Newsdesk Archive
This year, five space mining companies plan to send missions to the lunar surface in the hopes of mining the moon for precious metals.
But a caveat in international space law could prevent the firms from cashing in.
The moon is currently spinning away from Earth at a rate of around 3.8 centimetres a year.
But experts believe that in the future this could change, and the two bodies could one day be on a collision course.
We already knew that some black holes are just a few times the mass of our sun, while others are more than a billion times as massive. But others with intermediate masses, such as the one 2,200 times the mass of our sun recently discovered in the star cluster 47 Tucanae, are surprisingly elusive.
So what is it about black holes, these gravitational prisons that trap anything that gets too close to them, that captures the imagination of people of all ages and professions?
For the first time, theoretical physicists from the University of Basel have calculated the signal of specific gravitational wave sources that emerged fractions of a second after the Big Bang. The source of the signal is a long-lost cosmological phenomenon called "oscillon".
They grow up so fast. A new limit on how long the early solar system was full of dust and gas gives us clues about how and when the sun and planets grew and evolved.
Back in June 2016, NASA commissioned 21 scientists to design a lander headed for Europa, conjure up science objectives for it and figure out if the mission is feasible.
Venus is one of the most inhospitable places in the solar system. Descending through the clouds of boiling sulphuric rain is actually the easy bit—the hard bit is not being cremated by the surface temperature of 470°C (878°F) or crushed by the atmospheric pressure, which is about 90 times that of Earth, the same as swimming 900 metres under water.
Curiosity rover findings add to a puzzle about ancient Mars because the same rocks that indicate a lake was present also indicate there was very little carbon dioxide in the air to help keep a lake unfrozen.
Alt: Curiosity Just Sent Back Some Mysterious Inconsistencies
Although Mercury is the closest planet to the sun, some of its craters hide water ice in their shaded depths — but how much ice is there, and where exactly did it come from?
It was there at the birth of our planet 4.5 billion years ago. Now we know how magma from that formative period has survived to the present day, occasionally making it to the surface. And the tale it tells should help us better understand Earth’s formation.
The topic of time is both excruciatingly complicated and slippery. The combination makes it easy to get bogged down. But instead of an exhaustive review, journalist Alan Burdick lets curiosity be his guide in Why Time Flies, an approach that leads to a light yet supremely satisfying story about time as it runs through — and is perceived by — the human body.
As human emotions go, pride has earned a bad rap. Christians count it among the seven deadly sins, the ancient Greeks charged it with provoking destruction by the gods, and non-industrial peoples around the world consider it a source of bad luck.
When preschoolers spend time around one another, they tend to take on each others’ personalities, indicates a new study by Michigan State University psychology researchers.
By preschool, lots of toddlers will proudly don superhero attire and fervently expound on the need to stand up to bullies, defeat villains, and fight for good and justice. It may seem like their sponge-like minds have sopped up every dribble of virtue from their parents, peers, and cartoons. But a new study suggests that their noble credos may actually be hardwired into their noggins long before they can recite the Spiderman theme song
Children as young as 3 months old who have been exposed to a language have an advantage when they learn — or relearn — the sounds of that language later in life, according to a new study.
Related: Adoptees advantaged by birth language memory
Exposure to antibiotics in the womb could permanently weaken the immune system and make lung disease more likely, research in mice suggests.
Related: The drugs don't work, say back pain researchers
After a long week, if there's not much on TV, you may spend some time on Facebook. Could this decision hurt your health? A new study suggests it might, though the answer is complicated.
Related: The Secret Agenda of a Facebook Quiz
It has helped guard our planet from the threat of wayward asteroids, studied some of the most remote bodies in the cosmos and been used to make countless invaluable astronomical discoveries.
An exotic binary star system 380 light-years away has been identified as an elusive white dwarf pulsar – the first of its kind ever to be discovered in the universe. The white dwarf pulsar has eluded astronomers for over half a century.
When you mine uranium from the ground, you get leftover radium and radioactive rock, soil, and even the water. When you power a nuclear reactor, the spent fuel rods are still highly radioactive and dangerous. In the United States alone, there are hundreds of different sites which are heavily contaminated, over thousands of acres.
Scientists don't know much about the mysterious, powerful electric discharges that sometimes occur in the upper levels of the atmosphere in conjunction with thunderstorms. The first photograph of the phenomenon—which can occur as high as about 90km above the surface of the Earth and are known variously as sprites, pixies, elves, or jets—was only taken from Earth in 1989.
