Our entire understanding of Uranus might rest on a cosmic coincidence—a single spacecraft encounter that may have captured the planet during an extraordinarily rare atmospheric state.
In a new Nature Physics study, researchers accelerated electrons to more than twice the energy predicted by the traditional dephasing limit for laser-plasma accelerators operating over the same distance. This was made possible by a specially engineered laser …
Scientists found more than 200,000 radioactive waste barrels deep in the Atlantic, with some already leaking into seafloor mud.
Scientists are racing to unlock an energy source that could power civilization for centuries—or accelerate climate catastrophe if it escapes.
They went with their gut on this one.
Voyager 2’s four-planet route depended on a rare chain of planetary encounters, successive transfers of orbital momentum and a launch window that will not return until the 2150s.
From reaching for a cup of coffee to tying your shoelaces, gravity shapes nearly all human movement. So how do our bodies react when that familiar force begins to change? Texas A&M University researchers are exploring the answer through a multiphase proje…
Microplastics, which are plastic particles under 5 millimeters, are a major and growing threat in both soil and water. They damage soil fertility, disrupt nutrient cycling, harm aquatic and terrestrial life, and can move through the food chain. That makes cle…
Scientists still don't fully understand why some lakes can spontaneously suffocate entire communities with invisible gas, or how to prevent the next catastrophe.
Custom-designed machines could identify hazards on the moon and help astronauts collect rock samples, source water ice, researchers say.
The Korea Aerospace Research Institute shared images that show the gash on the surface. It’s pretty small.
The Aug. 12 eclipse won't rival 2024's Great American Eclipse, but millions across the U.S. and Canada will still see the moon take a bite out of the sun.
About 90 percent of the distance driven by Perseverance has been autonomous.
The idea was simple and a little mad
Wouldn't it be great if we could make a material we need for batteries by pulling carbon dioxide right out of the air? It almost sounds too good to be true, but chemists have found a way.
The clouds above Mars glow in colors that defy everything we know about how planets work, revealing an atmosphere far stranger than we imagined.
Curiosity’s JPL Morse-code wheel marks double as visual-odometry references, helping the rover compare commanded wheel rotation with its actual movement across difficult terrain.
Voyager is refusing to die. Long live Voyager.
US News: In the mountains of eastern West Virginia sits Green Bank, a town of roughly 150 people where using a cell phone, running a Wi-Fi router, or operating.
Solar eclipse viewers often witness a phenomenon known as shadow bands just before and after totality. An upcoming eclipse offers a new chance to study this mystery.
The confidence that you understand something is often the very thing that prevents you from actually learning it.
At some point in evolutionary history, possibly around 400 million years ago, things started having sex.
The world's greatest meteorite collection exists not because Antarctica attracts space rocks, but because the continent's ice and wind are nature's most efficient sorting machines.
This 2.6m-long prehistoric predator was the largest arthropod ever known, with enormous claws and the power to dominate ancient seas
NASA, INL and the private industry are partnering to develop fission-powered spacecraft for Mars by 2028 and a nuclear reactor for the moon by 2030.
The immune system's most abundant warrior fights infection with a suicide bomb strategy, vanishing without a trace.
Where Earth's most hostile terrain becomes a window into the search for life on other worlds.
Scientists have made a surprising finding about how an asexually reproducing stick insect has evolved. Research led by Dr. Darren Parker, lecturer in evolutionary biology at Bangor University, studied the genes of several species of Timema (a type of stick in…
Copernicus Browser adds wildfire visualization amid record wildfire season.
Voyager 1 crossed the Sun's plasma boundary in 2012, yet it remains thousands of years from the gravitational edge of the solar system.
Paleontologists have described a new genus of small, bird-like dinosaur that lived in what is now New Mexico approximately 73 million years ago.
Using light to process quantum information is one of the most promising approaches to building future quantum computers. Light particles, known as photons, are excellent carriers of quantum information, but their lack of natural interactions has created a maj…
Scientists in China predict that stacking two microscopic layers of boron could set a new record for superconductivity. Superconductors are materials that conduct electricity with zero resistance. Traditional types need temperatures close to absolute zero to …
A satellite spun out of control ahead of its rescue mission to boost a falling NASA observatory. But the team isn’t giving up yet.
