China is planning to launch its own 'artificial moon' by 2020 to replace streetlamps and lower electricity costs in urban areas, state media reported Friday.
Almost all galaxy clusters experience mergers. While a merger takes place, a specific spiral pattern can often be observed in X-ray images. Such a spiral feature is due to the motion of the sloshing gas induced by a merger. ...
The word "HAZMAT" describes substances that pose a risk to the environment, or even to life itself. Imagine the term being applied to entire planets, where violent flares from the host star may make worlds uninhabitable by ...
New observations by two Arizona State University astronomers using the Hubble Space Telescope have caught a red dwarf star in a violent outburst, or superflare. The blast of radiation was more powerful than any such outburst ...
Evgenij Zubko of Far Eastern Federal University (FEFU), in collaboration with international team members, has developed a comprehensive model to explain the results of the recent photometric study of the comet Schwassmann-Wachmann ...
A two-year cycle in the gamma-ray brightness of a blazar, a galaxy powered by a supermassive black hole, has been confirmed by 10 years of observations from NASA's Fermi Gamma-ray Space Telescope. The findings were announced ...
Long ago, sky watchers linked the brightest stars into patterns reflecting animals, heroes, monsters and even scientific instruments into what is now an official collection of 88 constellations. Now scientists with NASA's ...
An international team of astronomers has discovered a titanic structure in the early Universe, just two billion years after the Big Bang. This galaxy proto-supercluster, nicknamed Hyperion, is the largest and most massive ...
New research by a team led by an astrophysicist at the University of Warwick has a way of finally telling whether newly forming planets are migrating within the disc of dust and gas that typically surrounds stars or whether ...
An international team of researchers has investigated a peculiar extragalactic radio source known as IC 1531. The new study analyzes the nature of IC 1531's high-energy emission, suggesting that the source is a radio galaxy. ...
Collimated jets provide astronomers with some of the most powerful evidence that a supermassive black hole lurks in the heart of most galaxies. Some of these black holes appear to be active, gobbling up material from their ...
The Big Bang has captured our imagination like no other theory in science: the magnificent, explosive birth of our Universe. But do you know what came next?
When astrophysicists look at the gamma-ray glow from a galaxy outside our own, all they typically see is a small spot because the galaxy is extremely far away. So, when a galaxy appears as an extended blob, something extraordinary ...
Evidence that catastrophic geological events could have created evolutionary bottlenecks that changed the course of life on Earth may be buried within ancient rocks beneath our feet.
On October 16, 2017, an international group of astronomers and physicists excitedly reported the first simultaneous detection of light and gravitational waves from the same source—a merger of two neutron stars. Now, a team ...
Researchers have identified a young star with four Jupiter and Saturn-sized planets in orbit around it, the first time that so many massive planets have been detected in such a young system. The system has also set a new ...
Using ESO's Very Large Telescope (VLT), astronomers have performed observations of the planetary nebula IC 5148. The new study, described in a paper published October 2 on the arXiv pre-print server, unveils the presence ...
Most galaxies host a supermassive black hole (SMBH) at their nucleus. (A supermassive black hole is one whose mass exceeds a million solar-masses.) A key unresolved issue in galaxy formation and evolution is the role these ...
Japan's space agency is delaying a spacecraft touchdown on an asteroid because scientists need more time to find a safe landing site on the extremely rocky surface.
Ever since Chris Fox was a young boy, he wanted to visit alien planets. With no immediate plans for such a voyage, the Western University graduate student has done the next best thing. He's gone and found one.
Carnegie's Anthony Piro was part of a Caltech-led team of astronomers who observed the peculiar death of a massive star that exploded in a surprisingly faint and rapidly fading supernova, possibly creating a compact neutron ...
A new research recently carried out by astronomers suggests that the galaxy NGC 3256 has substantial amounts of dark matter in its central region. The finding, presented in a paper published October 2 on arXiv.org, might ...