Last year, a single star found fame. It consistently made headlines and even appeared on "Saturday Night Live" and "The Late Night Show with Stephen Colbert." The star (often referred to as Tabby's star) is located 1,200 light-years away toward the constellation Cygnus and has been inexplicably flickering and fading by such large amounts that it cannot be easily explained by natural causes.
A cluster of recent meteorite impacts on Mars have been found, highlighting a deadly hazard for future Mars colonists
Related: The Mars Mystery, by Graham Hancock
Jupiter may not be the "planetary shield" that many scientists make the gas giant out to be. Instead, new simulations suggest that Saturn may play a crucial role in steering asteroids away from Earth.
The cosmos is a harsh and unforgiving place, especially if you're a comet. Composed of rock and various volatiles, like water ice, these interplanetary vagabonds are formed during the genesis of star systems and may float, for billions of years, untouched and untroubled in a distant orbit around their parent stars.
Decades-old radioactive glass found blanketing the ground after the first nuclear test bomb explosion is being used by scientists to examine theories about the Moon's formation some 4.5 billion years ago.
Danger zones in the air where radiation levels surge could pose an unrecognised health hazard. Airliners may have to avoid these in future, just as they do with volcanic ash clouds, to minimise any risk to travellers and crew.
We have long known that high-altitude flight exposes us to cosmic rays.
The nearby alien planet Proxima b is not a great candidate to host life as we know it, a new study suggests.
Alt: NASA Suggests Nothing Could Survive on Our Nearest Earth-Like Planet
A leading green energy scientist who uses bacteria to turn greenhouse gases into usable chemicals is calling for more investment from industry and government subsidies to scale up this newest of technologies.
A drone that can pollinate flowers may one day work side by side with bees to improve crop yields.
About three-quarters of global crop species, from apples to almonds, rely on pollination by bees and other insects. But pesticides, land clearing and climate change have caused declines in many of these creatures, creating problems for farmers.
Alt: Japan Has Created Black Mirror-Inspired Bee Drones
A new study into honey bees has revealed the significant effect human impact has on a bee's metabolism, and ultimately its survival.
If you’ve ever seen bees flying around at night, there’s a good chance they’re so-called “ZomBees”—honey bees whose brains are under the control of tiny fly larvae growing inside their bodies.
Related: Zombie apocalypse would wipe out humankind in just 100 days, according to university research
Imagine feeling angry or upset whenever you hear a certain everyday sound. It’s a condition called misophonia, and we know little about its causes. Now there’s evidence that misophonics show distinctive brain activity whenever they hear their trigger sounds, a finding that could help devise coping strategies and treatments.
Research on music was recently published in the International Journal of Physical Education and shows that fourth grade students are 5.87 times more likely to enjoy P.E. when music is playing.
Related: Your Brain on Music: Why Certain Songs Bring Pleasure
An extremely rare condition may transform our understanding of memory
If you ask Jill Price to remember any day of her life, she can come up with an answer in a heartbeat.
Researchers have evidence that giving a small dose of ketamine one week before a psychologically traumatic event may help prevent PTSD. The study, in mice, may have implications for soldiers who are at risk for trauma and PTSD
Ireland is set to legalise the use of cannabis for treating specific medical conditions, after a report commissioned by the government said the drug could be given to some patients with certain illnesses.
In what can only be described as a youngster doing the 'puff, puff, pass', West Australian dolphins may be using blowfish - or 'blowies' - to get high, scientists have found.
The emergence of several new species in a relatively short time is often accompanied by the evolution of special new traits. Classic notions of evolution say that these traits — such as longer teeth with extensive enamel — are adaptive, enabling an animal to succeed in a particular environment.
A University of Wyoming researcher is part of an international team that has discovered how more than 700 species of fish have evolved in East Africa's Lake Victoria region over the past 150,000 years.
The human foot is distinguished from the feet of all other primates by the presence of a longitudinal arch, which spans numerous joints and bones of the midfoot region and is thought to stiffen the foot.
Scientists who spent years listening to the communication calls of one of our closest ape relatives say their eavesdropping has shed light on the origin of human language.
The unprecedented impact that humans are having on the planet is well known to us all. Scarcely a day passes by without a media report or two on the effects of human economic activity on the world's climate or some charismatic species under threat because of illegal wildlife trade or logging.
