News on the most recent advances in science
Staying updated with the most recent advances in science has never been easier. ThePhysicist gathers news about the most recent advances in the world of scientific research and analyses them regularly.
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Astronauts Eileen M. Collins, STS-93 mission commander, and Jeffrey S. Ashby, pilot, peruse checklists on Columbia's middeck.
The barred spiral galaxy NGC 6872 is interacting with a smaller galaxy to the upper left. The smaller galaxy has likely stripped gas from NGC 6872 to feed the supermassive black hole in its center.
Astronaut Buzz Aldrin, lunar module pilot, poses for a photo beside the U.S. flag that has been placed on the Moon at Tranquility Base during the Apollo 11 mission landing on July 20, 1969.
On July 16, 2024, the Artemis II core stage rolled out of the Vertical Assembly Building to the waiting Pegasus barge at NASA’s Michoud Assembly Facility in New Orleans in preparation for delivery to Kennedy Space Center.
"I found out years later that seeing me in high school and hearing my experience in college inspired her to major in physics, and so she became the first robotics director at her school. And now she’s a principal. And it just rocked me because I was just being me and trying to share. It seemed like I paid it forward the same way that NASA mechanical engineer made a mark on me.” — Dr. Phillip Williams, Acting Center Chief Technologist, NASA's Langley Research Center
Apollo 11 launches from NASA's Kennedy Space Center in Florida at 9:32 a.m. EDT, July 16, 1969. Aboard the Apollo 11 spacecraft were astronauts Neil A. Armstrong, commander; Michael Collins, command module pilot; and Buzz Aldrin Jr., lunar module pilot. Apollo 11 was the United States' first lunar landing mission. While Armstrong and Aldrin descended in the Lunar Module "Eagle" to explore the Sea of Tranquility region of the Moon, Collins remained in lunar orbit.
Painting of the NASA logo, also called the meatball, continued on the 525-foot-tall Vehicle Assembly Building at the agency’s Kennedy Space Center in Florida on May 29, 2020.
The distorted spiral galaxy at center, the Penguin, and the compact elliptical at left, the Egg, are locked in an active embrace. This near- and mid-infrared image combines data from NASA’s James Webb Space Telescope’s NIRCam (Near-Infrared Camera) and MIRI (Mid-Infrared Instrument), and marks the telescope’s second year of science. Webb’s view shows that their interaction is marked by a glow of scattered stars represented in blue. Known jointly as Arp 142, the galaxies made their first pass by one another between 25 and 75 million years ago, causing “fireworks,” or new star formation, in the Penguin. The galaxies are approximately the same mass, which is why one hasn’t consumed the other.
Several transient luminous events illuminate pockets of Earth’s upper atmosphere. A line of thunderstorms off the coast of South Africa powers the rare phenomena.
The Artemis II Core Stage moves from final assembly to the VAB at NASA’s Michoud Assembly Facility in New Orleans in preparation for delivery to Kennedy Spaceflight Center later this month. Image credit: NASA/Michael DeMocker
Earth planning date: Monday, July 22, 2024 Last week we wrapped up activities at Fairview Dome and started heading south towards our next potential drill location in the Upper Gediz Vallis ridge campaign. We had about a 29-meter (about 95 feet) drive over the weekend, which set us up nicely for contact science and remote […]
Earth planning date: Friday, July 19, 2024 As usual with our weekend plans, we are packing a lot of science into today’s three-sol plan. I had the fun of planning a complex and large set of arm activities as the Arm Rover Planner today. Since we did not drive in Wednesday’s plan, we still are […]
Welcome to NASA Aeronautics’ live update page with news about NASA events and other festivities taking place throughout the week at EAA AirVenture Oshkosh 2024, which we simply call Oshkosh. Day Two Wraps Up Tuesday, July 23 at 8 p.m. EDT There was a spot of rain here this afternoon, but the NASA Pavilion stayed […]
Scientists from around the world are gathering this week in California to take stock of the state of science from Mars and discuss goals for the next steps in exploration of the Red Planet. In the spirit of Mars 10, formally known as the 10th International Conference on Mars, here are 10 recent significant events […]
When designing a new spacecraft or exploration vehicle, there is intense focus on its technical performance. Do its systems perform as expected? What kind of power does it need? Will it safely reach its destination? Equally important, however, is whether that vehicle also works for the humans inside. Can astronauts easily reach critical controls? Do […]
This spring, NASA published a document overviewing almost 200 technology areas requiring further development to meet future exploration, science, and other mission needs – and asked the aerospace community to rate their importance. The goal was to better integrate the community’s most pervasive technical challenges, or shortfalls, to help guide NASA’s space technology development and […]
Leadership from NASA and Boeing will participate in a media teleconference at 11:30 a.m. EDT Thursday, July 25, to provide the latest status of the agency’s Boeing Crew Flight Test mission aboard the International Space Station. Audio of the media teleconference will stream live on the agency’s website: https://www.nasa.gov/nasatv Participants include: Media interested in participating […]
As part of NASA’s commitment to foster responsible exploration of the universe for the benefit of humanity, the Office of Technology, Policy, and Strategy (OTPS) is funding space sustainability research proposals from five university-based teams to analyze critical economic, social, and policy issues related to Earth’s orbit and cislunar space.