Fitted with telescopes, the plane did our longest imaging of the Sun's corona.
Neanderthals vanished roughly 42,000 years ago, but a piece of their biology appears to be quietly at work in some people today, according to a new study led by scientists from the Max Planck Institute for Evolutionary Anthropology.
The night of Aug. 12 is going to be a busy one as a solar eclipse, meteor shower, planet parade and new moon all take place.
Homer Dávila Gutierrez, director of SKYCR.ORG, has identified a gravitational arc candidate in the galaxy cluster MACS J0308.9+2645 from public data from the James Webb Space Telescope. The object had not been previously reported and is located at a photometr…
An international team of researchers has uncovered a previously undetected structure in the birdsong of Bengalese finches that has the same statistical patterns found in human languages.
A little red dot has been discovered at the heart of a distant galaxy not too dissimilar to the Milky Way.
The origin of spin in spiral and elliptical galaxies has posed a long-standing puzzle for astronomers. One idea, known as tidal torque theory, proposes that galaxies' spins are an imprinted record of the early universe, imparted by gravity long before galaxie…
Proxima Centauri b and the newly confirmed GJ 887 d occupy nearby habitable zones, but neither is known to have an atmosphere, ocean or life.
Austinhenge is what people call the days when the sunset aligns perfectly with Austin's east-west downtown streets.
These tiny capes carry some serious technology.
German researchers have developed a quantum-based method using silver-doped crystals to separate hydrogen isotopes.
A tall glass of ice water isn't just a thirst quencher; it's also an everyday example of coexisting phases. Water can exist simultaneously in both liquid and solid phases. As it turns out, this phase duality can also exist in more exotic quantum materials, in…
Captured in the data is proof that the plasma thereupon is subjected to the same physical force that causes waves to break.
Using a detector filled with nearly 9 metric tons of liquid xenon, researchers have delivered some of the most sensitive dark matter results ever recorded. In the latest analysis from the XENON collaboration, working at the Gran Sasso National Laboratory in I…
China has pulled off just one landing of an orbital rocket to date.
He thought certain plants were meat-eaters, and a new study shows he was right
A global constellation of neutrino detectors is creating a never-before-seen view of the radioactive elements that power Earth’s tectonic heat engine.
The Carina Nebula is truly something to behold in this new snapshot.
Mimas looks frozen and geologically quiet, yet Cassini's measurements point to a young global ocean beneath 20 to 30 kilometres of ice.
The objects suggest that humans entered South America thousands of years earlier than previously thought.
Mercury is close to Earth, but stopping there means shedding the speed gained while falling towards the Sun. BepiColombo spent eight years solving that orbital mechanics problem.
Astronomers have found evidence that one of the most massive white dwarfs known has an oxygen-neon core instead of the more common carbon-oxygen core. The finding is important because the composition of a white dwarf's core determines how it will evolve. A pa…
We are what we are because of ancient and mysterious genetics.
They didn’t deserve their Darwin Award.
Venus makes the closest approach to Earth, but Mercury has the smaller average separation over time. The difference turns on what astronomers mean by nearest.
Earth’s molten iron core unexpectedly reversed direction beneath the Pacific, revealing a dramatic change in the hidden engine that creates our planet’s magnetic field. Satellite data suggest the surge is already weakening, raising the possibility that the de…
In the deep, dim ocean, a world of eat-or-be-eaten, lighting up may seem like a counterintuitive survival strategy.
A photographer recorded the “extraordinary” moment a humpback whale gave birth to its calf, in what is believed to be a world-first drone feat
A laser-driven lightsail could in principle send a gram-scale probe to Alpha Centauri in just over 20 years, but the complete mission still depends on an unbuilt laser, sail and communications system.
Diver and microbiologist, Gary Rose MD reviews the loss of long-spined black sea urchins and the coral bleaching events of 1983 and 2023.