Preliminary results are in from NASA’s unprecedented twin study — a detailed probe of the genetic differences between astronaut Scott Kelly, who spent nearly a consecutive year in space, and his identical twin Mark.
MRIs before and after space missions reveal that astronauts' brains compress and expand during spaceflight, according to a University of Michigan study.
Researchers may now know why spaceflight is so hard on the eyes — and what to do about the problem.
The likely culprit is the lack of a day-night cycle in the pressure inside astronauts' skulls, a new study reports.
Primitive plants are the latest forms of Earth life to show they can survive in the harshness of space, and for many months. Cold-loving algae from the Arctic Circle have joined the space-travelling club, alongside bacteria, lichens and even simple animals called tardigrades.
Many scientists believe the Earth was dry when it first formed, and that the building blocks for life on our planet -- carbon, nitrogen and water -- appeared only later as a result of collisions with other objects in our solar system that had those elements.
Black holes are among the most mysterious objects in the Universe. But they have one thing in common - most of the black holes we've found fall into two categories: small, stellar black holes with the mass a few times more than our Sun; or supermassive black holes that weigh the equivalent of millions of billions of Suns.
This is archaeology in the digital (and, er, real, and very amateur) age. A new project invites armchair Indianas everywhere to survey isolated tiles of satellite imagery, marking them as potential sites of interest or, in my case today, crime scenes.
It has been calculated that the network of Roman roads covered a distance of over 400,000 km (248,548.47 miles), with more than 120,000 km (74,564.54 miles) of this being of the type known as ‘public roads’.
Archaeologists have uncovered a fantastic Roman mosaic and evidence of good living over 1,500 years ago in Leicester city centre in a home with underfloor heating.
Related: Found in the Remains of a Former Gilded Age Mansion, an Ancient Roman Artifact Reveals Its Secrets
"It felt like I was helping in some way to bring these voices to the present, voices that had become somewhat lost to the historical record," says Endres. "The discovery of this single canister holding a lost recording means that these songs can be heard again
Hebrew University archaeologists working near the Dead Sea have found a cave that previously contained Dead Sea scrolls, which were looted in the middle of the 20th Century. Scholars now suggest the cave should be numbered as Cave 12, along with the 11 caves previously known to have housed hidden Dead Sea scrolls.
Alt: New Dead Sea Scroll Find May Help Detect Forgeries
Related: Archaeologists get set to dig at Masada, after 11-year hiatus
They lived lives of prestige and power. In death, these women still command attention.
The latest chapter in the saga began in 2015, when University of Arizona Egyptologist Nicholas Reeves claimed to have discovered evidence of another chamber in Tutankhamun’s tomb in the Valley of the Kings, based on radar scans. He theorized that the room could contain Nefertiti, inciting a storm of controversy.
Humans may have ritualistically "killed" objects to remove their symbolic power, some 5,000 years earlier than previously thought, a new international study of marine pebble tools from an Upper Paleolithic burial site in Italy suggests.
The current (and some would say tragic) deforestation of the Amazonian rainforest has given archeologists a small – and some would say ‘ironic’ – benefit. As the trees disappear, evidence appears of what may be a lost civilization that lived in the area 4,000 years ago and conducted the first human alteration of the forest
Alt: Do these ancient 'geoglyphs' hold a secret to preserving the Amazon?
Alt: Long Before Making Enigmatic Earthworks, People Reshaped Brazil’s Rain Forest
About a 15-minute drive east of St. Louis is a complex of earthen mounds that once supported a prehistoric city of thousands. For a couple of hundred years, the city, called Cahokia, and several smaller city-states like it flourished in the Mississippi River Valley. But by the time European colonizers set foot on American soil in the 15th century, these cities were already empty.
The first comprehensive assessment of Europe's crickets and grasshoppers has found that more than a quarter of species are being driven to extinction.
The Bolivian government has declared a state of emergency in a vast agricultural area affected by a plague of locusts.
Related: Cicadas Are Coming! Brood VI Returns After 17 Years
Engineers have developed a scalable manufactured metamaterial -- an engineered material with extraordinary properties not found in nature -- to act as a kind of air conditioning system for structures. It has the ability to cool objects even under direct sunlight with zero energy and water consumption.
Extremely high radiation levels have been recorded inside a damaged reactor at the Fukushima Daiichi nuclear power station, almost six years after the plant suffered a triple meltdown.
The wind industry crossed an important threshold in the United States last year, exceeding the generating capacity of hydroelectric power for the first time, according to the main industry trade group, the American Wind Energy Association.