Astronaut Eileen Collins, STS-93 commander, looks through a checklist on the space shuttle Columbia’s middeck in this July 1999 image. Collins was the first female shuttle commander. Collins graduated in 1979 from Air Force Undergraduate Pilot Training at Vance AFB, Oklahoma, where she was a T-38 instructor pilot until 1982. She continued her career as […]
By Rick Smith “The art of aerospace engineering is a matter of seeing around corners,” said NASA thermal analyst Jodi Turk. In the case of NASA’s Chandra X-ray Observatory, marking its 25th anniversary in space this year, some of those corners proved to be as far as 80,000 miles away and a quarter-century in the […]
To celebrate the 25th anniversary of the flagship Chandra X-ray observatory, NASA has released 25 never-before-seen images of iconic astronomical objects.
"Cosmic lighthouses" comprised of rapidly spinning dead stars that blast out radiowaves could be used to shed new light on dark matter, the universe's most mysterious "stuff."
The U.S. just suffered its second-hottest June in 130 years. The month also featured four new billion-dollar weather and climate disasters.
Astronomers have detected 21 rare systems with widely separated neutron stars and sun-like stars. These binaries are "one in a million" and challenge dead star binary formation models.
NASA's Artemis 2 mission is returning astronauts to the moon for the first time since 1972. See live mission updates here.
Described as "high-speed internet on the go," SpaceX's Starlink Mini is now available from coast to coast, bringing users a world-wide connection from space.
SpaceX has won a $113 million contract to launch NOAA's JPSS-4 climate and weather satellite. Liftoff is targeted for 2027.
The JWST's infrared vision has seen deep into the stormy atmosphere of two brown dwarfs that form the third closest system to the sun.
A missing link black hole that sits in the mass gap between stellar-mass black holes and supermassive black holes is "parked" right by the Milky Way's central black hole, Sagittarius A*.
An interview with NASA astronaut Nicole Stott for her 'Space Cadet' Hollywood advisory work.
It's hard to know what Neanderthals ate: food preparation, especially when it comes to smaller items like birds, can leave few archaeological traces. But understanding their diets is critical to understanding these incredibly adaptable hominins, who thrived for hundreds of thousands of years in wildly varied environments. To learn what food preparation could look like in the archaeological record, scientists tried cooking like Neanderthals.
Butterflies and moths collect so much static electricity while in flight, that pollen grains from flowers can be pulled by static electricity across air gaps of several millimeters or centimeters.
A small but ferocious predator, the male dragonfish will apparently do anything for love. Or at least to find a mate. A study by researchers at Boston College found that the eyes of the male dragonfish grow larger for mate-seeking purposes, making the dragonfish an anomaly in vertebrate evolution. The team report their findings in the journal Biology Letters.
A new study, led by paleontologists at the Royal Ontario Museum (ROM) is helping resolve the evolution and ecology of Odaraia, a taco-shaped marine animal that lived during the Cambrian period.
For decades, insecticide-treated bed nets and indoor insecticide spraying regimens have been important—and widely successful—treatments against mosquitoes that transmit malaria, a dangerous global disease. Yet for a time, these treatments also suppressed undesirable household insects like bed bugs, cockroaches and flies.
Scientists at the Department of Energy's Lawrence Berkeley National Laboratory (Berkeley Lab) are credited in the discovery of 16 of the 118 known elements. Now they've completed the crucial first step to potentially create yet another: element 120.
Quantum information systems offer faster, more powerful computing methods than standard computers to help solve many of the world's toughest problems. Yet fulfilling this ultimate promise will require bigger and more interconnected quantum computers than scientists have yet built. Scaling quantum systems up to larger sizes, and connecting multiple systems, has proved challenging.