To train future explorers to support NASA's mission to return to the Moon's surface, scientists use similar environments found on the Earth. Last week, a group of domestic and international students traveled to Barringer ...
Final preparations were underway Friday for the launch of a joint mission by European and Japanese space agencies to send twin probes to Mercury, the closest planet to the sun.
Space Shuttle Atlantis deployed the Galileo spacecraft six hours, 30 minutes into the flight on Oct. 18, 1989. In this image, Galileo, mounted atop the inertial upper stage, is tilted to a 58-degree deployment position in ...
Space, that final frontier, is something that catches the attention of a country naturally inclined to believe in ideas like "Manifest Destiny" and American exceptionalism. But how well does a Space Force fit that bill? And ...
How do you create the largest 3-D map of the universe? It's as easy as teaching 5,000 robots how to "dance." DESI, the Dark Energy Spectroscopic Instrument, is an experiment that will target millions of distant galaxies by ...
Known since antiquity, Mercury has not yet delivered all its secrets. The international mission BepiColombo, scheduled to launch in the coming days, will study the planet's surface and compare its magnetic field with that ...
,We are now truly living in the era of big data. And it's not just companies like Facebook and YouTube that are reaping the benefits, big data is transforming science too. In the space sciences, we have an unprecedented number ...
Teams responsible for flying the bold BepiColombo mission to Mercury today completed the last major step in preparation for Saturday's liftoff—the final pre-launch 'dress rehearsal' at ESA's ESOC control centre in Darmstadt, ...
An international team of scientists, including KAUST high performance computing experts and astronomers from the Paris Observatory and the National Astronomical Observatory of Japan (NAOJ), in collaboration with NVIDIA, is ...
Environmental data collected from an exposure panel exposed to the space environment for one year suggests that microbes and organic compounds present in the exposure panel would be able to survive, supporting the possibility ...
A California-based startup said Wednesday that it will rocket small satellites into orbit from Virginia, an endeavor that reflects increasing demand from companies and governments alike to monitor ships, crops and the weather ...
The idea of exploring and colonizing Mars has never been more alive than it is today. Within the next two decades, there are multiple plans to send crewed missions to the Red Planet, and even some highly ambitious plans to ...
School students have successfully identified sounds caused by a solar storm in the Earth's magnetic shield, as part of a Queen Mary University of London research project.
Last week saw the installation of ESA's next-generation life-support system on the International Space Station. The new facility recycles carbon dioxide in the air into water that can then be converted into oxygen reducing ...
Popular science fiction of the early 20th century depicted Venus as some kind of wonderland of pleasantly warm temperatures, forests, swamps and even dinosaurs. In 1950, the Hayden Planetarium at the American Natural History ...
Hundreds of scientists and Mars-exploration enthusiasts will convene in a hotel ballroom just north of Los Angeles later this week to present, discuss and deliberate the future landing site for NASA's next Red Planet rover—Mars ...
Magnetic forces ripple throughout the universe, from the fields surrounding planets to the gasses filling galaxies, and can be launched by a phenomenon called the Biermann battery effect. Now scientists at the U.S. Department ...
A trio of economists is suggesting that it is time to add a well-being index to national economic measures. Carol Graham with the Brookings Institution, Kate Laffan with the London School of Economics and Sergio Pinto with ...
A research group at the Center for Multidimensional Carbon Materials, within the Institute for Basic Science (IBS), has published an article in Science describing a new method to convert inexpensive polycrystalline metal ...
A pair of researchers, one with the University of Bonn, the other the University of California, has found evidence that shows gender preferences differ more in countries that are more affluent and gender equal than in countries ...
Most of us would acknowledge that family members often resemble one another, particularly in the face. Indeed, humans are good at picking out pairs of close relatives amongst the faces of unfamiliar adults. We are also more ...
Climate change is in full swing and will continue unabated as long as CO2 emissions continue. One possible solution is to return CO2 to the energy cycle: CO2 could be processed with water into methanol, a fuel that can be ...