Related: Massive lake drained for hydropower leaves dry bed and no fish
The bacterial world is rife with unusual talents, among them a knack for producing electricity. In the wild, "electrogenic" bacteria generate current as part of their metabolism, and now researchers at the University of California, Santa Barbara (UCSB), have found a way to confer that ability upon non-electrogenic bacteria. This technique could have applications for sustainable electricity generation and wastewater treatment
The possibility of using microalgae as a potential source of biofuel has been long discussed, but it’s not without its challenges. The big one is the same issue that affects a lot of promising tech: scaling it correctly — or, in this case, managing to grow enough of it an efficient manner.
New research has shown that intestinal bacteria can accelerate the development of Alzheimer’s disease. According to the researchers behind the study, the results open up the door to new opportunities for preventing and treating the disease.
Got BO? Blame the bacteria living in your armpits. In some people, bacteria cause body odour that no deodorant can disguise. But replacing them with underarm bacteria from a less smelly person can solve the problem, for a month or two at least.
The rise of deadly superbugs which are resistant to antibiotics could be thwarted by a humble and widely available red berry, scientists have said.
The influenza virus is a sneaky little bugger. In most cases, you have no idea you’re infected with it until you start to show symptoms — and by that point, it’s too late. Wouldn’t it be nice if there was some sort of early-detection device that could tell us who is secretly harboring a virus before it spreads around the entire office?
Brandies, such as cognac, are renowned for colors, flavors and aromas that require years to achieve. But scientists in Spain have used ultrasound to cut the time needed for such spirits to mature down to days.
UCLA researchers have found that an anti-inflammatory drug primarily used in Japan to treat asthma could help people overcome alcoholism.
Next time a nurse sticks a needle into your arm, don’t look away: it’ll be less painful. A new study shows that we feel less pain when we are looking at our body – and that this effect works with virtual reality too.
Your diagnostic kit is downloading. A “lab on a chip” system costs less than a penny to make and can test cell samples for diseases such as tuberculosis, malaria and cancer.
Hydrogen has many potential applications and is already used to upgrade crude oil for fuel production and in the synthesis of ammonia (which is critical in food production). Today, this hydrogen is commonly produced using steam reformation processes that rely on natural gas. But, scientists have been working on ways to swap out this fossil fuel for renewable energy sources.
A meteor streaked across the skies over Lake Michigan Monday morning across several states in the Midwest, accompanied by a sonic boom.
Related: A Strange Green Comet Is Heading Our Way
Bright, flaring meteors are sometimes accompanied by faint noises. What's strange about these popping, sizzling, rustling, and hissing sounds are that they reportedly occur almost instantly to earthly onlookers. This makes little sense, as meteors are as far as sixty miles away from viewers on the ground, so any sound they make should take several minutes be heard. What's going on? Do meteors somehow defy the laws of physics?
While best known for its surveys of the stars and mapping the Milky Way in three dimensions, ESA's Gaia has many more strings to its bow. Among them, its contribution to our understanding of the asteroids that litter the solar system. Now, for the first time, Gaia is not only providing information crucial to understanding known asteroids, it has also started to look for new ones, previously unknown to astronomers.
Some 470 million years ago, during the middle part of the geological period known as the Ordovician, an asteroid collision took place somewhere between Mars and Jupiter. The collision caused an explosion that sent a cascade of meteorites towards Earth.
Fossils can be so much more than dried out, mineralized bones. Researchers have found entire creatures exquisitely preserved in amber, dinosaur eggshells, and even the fossilized structure of a 515-million-year-old animal's nervous system.
What makes ancient, extinct animals so compelling is that they are often beyond anything we can imagine. Many of them have no comparison among the lifeforms surviving on earth today. They reached unsurpassed sizes, or were chimeric half-and-halfs. Others had alien skeletons with bodily projections and elongations that stretch credulity.
In the beginning, planet Earth was a very inhospitable place with no oxygen and only single-celled bacteria as inhabitants. According to a new study, the oxygen content in the air began to increase about 2.4 billion years ago, at the same time as the global glaciation and when all continents were gathered in a single huge landmass, or supercontinent. How to explain the exact connection between these events, however, is a question that baffles the researchers.
Ah, wormholes. The intergalactic shortcut. A tunnel through space-time that allows intrepid travelers to hop from star system to star system without ever coming close to the speed of light.
