Science

NASA astronauts Peggy Whitson and Jack Fischer conducted an emergency spacewalk Tuesday morning, May 23, to replace a malfunctioning external computer and install a pair of antennas on the International Space Station (ISS). The spacewalk, which lasted two hours and 46 minutes, was Whitson’s tenth. She now holds a new record, having spent a total of 60 hours and 21 ... Read More »

Europe, not Africa, might have spawned the first members of the human evolutionary family around 7 million years ago, researchers say. In a new finding that adds to that conversation, an international team of researchers analyzed two previously found specimens of a hominid species, Graecopithecus freybergi, whose dental fossils were found in Greece and Bulgaria. Using a visualization method called ... Read More »

The Global Seed Vault, also popularly known as the Doomsday Vault, which has been specifically built to secure a million packets of the world’s most precious seeds from all natural and man-made calamities has been breached. High temperatures this winter resulted meltwater entering the tunnel at the entrance of the vault. The facility, which is dug deep into Arctic permafrost, ... Read More »

Titan is the only place in our solar system where liquid currently flows in the same way it does on Earth, but it turns out that this moon of Saturn may have more in common with Mars than with our planet. MIT researchers have found that despite these similarities, the origins of topography, or surface elevations, on Mars and Titan ... Read More »

Tyrannosaurus Rex was one of the most fearsome dinosaurs that ever lived. And now scientists know why. Using advanced modeling techniques, they have found T-Rex could bite down with a force of 8,000 pounds. That’s equivalent to the weight of three small cars, and twice as strong as the largest crocodiles alive today. Its long conical teeth could generate bone-crushing ... Read More »

Two rare ‘lefty’ snails brought together following a public appeal by a researcher at The University of Nottingham have produced their first offspring. More than 170 baby snails have hatched, just six months after the story of Jeremy the ‘lefty’ garden snail and his search for a similarly left-coiling, or sinistral, companion hit international headlines. Two potential mates were uncovered ... Read More »

A teenager from India recently won a satellite-design competition co-sponsored by NASA. His winning invention, probably the world’s lightest satellite, will be launched by NASA this June for a sub-orbital test flight. Rifath Sharook, who is from Tamil Nadu, India, made the pocket-sized satellite for a competition called Cubes in Space, which is an international design challenge that asks students ... Read More »

A NASA camera has captured hundreds of flashes of light coming from above the Earth’s surface that researchers say are caused by sunlight reflecting off tiny ice particles. Mysterious flashes of light from Earth were captured by the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration’s Deep Space Climate Observatory, or DSCOVR, an Earth and space weather satellite launched in 2015. Eagle-eyed amateur ... Read More »

Researchers have revealed the presence of a huge man-made bubble that’s surrounding the Earth. Observations with NASA’s Van Allen Probes have revealed the presence of a human-made ‘bubble’ around our planet, sometimes acting as a barrier against high-energy particles. Researchers say the phenomenon is likely caused by the very low frequency (VLF) radio signals used to communicate with deep-ocean submarines, ... Read More »

Canada’s Royal Tyrrell Museum of Paleontology unveiled an incredibly well-preserved nodosaur fossil. The 18-feet-long, 3,000-pound dinosaur fossil is over 110 million-years-old and looks like a statue. The creature, identified as a nodosaur, was a four-legged herbivore whose massive size and body armor caused it resemble a tank, museum officials told CNN. Not only is it among the most well-preserved specimens ... Read More »

One of the world’s most remote islands is polluted with the highest density of plastic debris reported anywhere on the planet, with over 37 million pieces littered on its beaches, a new study has found. Henderson Island, a designated World Heritage Site and part of the Pitcairn islands group, is a raised coral atoll containing several unique plant, bird and ... Read More »