News
NASA's Lucy spacecraft finds asteroid Donaldjohanson is tumbling through space
1+ hour, 6+ min ago (1156+ words) Lucy found asteroid Donaldjohanson wobbling, scarred by impacts and rich in water-altered minerals from an ancient breakup. (CREDIT: Southwest Research Institute) Asteroid Donaldjohanson does not move through space with the tidy, steady spin scientists often expect. It tumbles in a…...
Spin Launch looks to slingshot satellites into space
5+ hour, 22+ min ago (986+ words) This technology transforms satellite deployment by utilizing a massive rotating arm to launch satellites into low Earth orbit. (CREDIT: Spin Launch) A giant slingshot sounds more like a county fair stunt than a serious space plan. Yet one California company…...
Great apes show mental differences that do not follow human rules
18+ hour, 6+ min ago (1051+ words) Great apes show stable cognitive differences, raising new questions about how ape intelligence is structured. (CREDIT: AI-generated image / The Brighter Side of News) That matters because much of comparative psychology has leaned on species-wide averages. If one species performs well…...
New prototype quantum sensor expedites search for dark matter and gravitational waves
1+ day, 5+ hour ago (908+ words) Imperial physicists showed a prototype quantum sensor can cancel noise and recover hidden signals. (CREDIT: Dr Thomas Walker, Imperial College London) The trouble with listening for the faintest events in the universe is that your own instrument often drowns them…...
Scientists discover 'explosive' new immune cell type
2+ day, 1+ hour ago (948+ words) Flatworms use newly identified ruptoblasts, exploding cells triggered by activin, to kill bacteria and reject foreign tissue. (CREDIT: AI-generated image / The Brighter Side of News) Full-body defense does not always look the way textbooks say it should. The study, published…...
Kyawthuite is Earth's rarest mineral " only one specimen has ever been found
2+ day, 5+ hour ago (850+ words) Kyawthuite, found in Myanmar, is known from a single gemstone and may be the rarest mineral on Earth. (CREDIT: Natural History Museum of Los Angeles County) The world's rarest mineral does not look especially imposing at first glance. It is…...
Distant star TOI-5882 appears to have swallowed a planet
2+ day, 18+ hour ago (1018+ words) An artist's conception of a star engulfing a planet. The blue lines traces the path of the planet as it spirals toward the star and ultimately collides with it (the planet is partially as it crashes into the left-hand side…...
Ancient crocodile-like predators rewrite current knowledge of how animals adapted to the land
2+ day, 21+ hour ago (823+ words) New fossil evidence from crocodile-like early tetrapods known as embolomeres suggests they grew without undergoing amphibian-style metamorphosis. The finding challenges the long-held idea that the ancestors of amphibians, reptiles, and mammals all passed through a tadpole-like stage. (CREDIT: Berit Goding)…...
Scientists use Einstein's equations to reveal what came before the Big Bang
3+ day, 5+ hour ago (1223+ words) Numerical relativity may let scientists test early-universe ideas once considered beyond the reach of physics. (CREDIT: Shutterstock) Some of the hardest questions in cosmology begin where the usual math gives up. Push Einstein's theory far enough back toward the Big…...
New satellite technology could protect water quality around the world
3+ day, 21+ hour ago (1142+ words) New satellite tools may help scientists track river water quality, pollution, flooding, and human impacts worldwide. (CREDIT: Wikimedia / CC BY-SA 4. 0) Rivers do not sit still for easy measurement. Some shift across floodplains, some hide under tree cover, and some disappear…...