Buried under the Antarctic ice, the IceCube experiment was designed primarily to capture particles called neutrinos that are produced by powerful cosmic events, but it is also helping scientists learn about the fundamental nature of these ghostly particles.
Baryons seem to prefer matter to antimatter, but we still need more data.
Everyone, at some point in their lives, wonders why they are here. Existential questions don't stop at the personal level, though. Why is there a Universe, and why is it filled with matter?
Related: Research pushes concept of entropy out of kilter
Researchers have devised a test to see if pairs of black holes — famous for creating gravitational waves when they merge — themselves formed from multiple mergers of smaller black holes.
Related: Possible way to test black hole information paradox in the lab
Sometimes, you get lucky. There's a galaxy cluster that's been a frequent target of X-ray observatories due to the galaxies' interactions with the relatively dense gas in the vicinity. So, when a bright source of X-rays suddenly appeared behind this cluster, that brightness was imaged relatively quickly, and follow-up images have been captured regularly since then. Now, researchers are reporting that, a decade after the source of the X-rays first appeared, it's still around.
“The void” is more than a metaphor for gnawing existential pain. In fact, new research from an international team of scientists suggests that a huge void outside our extragalactic neighborhood could be impacting the way our galaxy—and others around it—move.
In a long-term experiment on the International Space Station, Fraunhofer researchers studied how the extreme conditions in space affect algae. Fraunhofer conducted this experiment in close cooperation with German and international partners. Research findings could benefit industrial applications and perhaps a mission to Mars.
Single-celled organisms have stiffer DNA than multicellular lifeforms like humans and rice. Theoretical physicists managed to simulate the folding in full genomes for the first time to reach this conclusion. Publication in Biophysical Journal on February 7.
After the 2003 completion of the Human Genome Project – which sequenced all 3 billion "letters," or base pairs, in the human genome – many thought that our DNA would become an open book. But a perplexing problem quickly emerged: although scientists could transcribe the book, they could only interpret a small percentage of it.
Advances in epigenetics mean incredibly detailed profiles of criminal suspects might soon be reality. Is the legal system ready to use this information?
In the summer of 2015, a team of scientists eported restoring rudimentary hearing in genetically deaf mice using gene therapy. Now the research team reports restoring a much higher level of hearing -- down to 25 decibels, the equivalent of a whisper -- using an improved gene therapy vector.
A new method for printing on paper using light promises to be much cheaper, and easier on the environment than the traditional ink-based printing we're used to.
Many forms of energy surround you: sunlight, the heat in your room and even your own movements. All that energy—normally wasted—can potentially help power your portable and wearable gadgets, from biometric sensors to smart watches. Now, researchers from the University of Oulu in Finland have found that a mineral with the perovskite crystal structure has the right properties to extract energy from multiple sources at the same time.
American chestnut trees once blanketed the east coast, with an estimated 4 billion trees spreading in dense canopies from Maine to Mississippi and Florida. These huge and ancient trees, up to 100 feet tall and 9 feet around, were awe-inspiring, the redwoods of the east coast, but with an extra perk?—?the nuts were edible.
A crop-destroying caterpillar native to the Americas is "spreading rapidly" in Africa and threatens farming worldwide, the Centre for Agriculture and Bioscience International (CABI) warned on Monday.
The innovation of synthetic fleece has allowed many outdoor enthusiasts to hike with warmth and comfort. But what many of these fleece-wearing nature lovers don't know is that each wash of their jackets and pullovers releases thousands of microscopic plastic fibers, or microfibers, into the environment — from their favorite national park to agricultural lands to waters with fish that make it back onto our plates.
This has scientists wondering: Are we eating our sweaters' synthetic microfibers?
Any insect unlucky enough to land on the mouth-like leaves of an Australian pitcher plant will meet a grisly end. The plant's prey is drawn into a vessel-like ‘pitcher’ organ where a specialized cocktail of enzymes digests the victim.
Alt: Carnivorous Plants Around The Globe Use Similar Deadly Tricks
French parliamentarians Thursday night voted to mandate video surveillance in slaughterhouses from 2018 after a year of shocking revelations about abattoir conditions.
Related: Vegetarian burger that’s so much like meat it even sizzles and bleeds: Patty made from pea protein hits the shelves as consumers look for alternative to meat
Human empathy can even extend to dogs: empathetic people interpret dogs' facial expressions more intensely.
A study by the University of Helsinki and Aalto University explored how empathy and other psychological factors affect people's assessments of the facial images of dogs and humans.