent of all marine species, including the famous trilobite that had previously survived
A diminutive nugget of a moon has been discovered lurking in the inner orbit of Neptune. The moon, dubbed Hippocamp for the half-horse, half-fish sea monster from Greek legend, is about the size of Chicago and so faint only the powerful Hubble Space Telescope can spot it. But by examining data stretching more than a
A disturbing new video lets you watch as a Mexican red-kneed tarantula (Brachypelma smithi) literally crawls out of its skin. The 40-second time-lapse from The Cincinnati Zoo & Botanical Garden captures the adult tarantula as it tosses and turns, spending seven long hours shedding its old exoskeleton. The Mexican red-kneed tarantula is a docile spider
This system is used to reduce extreme heat and energy generated by a rocket launch.? On Oct. 15, 2018, the Ignition Overpressure Protection and Sound Suppression water deluge system at Kennedy Space Center’s Launch Pad 39B was tested, sending water about 100 feet in the air. The test is part of preparation for launching our
We humans like to put labels and boundaries on things. For example, the boundary between Earth’s atmosphere and space is the Kármán line, the point at 100 kilometres (62 miles) altitude where aeronautics end, and astronautics take over. But Earth’s atmosphere is way more complicated than that (there’s even some debate about where the Kármán
WASHINGTON — NASA managers have given their approval for SpaceX to proceed with an uncrewed test flight of its Crew Dragon spacecraft on March 2. At the conclusion of a day-long flight readiness review at the Kennedy Space Center Feb. 22, NASA announced that it approved plans for SpaceX to fly a mission designated Demo-1,
FILE PHOTO: A H-IIA rocket carrying Hayabusa 2 space probe blasts off from the launching pad at Tanegashima Space Center on the Japanese southwestern island of Tanegashima, in this photo taken by Kyodo December 3, 2014. Mandatory credit Kyodo/via REUTERS TOKYO (Reuters) – A Japanese space probe named after a falcon, Hayabusa 2, has touched
A SpaceX Falcon 9 rocket blasted off from Florida on Thursday night carrying Israel’s first lunar lander on a mission that if successful will make the Jewish state only the fourth nation to ever to achieve a controlled touchdown on the moon’s surface. The unmanned robotic lander dubbed Beresheet – Hebrew for the biblical phrase
Richard Branson’s company Virgin Galactic has flown its first passenger on a rocket-powered spaceship. The flight is part of a decades-long effort by multiple companies to usher in an era of frequent and safe suborbital space tourism, in which vehicles can fly high enough to briefly enter space, provide minutes of zero gravity, then return to
Russian cosmonaut Aleksey Ovchinin and US astronaut Nick Hague said Thursday they were ready to head into space again next month after their last launch ended in failure. The two men previously took off in a Soyuz rocket for the International Space Station in October, but an accident minutes after blast-off sent them plunging back
FILE PHOTO: The SpaceX headquarters is shown in Hawthorne, California, U.S. September 19, 2018. REUTERS/Mike Blake CAPE CANAVERAL, Fla. (Reuters) – NASA gave its final go-ahead on Friday to billionaire entrepreneur Elon Musk’s SpaceX company to conduct its first unmanned test flight of a newly designed crew capsule to the International Space Station on March
We’ve taken giant leaps and left our mark in the heavens. Now we’re building the next chapter, returning to the Moon to stay, and preparing to go beyond. We are NASA – and after 60 years, we’re just getting started. Special thanks to Mike Rowe for the voiceover work. This video is available for download
A Japanese space probe named after a falcon, Hayabusa2, has touched down on an asteroid more than 300 million km (186 million miles) from Earth on a mission to seek clues about the origins of life, Japan’s space agency said on Friday. The spacecraft’s landing on the asteroid Ryugu, just 900 metres (3,000 feet) in
WASHINGTON — Firefly Aerospace announced agreements with state and federal agencies Feb. 22 to build a new factory for producing and launching its rockets from Florida’s Space Coast. The Texas-based company said it had reached an agreement with Space Florida, the state’s space development agency, to help fund development of a launch site at Space
MACHINES: HOW THEY WORK Thursdays 10/9c on Science This machine can decipher coins with pinpoint accuracy. Light sensors measure the size while electromagnets detect the metal type of the coin. More Machines! http://www.sciencechannel.com/tv-shows/machines-how-they-work/ Full episodes streaming FREE on Science GO: https://www.sciencechannelgo.com/machines-how-they-work/ Subscribe to Science Channel: http://bit.ly/SubscribeScience Check out SCI2 for infinitely awesome science videos. Every
Elon Musk’s push to include space technology in US trade talks with the European Union is running into French resistance. The “non” by Paris is the latest obstacle to emerge before negotiations begin, adding to a list of industries that France considers off-limits, such as agriculture. On the US side, President Donald Trump is threatening
[ad_1] At the end of last year, scientists discovered a small octopus city – dubbed Octlantis – a find that suggests members of the gloomy octopus species (Octopus tetricus) are perhaps not the isolated and solitary creatures we thought they were. Octlantis features dens made out of piles of sand and shells, and is home