A stellar nursery nicknamed the Tarantula Nebula has been captured in crisp detail by NASA’s James Webb Space Telescope, revealing hitherto unseen features that deepen scientific understanding, the agency said Tuesday. Officially known as 30 Doradus, the region of space is characterized by its dusty filaments that resemble the legs of a hairy spider, and
There are all kinds of pollutants in the air around us. Outdoors, these can be washed away through the falling rain, and the oxidation that happens after ultraviolet light from the Sun interacts with ozone and water vapor. So, what happens indoors? As a new study shows, there’s also some oxidation going on indoors too:
An Antarctic body of ice nicknamed the ‘Doomsday Glacier’ could melt far faster than previously expected and is holding on “by its fingernails,” according to new scientific research. The melting of the Thwaites Glacier – which is around the size of Florida – could raise sea levels by up to two feet. It’s that, and
Hydrogen has huge potential as a clean fuel: it’s abundant (mainly in compounds like water), it doesn’t produce any damaging emissions, and it can also be used to store energy from solar, wind, and tidal sources. There are challenges in producing enough of the stuff in a practical and affordable way, however. Splitting hydrogen from
Today, it’s on the brink of death: a huge, red ball of flame, glaring like a baleful, bloodshot eye before it winks out into a tiny pinprick of degenerate matter. But red supergiant Betelgeuse was not always this way. Once upon a time, the star was a main-sequence monster – a blue-white O-type star, the
Scientists reviewing over a decade’s worth of studies on the fate of notorious pollutants – dubbed ‘forever chemicals’ for the way they persist in waterways, soils, and sea ice – have unearthed where environmental hotspots of contamination lie. The review, led by hydrologist Xueyan Lyu of Nanjing University of Information Science and Technology, focused specifically
Amid the continuous noise about cryptocurrencies, it’s often hard to pick out what really matters. However this month, if all goes to plan, the energy-hungry digital sector will undergo its biggest shake-up in years. Ethereum, the world’s second-largest cryptocurrency, is tomorrow expected to start a technology changeover which, once complete, should cause its carbon emissions
Even if humanity manages not to self-destruct with war or climate change, there are still other existential threats we must be ready for. Earth came pre-loaded with plenty of dangers long before we began piling on, some of which our species has still barely experienced. One of the flashier dangers comes from asteroids, like the
The launch of NASA’s Artemis “mega moon rocket” has been pushed out more than a month, likely to mid-October, after Saturday’s (Sept. 3) second launch attempt was canceled because of an engine leak. The gigantic Artemis 1 rocket – made up of the Orion capsule perched atop the 30-story Space Launch System (SLS) – will
A gamma-ray trickster has just been found in the vicinity of the Milky Way. Energetic radiation previously associated with structures erupting from the Milky Way galactic center called the Fermi bubbles actually seems to instead be coming from something more distant. The origins are instead thought to be millisecond pulsars in a small dwarf galaxy
It could be raining diamonds on planets throughout the Universe, scientists suggested Friday, after using common plastic to recreate the strange precipitation believed to form deep inside Uranus and Neptune. Scientists had previously theorized that extremely high pressure and temperatures turn hydrogen and carbon into solid diamonds thousands of kilometers below the surface of the
New observations from the James Webb Space Telescope have given us direct confirmation that some alien worlds have clouds of rock. The telescope has directly detected silicate clouds in the atmosphere of a brown dwarf – the first time, according to an international team of astronomers, that such a detection has been made in a
Insects have their own suite of friendly microbes that help keep them healthy, just as we do. But instead of simply growing larger like us sensible vertebrates, insects undergo extreme body warping to metamorphosize into their older stages of life. As you might expect, these life-changing contortions complicate the microbes’ living arrangements. This convoluted process
Scientists working in the Andes Mountains in Patagonia have been presented with a puzzle: Mice from the same species are growing to larger sizes on the western side of the mountains compared to the eastern side. Now a new study suggests a solution to the mystery. It seems that thanks to the rain shadow effect
The skeletal remains of a female ‘vampire’ were found in a 17th-century Polish graveyard – with a sickle across her neck to prevent her rising from the dead. Professor Dariusz Poliński from Nicholas Copernicus University headed the archaeological dig that led to the discovery of the remains, which were found wearing a silk cap and
An expedition team has captured the highest quality footage of the Titanic, the iconic passenger liner that sunk in 1912 during her maiden voyage. The footage, which is the world’s first and only 8K video of the underwater wreck, shows “amazing detail” that will help marine archaeologists to study further the rate of decay of
