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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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NASA and Blue Origin’s Club for the Future will co-host multiple free in-person viewing events of the agency’s documentary, The Color of Space, at historically Black colleges and universities, conferences, festivals, and more nationwide. The documentary is a conversation between seven current and former Black astronauts, each of whom were selected

NASA and Boeing will host a mission overview media teleconference at 11 a.m. EST Friday, Feb. 17, to provide a status update on the first astronaut flight test of the company’s CST-100 Starliner to the International Space Station. Launch is targeted for no earlier than April to the microgravity laboratory.

It was April in 1981 when a party of four camped for two days and nights on the forested slopes of Mount Evermann, the central peak of Socorro, a volcanic island in the Pacific some 400 kilometers southwest of Baja California, Mexico. Their fruitless search confirmed their suspicions: the Socorro dove, an endearingly tame bird unique to the island, had disappeared, eaten by the cats of Spanish colonists, pushed out by grazing sheep and shot from the sky by hunters.

Hurricanes are becoming more intense due to the climate crisis. Therefore, researchers from the Max Planck Institute for Animal Behavior in Germany and Swansea University in the United Kingdom have studied the wind speeds that different seabird species can withstand. The team was able to show that the individual species are well adapted to the average wind conditions in their breeding grounds, but use different strategies to avoid flying through the storm. Within their research, one behavior of the albatrosses particularly surprised the scientists.

ESA's Hera asteroid mission for planetary defense is about to gain its sight. Two complete and fully tested Asteroid Framing Cameras have reached OHB in Germany for integration aboard Hera's payload module. This instrument will provide the very first star-like view of Hera's target for the mission to steer towards the Dimorphos asteroid, which last year had its orbit altered by an impact with NASA's DART mission.

Zircons are common, hardy minerals that can be found in rocks up to 4 billion years old. Their structure and texture can reflect the conditions in which they formed, earning them a reputation as nature's time capsules. And according to new research, with the power of machine learning, scientists can mine zircon textures to identify valuable mineral deposits.

Several real-life pathogens can change a host’s behavior against their will. Here’s what we know about these zombie-like infections.
The post Can Our Brains Be Taken Over? first appeared on Quanta Magazine

The quantum energy teleportation protocol was proposed in 2008 and largely ignored. Now two independent experiments have shown that it works.
The post Physicists Use Quantum Mechanics to Pull Energy out of Nothing first appeared on Quanta Magazine

Big Freeze, Big Rip, Big Crunch, Bounce or vacuum decay? Steven Strogatz speaks with theoretical cosmologist Katie Mack about the five ways that scientists think the universe could come to an end.
The post How Will the Universe End? first appeared on Quanta Magazine

“Virovores” — organisms that survive and multiply by eating viruses — might influence the flow of energy through ecosystems.
The post With Nothing to Eat Except Viruses, Some Microbes Thrive first appeared on Quanta Magazine

Mathematicians have struggled to understand the moduli space of graphs. A new paper uses tools from physics to peek inside.
The post Quantum Field Theory Pries Open Mathematical Puzzle first appeared on Quanta Magazine