The behavior of the cells that make up our blood vessels is crucial to our well-being. Conditions such as inflammation, oxygen deprivation and viral infection can stress these cells and disrupt the formation of new, often pathological, blood vessels. Now a team of researchers led by Jean-Philippe Gratton, chair of the Department of Pharmacology and Physiology at Université de Montréal and a specialist in vascular biology, has discovered a previously unknown pathway leading to the formation of new blood vessels, a process known as angiogenesis.
At the turn of the millennium, gray wolves returned to Germany after 150 years and subsequently established territories in many parts of the country. But coexistence harbors challenges—for both humans and animals. Since 2006, almost all gray wolves found dead in Germany have been examined at the Leibniz Institute for Zoo and Wildlife Research (Leibniz-IZW) in order to assess their health status and determine the cause(s) of death.
As the world grapples with an aging population, the rise in neurodegenerative diseases such as Alzheimer's and Parkinson's is becoming a significant challenge. These conditions place a heavy burden not only on those afflicted but also on their families and society at large. Traditional treatments, including drug therapy and surgery, often come with side effects and high costs, and more critically, they fail to halt the progression of neuronal degeneration or prevent the death of neurons in patients.
It all started with a painkiller.
"They should have been studied separately."
They're called bezoars.
"Gilead has an opportunity to save the world."
This could be bad for heart health.
As the daughter of a cancer researcher, Kamala Harris would bring a lifelong familiarity with science to the presidency, experts say
Scientists hope the incredibly rare beaching of a spade-toothed whale will help them learn more about this persistently elusive species
Temperatures in Fairbanks, Alaska, are predicted to reach a record-tying 90 degrees Fahrenheit because of a prolonged, unusually late heat wave
The current presidential race has ensured that age will be a key and likely fraught consideration in future elections. Can science help determine how old is too old for a candidate before politics does?
Almost all packaged food sold in the U.S. for the past three decades has sported a Nutrition Facts label, with major consequences for the food system
Trump’s language about immigrants “poisoning” the U.S. repeats past rhetoric that led to civilian detention camps, with horrific, tragic results
Companies and governments alike need to step up cybersecurity practices in the wake of massive technology failures associated with a CrowdStrike update
If Harris becomes the Democratic presidential nominee, reproductive rights will likely be a key focus of her campaign, experts say
Baffling new results show that rocklike mineral deposits in the deep sea can produce oxygen
A tall cactus found only in Florida’s Key Largo is the U.S.’s first species to go extinct from sea-level rise
Scientists made the known element 116 with a beam of titanium atoms, a technique that could be used to make the undiscovered element 120.
A new study clarifies how melanoma cells use cell membrane protrusions called “blebs” to burrow through tissue.
Instead of sinking from the surface, some deep-sea oxygen may be created by battery-like nodules that split water into hydrogen and oxygen.
Rocky planets around fiery stars could hide their water for later use, but it takes 3 to 8 times the amount in our world’s oceans to end up Earthlike.
Brief blasts of light might make some materials into fleeting superconductors. Magnetic measurements strengthen the case for this controversial claim.
Infections peak in the summer and winter. Up-to-date vaccinations, testing and masking can slow the spread.
Science News talked to a meteorologist and Twisters’ tornado consultant to separate fact from fiction in Hollywood’s latest extreme weather thriller.
For the first time, a scientist has used ocean and atmospheric data to find a milky sea, a huge expanse of luminous water, in past satellite images.
The model, which was trained on data from ocean buoys to identify potential rogue waves, could help save lives.
As different coronavirus variants took center stage during the pandemic, the chances of developing long COVID fell, especially for vaccinated people.
One of the quantum fields that fills the universe is special because its default value seems poised to eventually change, changing everything.
The post Vacuum of Space to Decay Sooner Than Expected (but Still Not Soon) first appeared on Quanta Magazine
In work that has been 30 years in the making, mathematicians have proved a major part of a profound mathematical vision called the Langlands program.
The post Monumental Proof Settles Geometric Langlands Conjecture first appeared on Quanta Magazine
These metaphorical gardens have become central objects in modern mathematics.
The post What Are Sheaves? first appeared on Quanta Magazine
Common sense has been viewed as one of the hardest challenges in AI. That said, ChatGPT4 has acquired what some believe is an impressive sense of humanity. How is this possible? Listen to this week’s “The Joy of Why” with co-host Steven Strogatz.
The post Will AI Ever Have Common Sense? first appeared on Quanta Magazine
At sea, biologists discovered microbial partners that together produce nitrogen, a nutrient essential for life. The pair are in the process of merging into a single organism.
The post Tight-Knit Microbes Live Together to Make a Vital Nutrient first appeared on Quanta Magazine