Researchers from the University of Luxembourg, Technische Universität Berlin, and the Fritz Haber Institute of the Max Planck Society have combined machine learning and quantum mechanics to predict the dynamics and atomic ...
Scientists studying a valuable, but vulnerable, species of poplar have identified the genetic mechanism responsible for the species' inability to resist a pervasive and deadly disease. Their finding, published in the Proceedings ...
The ability to translate the genetic code into proteins is an essential step in all living organisms. A cornerstone of this molecular process is the ability of transfer RNA (tRNA) molecules to couple recognition of the genetic ...
Scientists at the UNC School of Medicine in collaboration with researchers at Oregon Health & Science University have resolved the three-dimensional molecular structure of the protein that's defective in people with cystic ...
What do watermelons and bacteria have in common? Just like the tasty fruit, microbes can be molded into unusual shapes, a study in Nature Communications has shown. The paper, produced by researchers at the Okinawa Institute ...
Chlorophyll is the pigment used by all plants for photosynthesis. There are two versions, chlorophyll a and chlorophyll b. These are structurally very similar to one another but have different colors, blue-green and yellowish ...
A newly discovered toxin that some bacteria deploy to fend off competing bacteria stands out from others in the battle for microbial domination. While many deadly substances have been identified among bacteria, this previously ...
A team of scientists led by Professor Richard Layfield at the University of Sussex has published breakthrough research in molecule-based magnetic information storage materials.
Measuring the properties of superconducting materials in magnetic fields at close to absolute zero temperatures is difficult, but necessary to understand their quantum properties. How cold? Lower than 0.05 Kelvin (-272°C).
An international team of researchers has successfully produced a Bose-Einstein condensate (BEC) in space for the first time. In their paper published in the journal Nature, the group describes creating a small experimental ...
Those pesky bees that come buzzing around on a muggy summer day are helping researchers reveal the genes responsible for social behaviors. A new study published this week found that the social lives of sweat bees—named ...
Inside smartphones and computer displays are metals known as the rare earths. Mining and purifying these metals involves waste- and energy-intense processes. Better processes are needed. Previous work has shown that specific ...
Pioneering research has given a fascinating fresh insight into how animal nervous systems evolved from simple structures to become the complex network transmitting signals between different parts of the body.
The embryonic stem cells that form facial features, called neural crest cells, use an unexpected mechanism of moving from the back of the head to the front to populate the face, finds a new UCL-led study.
A team of researchers affiliated with several institutions in the U.S. has come up with a new type of cermet that could prove especially useful as a heat exchanger in solar power plants. In their paper published in the journal ...
A new paper written by academics at Royal Holloway and George Washington University, predicts reliable patterns in violent events occurring within wars and terrorism, regardless of geography, ethnicity and religion.
Researchers at the Center for Quantum Nanoscience (QNS) within the Institute for Basic Science (IBS) in South Korea have made a major scientific breakthrough by detecting the nuclear magnetism, or "nuclear spin" of a single ...
Scientists at Oregon State University have shed light on the evolutionary history of a soil-borne bacteria that is so dangerous to grazing animals it is kept behind lock-and-key to prevent its spread.
Big Data is all the rage today, but Small Data matters too! Drawing reliable conclusions from small datasets, like those from clinical trials for rare diseases or in studies of endangered species, remains one of the trickiest ...
An ancient group of microbes that contains some of the smallest life forms on Earth also has the smallest CRISPR gene-editing machinery discovered to date.
One of the balancing acts faced by conservation agencies is how to conserve and protect as many species as possible from extinction with limited funding and finite resources. In the U.S., conservation agencies are supported ...
Research from King's College London has shown for the first time that genetics plays a significant role in whether young adults choose to go to university, which university they choose to attend and how well they do.
Researchers in Singapore can now explain what gives the mantis shrimp, a marine crustacean that hunts by battering its prey with its club-like appendages, the most powerful punch in the animal kingdom. In a paper publishing ...
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