ABSTRACT breaks down mind-bending scientific research, new discoveries, and major breakthroughs. Behold: the complete video of the first powered, controlled flight on another planet. NASA released this extraordinary footage of its Mars helicopter, Ingenuity, ascending 10 feet into the air on Monday. The video is just short of a minute, and was shot by the […]
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As we grapple with climate change, an extinction crisis, and the legacy of extractive land use, many now assume that humans and the Earth are an inherently bad mix. But this wasn’t always the case, according to new research. A team of archaeologists, ecologists, anthropologists and conservation managers found that humans have been altering the […]
Read MoreImage: Purdue University/ Jared Pike ABSTRACT breaks down mind-bending scientific research, new discoveries, and major breakthroughs. Engineers have created the whitest paint ever, an innovation that could help to cool buildings, reduce the energy demands of air conditioning, and mitigate climate change. The new paint reflects 98.1 percent of sunlight, essentially making it the opposite […]
Read MoreImage: David Valentine, UC Santa Barbara / ROV Jason ABSTRACT breaks down mind-bending scientific research, new discoveries, and major breakthroughs. A massive industrial dump site 10 miles off the coast of Los Angeles has been leaking the harmful chemical DDT into the ocean for decades, according to scientists who discovered the whereabouts of the underwater landfill. […]
Read MoreYuri Gagarin. Image: Heritage Images / Contributor via Getty Images ABSTRACT breaks down mind-bending scientific research, new discoveries, and major breakthroughs. On April 12, 1961, cosmonaut Yuri Alekseyevich Gagarin delivered on the dreams of countless generations by becoming the first human being in history to enter outer space. As he awaited launch in his Vostok […]
Read MoreCrab Nebula. Image: NASA/ESA, J. Hester and A. Loll (Arizona State University) ABSTRACT breaks down mind-bending scientific research, new discoveries, and major breakthroughs. In the year 1054, skywatchers in China and Japan witnessed light from an exploding star reach Earth, creating a dazzling bright spot in the sky. More than a millennium later, scientists have […]
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ABSTRACT breaks down mind-bending scientific research, new discoveries, and major breakthroughs. The long-anticipated results of an experiment at one of the world’s most powerful particle physics laboratories has confirmed tantalizing hints of new and unexplained physics that may challenge our understanding of reality. On Wednesday, scientists revealed the findings of the Muon g-2 experiment, conducted […]
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ABSTRACT breaks down mind-bending scientific research, new discoveries, and major breakthroughs. The name “USS Jellyfish” may evoke visions of a Starfleet vessel designed to accommodate gelatinous marine aliens. But it is actually the name of a very real, newly discovered structure in outer space that is like nothing that has ever been observed before. The […]
Read MoreIngenuity on Mars. Image: NASA/JPL-Caltech Since it arrived on Mars in February, NASA’s Perseverance rover has been spending its time taking short drives, zapping rocks with lasers, and recording the first ever audio of the red planet. Advertisement But on Saturday, the rover completed a particularly exciting task: dropping off its tiny helicopter buddy, Ingenuity, […]
Read MoreImage: Maskot via Getty Images ABSTRACT breaks down mind-bending scientific research, new discoveries, and major breakthroughs. For most of his childhood, famed Swiss psychologist Jean Piaget believed that he was kidnapped as a child, and the memory was so vivid that he recalled the subway station where it happened. It was only at the age of […]
Read MoreImage: sololos via Getty Images For more than a decade, scientists have been working to unravel the mysteries of so-called “fast radio bursts” (FRBs), which are sudden and unexplained radio pulses that are mostly observed in distant galaxies. These bizarre bursts, which last for mere milliseconds and sometimes repeat in odd patterns, have inspired explanations […]
Read MoreImage: Bellingham Herald/ Contributor via Getty Images It all started with some green turtles. Tomoko Narazaki, an ocean researcher at the University of Tokyo, wanted to understand how these animals are able to navigate across the ocean, so her team displaced a turtle population from one region to another and tracked their movements to get […]
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This summer will (hopefully) welcome not only widespread vaccination for COVID-19 but will also mark the return of a once-in-a-generation event that hasn’t been witnessed since Shrek 2hit cinema screens nationwide: the hatching of periodical cicada Brood X. Like many-limbed zombies emerging from the soil, billions of cicadas will arrive across the Northeastern United States […]
Read MoreImage: Wild Horizon/ Contributor via Getty Images A bolt of lightning that struck Glen Ellyn, Illinois, has sparked an alternate vision of how life may have emerged on Earth, while also shedding light on the odds of alien life on other worlds, according to a new study. It all started in 2016, when the geology […]
Read MoreImage: Joint Institute for Nuclear Research/ Baikal-GVD collaboration ABSTRACT breaks down mind-bending scientific research, new discoveries, and major breakthroughs. A gigantic and sophisticated telescope that aims to capture one of the most elusive forms of matter in the universe—neutrinos—was lowered into the waters of Russia’s Lake Baikal, the deepest lake on Earth, on Saturday. Scientists […]
