Canadian John Hodge, left, with astronaut Al Shepard and Flight Director Chris Kraft. NASA. There was nothing particularly different about February 20, 1959. For the workers at the A.V. Roe plant in Malton, Ontario, it was just another Friday working on cutting-edge aircraft before the chilly winter weekend. Then, out of nowhere that afternoon, the […]

An artist’s depiction of Lucy, the world’s most famous Australopithecus africanus. (Credit: Greg Grabowski/Shutterstock) In the savannah of southern Africa three million years ago, an early human species known as Australopithecus africanus roamed the tropical grasslands chomping on a diverse diet of fruits, leaves and roots. The hominins ate well when the land was ripe with […]

Astronomers measured red giant stars to figure out a new measure of how fast the universe is expanding. (Credit: Norval Glover/University of Chicago) If you’re confused by modern cosmology, you’re not alone. Cosmologists themselves are confused, and two new results, using very different methods, add to their collective bewilderment. The results are measurements of how fast […]

Archinaut One will test 3-D printing spacecraft components, and then assembling them, in low-Earth orbit. (Credit: Made in Space, Inc.) Putting a satellite in space is news of the past, but launching a spacecraft that can 3-D print and self-assemble is a story of the future. NASA is now betting on the technology being ready […]

Could moons around hot Jupiters, like the exoplanet shown in this artist’s concept, be stripped from the planets they orbit? New research suggests the answer is yes, and the researchers have defined such objects as “ploonets.” (Credit: ESA/ATG medialab) Astronomers can’t stop debating about the definition of a planet (see: Pluto). But one thing is […]

An artist’s illustration shows the eventual Starship, SpaceX’s future passenger vehicle, launching above the clouds. (Credit: SpaceX) Exploring space on your next family vacation is still a few years in the future. But Elon Musk now says that Starhopper, the prototype for SpaceX’s future passenger spacecraft, could be tested as soon as July 16 at […]

(Credit: Discover; Pavel Chagochkin/Shutterstock) (Inside Science) — Shields made of a material so light it is sometimes called “frozen smoke” could help make areas on Mars livable, a new study suggests. Currently, the surface of Mars is too cold for water to stay liquid, often thought of as a key prerequisite for life as we know […]

Ochre engraving on a rib fragment from China is the oldest evidence for the material’s symbolic usage, say researchers behind the find (top: photograph; bottom: illustration). (Credit: Francesco d’Errico and Luc Doyon) Two pieces of animal bones with ochre engraving, found in central China, are the latest evidence that members of the human family used […]

An animation of GOES-16 satellite imagery acquired in the infrared reveals the evolution of Tropical Storm Barry on Friday, July 12, 2019. The crackling white and blue areas are indicative of lightning activity. (Source: RAMMB/CIRA GOES-16/17 Loop of the Day) Tropical Storm Barry is now expected to make landfall as a hurricane. As I’m writing […]

A malnourished child at a camp in Bangladesh. (Credit: Pahari Himu/Shutterstock) One in four children will never grow to a normal height. In developing countries, the number can be as high as one in three. The problem? Malnutrition. Now scientists have developed a diet that can boost key colonies of gut bacteria in malnourished kids. […]

The hunt for intermediate-mass black holes (IMBH) has picked up over recent years, and there are now dozens of promising candidates. This artist’s concept depicts a 2,200 solar mass IMBH suspected to reside in the heart of the globular cluster 47 Tucanae, located some 15,000 light-years from Earth. (Credit: B. Kiziltan/T. Karacan) Black holes have […]

LEMUR can climb walls with special gripping feet, and is only one of a suite of climbing NASA robots. (Credit: NASA/JPL-Caltech) NASA has built many adventurous robots that can fly in space, land on alien planets, roll across Martian and lunar terrain, and even fly helicopter-style across far-off worlds. But the next big challenge is […]

This galaxy, which sits about 2.5 billion light-years away, hosts two supermassive black holes (inset), visible because of the heated gas, dust, and stars around them. The two black holes are on a collision course, but astronomers still aren’t sure whether they will – or can – merge. (Credit: A.D. Goulding et al./Astrophysical Journal Letters […]

Archaeological sites in the Nuuk Region along Greenland’s southern coast, shown here, are among those in the most danger from climate change. (Credit: XPixel/shutterstock) Hailing from Norway, Sweden and Denmark, the seafaring pirates best known as Vikings, or Norsemen, raided and colonized Europe from the ninth to eleventh centuries. They also established settlements throughout the […]

Cambridge researchers have a new lettuce-picking robot. Its success underlines the challenges of automating vegetable picking. (Credit: leungchopan/shutterstock) A skilled human can pick a head of lettuce every 10 seconds. Just reach down, slice a mature head off its stalk, bag it, toss it in the cart. Easy, right? Tell that to wannabe veggie-picking robots. […]