Humpback whales throughout the entire South Pacific Ocean are connected to each other via shared song, according to new research. From the east coast of Australia to French Polynesia to breeding grounds off Ecuador – a total distance of more than 14,000 kilometers (8,700 miles) – researchers have heard humpbacks (Megaptera novaeangliae) trading the same
With the right physics, it’s possible to blast a box of circuits clear across the Solar System with pinpoint accuracy to come within a whisker of distant worlds. But stir a splash of milk in your tea and the best physicists can do is hazard a guess at the kinds of patterns you’ll see swirling
We know verbal insults hurt. Words slung with spite or malice can feel like a proverbial slap in the face. Now new research goes some way to explaining why visceral shocks to spoken insults linger longer than praise or compliments often do. A team of researchers in the Netherlands explored people’s emotional reactions to hurtful
NASA on Saturday (Sept. 3) scrapped a second attempt to get its new 30-story rocket off the ground and send its uncrewed test capsule toward the Moon after engineers detected a fuel leak. With millions around the globe and hundreds of thousands on nearby beaches waiting for the historic launch of the massive Space Launch
You may not have given much thought to being able to text underwater, but for millions of scuba diving and snorkeling enthusiasts, communication in the ocean is pretty essential to staying safe. Right now, hand gestures are the preferred way of keeping in touch under the waves, and professional divers use a globally recognized vocabulary
In seahorses and pipefish, it is the male that gets pregnant and gives birth. Seahorse fathers incubate their developing embryos in a pouch located on their tail. The pouch is the equivalent of the uterus of female mammals. It contains a placenta, supporting the growth and development of baby seahorses. Seahorse dads provide nutrients and
Most of us grow up familiar with the prevailing law that limits how quickly information can travel through empty space: the speed of light, which tops out at 300,000 kilometers (186,000 miles) per second. While photons themselves are unlikely to ever break this speed limit, there are features of light which don’t play by the
Earth’s concentration of greenhouse gases and sea levels hit new highs in 2021, a US government report said Wednesday, showing that climate change keeps surging ahead despite efforts to curb emissions. “The data presented in this report are clear – we continue to see more compelling scientific evidence that climate change has global impacts and
We could one day charge our phones and tablets wirelessly through the air, thanks to newly developed technology. Researchers have used infrared laser light to transmit 400mW of light power over distances of up to 30 meters (98 feet). That’s enough juice to charge small sensors, though in time it could be developed to charge
The cost inflicted on the world by carbon pollution may be nearly four times higher than recent estimates, a study said Thursday (Sept. 1), highlighting how much climate action could save this and future generations. The “social cost of carbon” is a way of evaluating the negative economic, labor, and health consequences of CO2 emissions,
There’s something really peculiar about ferns. Their DNA is weird and complex. In fact, one species of fern – Ophioglossum reticulatum, or the adder’s tongue fern – holds the record for the multicellular organism with the most number of chromosomes. Around 720 pairs of chromosomes can be found in most of its cellular nuclei. Well,
The James Webb Space Telescope has just delivered its first direct image of a planet orbiting a distant star. The gas giant’s faint glow was captured near a young star around 350 light-years away, serving as a demonstration of the telescope’s abilities to directly observe exoplanets – a technically difficult task, but one that gives
Our oceans are swirling concoctions of waste that scientists have for years reported is fed by an influx of pollution from both the land and the sea. But working out what rubbish winds up in the Great Pacific Garbage Patch in the North Pacific, where it comes from, and who is responsible is an ongoing
On 18 February 2021, the Perseverance rover landed in the Jezero Crater on Mars. Since then, Perseverance has been exploring the region in search for evidence of past (and possibly present) life – much like its cousin, the Curiosity rover. This includes obtaining samples that will be placed in a cache and retrieved by a
We have new insight into a wonderful Martian phenomenon, thanks to a collaboration between two orbiting space probes. NASA’s Mars Atmosphere and Volatile Evolution (MAVEN) and the United Arab Emirates’ Hope Probe have joined forces to study the ultraviolet proton auroras that dance and glow high up in Mars’ atmosphere. The new research reveals that
The Voyager 1 space probe launched from Earth in September 1977, and is now around 23.5 billion kilometers (or 14.6 billion miles) away from home – and counting. But despite that mind-blowing distance, NASA scientists just carried out a repair job on the craft. Since May, Voyager 1 has been sending back garbled information from