Read MoreImage: PASIEKA/ Science Photo Library via Getty Images Scientists have managed to measure the smallest gravitational field on record, a breakthrough that could open new avenues of research into fundamental cosmic mysteries such as the existence of dark matter, the possibility of extra dimensions, and the quantum nature of gravity. A team of researchers based […]
Read MoreThe head and body of a sea slug after autotomy. Image: Sayaka Mitoh It was an ordinary day in the Yoichi Yusa laboratory at Nara Women’s University in Japan, where scientists examine the life cycle of sea slugs. PhD student Sayaka Mitoh was conducting her usual work at the lab when she spotted something truly […]
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NASA’s Perseverance rover is officially on the move on the surface of Mars. The mission released new images sent back from the rover during a Friday press conference, including a shot of the tracks Perseverance left on its first test drive on the Martian surface. NASA also announced on Friday that Perseverance’s landing site will […]
Read MoreImage: Mark Garlick/Science Photo Library via Getty Images It was a cosmic collision that stunned scientists: 17 billion light years away, two objects that scientists think were massive black holes merged into a single monstrous entity imbued with the never-before-seen mass of 142 Suns. The union was so tumultuous that it produced ripples in spacetime, known […]
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In a first, scientists have managed to capture video footage of a space-time crystal, also known as an STC or simply a “time crystal,” revealing the eerie pulsations of this very trippy phase of matter. Captured by Maxymus, a scanning transmission X-ray microscope at Helmholtz-Zentrum Berlin, the footage provides an unprecedented glimpse of the behavior […]
Read MoreImage: John Lund via Getty Images If you peer into the deep reaches of time and space to glimpse the universe when it was just a few billion years old, you’ll see an ancient era populated by many massive galaxies. Simulations suggest these galactic behemoths must have been fed by cold gas in dark matter […]
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If you were hurtling through the skies of an alien world with the aim of pulling off an audacious touchdown at a hazardous landing site, you might be forgiven for being too distracted to shoot a movie while you were at it. Yet that’s exactly what NASA’s Perseverance rover accomplished last week on Mars. As […]
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Last week, NASA landed its Perseverance rover on Mars, kicking off a new mission that will hunt for signs of microbial life that might have thrived in the wetter, warmer conditions on the red planet billions of years ago. Finding tiny Martian fossils would be one of the most spectacular breakthroughs in history. But what […]
Read MoreConcept art of the sky crane maneuver. Image: NASA/JPL-Caltech After seven years of development on Earth and seven months traveling through interplanetary space, NASA’s Perseverance rover will attempt a daredevil landing on the surface of Mars on Thursday. As the biggest and fastest rover ever sent to the red planet, Perseverance is a science powerhouse. […]
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On Thursday, NASA will attempt to land its latest rover, Perseverance, in an ancient lakebed on the surface of Mars. Perseverance, the biggest and fastest rover that has ever been sent to the red planet, is tasked with searching for signs of life at its landing site, Jezero Crater, which scientists think was filled with […]
Read MoreImage: Eston Martz/ Pennsylvania State University Pigs are famously smart: they can use tools, learn how mirrors work, and display sensitivity to the emotions of their peers. Now, scientists have confirmed that pigs can acquire another skill that requires impressive cognition and dexterity: gaming. Advertisement Four pigs showed a “remarkable” ability to play a joystick-operated […]
Read MoreImage: agsandrew via Getty Images A good conjecture has something like a magnetic pull for the mind of a mathematician. At its best, a mathematical conjecture states something extremely profound in an extremely precise and succinct way, crying out for proof or disproof. But posing a good conjecture is difficult. It must be deep enough to […]
Read MoreImage: Xinhua News Agency/ Contributor via Getty Images China’s first successful Mars mission, Tianwen-1, swung itself into Martian orbit on Wednesday after a seven-month voyage through interplanetary space. In addition to its orbiter component, Tianwen-1 is carrying a lander and rover, both of which will attempt to touch down on the Martian surface in May. […]
Read MoreImage: Bloomberg/ Contributor via Getty Images The Mars Hope orbiter, the first interplanetary probe developed by the United Arab Emirates, entered the final hair-raising stretch of its journey to the Red Planet on Tuesday. In July 2020, the Emirates, China, and the United States all launched Martin missions—and now Hope is the first to arrive […]
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Honoring scientists, engineers, and visionaries who are changing the world for the better. Since the discovery of the gene-editing potential of CRISPR-Cas9, Dr. Jennifer Doudna has become a science superstar. As her fame ballooned, so did her workload: she runs a large lab at UC Berkeley, helms the Innovative Genomics Institute, consults on projects, speaks […]
Read MoreWhat is Last Mile in terms of transportation? In the transportation sector, the last mile has two meanings. It could either refer to the last stage in a process when a customer buys goods online or it could mean the last leg of your journey from any transportation hub such as airport or railway station […]
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