The oldest definitive dinosaur species ever discovered in Africa – and one of the oldest dino species to walk Earth – has been unearthed in Zimbabwe, a new study finds. The finding sheds new light on dinosaur evolution, and on one of the most fundamental questions of Triassic paleontology: Why did dinosaurs live in only
Relentless rains in Pakistan over two months have caused the country’s worst flooding in more than a decade. Floodwaters have washed away roads, buildings, and crops. A third of the country, an area about the size of Colorado, is now underwater, according to the country’s climate minister. Officials estimate that more than 33 million Pakistanis
The Martian atmosphere, in its current state, is not Earthling-friendly at all. It’s extremely thin, over 100 times less dense than Earth’s, and is made up mostly of carbon dioxide. Any humans attempting to breathe it would soon find themselves not breathing at all. But on that dusty, dry, alien world, a small instrument, a
A new method for entwining the fates of fragments of light has overcome some serious obstacles on the road to photon-based quantum computing. Researchers from the Max Planck Institute of Quantum Optics in Germany have successfully entangled 14 photons into a state considered optimal for qubits, more than doubling previous attempts – while also improving
Hydrogen fuel promises to be a clean and abundant source of energy in the future – as long as scientists can figure out ways to produce it practically and cheaply, and without fossil fuels. A new study provides us with another promising step in that direction. Scientists have described a relatively simple method involving aluminum
A crime scene can present itself in any form and size. In recent weeks, an Aotearoa New Zealand family who’d purchased abandoned goods from a storage locker made the harrowing discovery of two sets of human remains hidden inside two suitcases. Sadly, this is not a unique case – bodies of murder victims are found
Well, it had to happen eventually, and now it has. Hubble and the James Webb Space Telescope (JWST) have this week released images of the same object. The result is a set of images that reveal the magnificently complementary abilities of the two telescopes, and some fascinating insights into one of the most spectacular galaxies
They found his body in a hammock, adorned by feathers, the last remaining member of his tribe. For 26 years, nearly 9,500 days and nights, the man with no known name had neither spoken to nor touched a single other human. He was known to the wider world as the “Man of the Hole” for
The Perseverance rover is enjoying a bit of a winning streak lately! For the past year and a half, the rover has been exploring the Jezero Crater on Mars to learn more about the planet’s past. As part of this mission, Perseverance is obtaining samples of Martian rock and soil that it will set aside
A mysterious ancient writing system called Linear Elamite, used between about 2300 BCE and 1800 BCE in what is now southern Iran, might have finally been deciphered, although some experts are skeptical about the findings. What’s more, it’s unclear whether all the artifacts used to decipher the writings were legally acquired. Only about 40 known
A new study has discovered a ‘frat-boy culture’ in dolphin society to rival our own. Beyond humans, researchers say dolphins are the only species known to form such complex, cooperative ‘bromances’. Other animals, like chimpanzees, show fierce male rivalry in their bid to mate with females. Their interactions don’t end in cooperation but in violence.
Seeing the famed pyramids of Giza as they stand today – immovable, impenetrable fortresses surrounded by windswept sands and a sprawling metropolis – it’s hard to imagine the day they were built. These stone labyrinths, constructed to honor the dead and carry them into the afterlife, were erected around 4,500 years ago without modern technology
The Universe, truly, is full of wonders, and the James Webb Space Telescope has just given us our best views of one of them yet. The object in question is a star around 5,600 light-years away, and Webb’s infrared eye has picked out an extraordinary detail: it’s surrounded by what appear to be concentric rings
It’s a common misconception that the Moon has a “dark” side. Like a rotisserie chicken, the Moon’s rotation ensures a nice, even sunbathe around its equator. But there are pockets that never receive any rays: deep craters and pocks at high latitudes, in the Moon’s polar regions, with high walls that protect the crater floor
For over a century, astronomers have known that the Universe has been expanding since the Big Bang. For the first 8 billion years, the expansion rate was relatively consistent since it was held back by the force of gravitation. However, thanks to missions like the Hubble Space Telescope, astronomers have since learned that roughly 5
Paleontologists in Portugal have unearthed the fossilized skeleton of what could be the largest dinosaur ever found in Europe. The remains are thought to be those of a sauropod, a herbivorous dinosaur 12 meters (39 feet) tall and 25 meters long that roamed the Earth around 150 million years ago. “It’s one of the biggest
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