ESA’s Hera mission team congratulates their counterparts in NASA’s DART mission team for their historic impact with the Dimorphos asteroid. Moving at 6.1 km per second, the car-sized Double Asteroid Redirect Test spacecraft struck the 160-m diameter asteroid at 01:15 CEST (00:15 BST) in the early hours of Tuesday morning, in humankind’s first test of the ‘kinetic […]
Sci/Tech
DART’s Impact with Asteroid Dimorphos (Official NASA Broadcast)
Countdown to impact as NASA’s Double Asteroid Redirection Test (DART) attempts humanity’s first-ever test of planetary defense! The DART spacecraft will intentionally crash into asteroid Dimorphos at 4:14 p.m. PT on Monday, September 26, 2022 to see if kinetic force can change its orbit. Why? If this test is successful, the same technique could be […]
How global warming affects astronomical observations
September 22, 2022 – Astronomical observations from ground-based telescopes are sensitive to local atmospheric conditions. Anthropogenic climate change will negatively affect some of these conditions at observation sites around the globe, as a team of researchers led by the University of Bern and the National Centre of Competence in Research (NCCR) PlanetS reports. The quality […]
Charging cars at home at night is not the way to go, Stanford study finds
The vast majority of electric vehicle owners charge their cars at home in the evening or overnight. We’re doing it wrong, according to a new Stanford study. In March, the research team published a paper on a model they created for charging demand that can be applied to an array of populations and other factors. In the new […]
New Webb image captures clearest view of Neptune’s rings in decades
The NASA/ESA/CSA James Webb Space Telescope is showing off its capabilities closer to home with its first image of Neptune. Not only has Webb captured the clearest view of this peculiar planet’s rings in more than 30 years, but its cameras are also revealing the ice giant in a whole new light. Most striking about Webb’s new […]
Researchers have discovered a 380-million-year-old heart – the oldest ever found
Researchers have discovered a 380-million-year-old heart – the oldest ever found – alongside a separate fossilised stomach, intestine and liver in an ancient jawed fish, shedding new light on the evolution of our own bodies. The new research, published today in Science, found that the position of the organs in the body of arthrodires – an […]
Chrysalis, the lost moon that gave Saturn its rings
Rings appear to be common around planets in the solar system, but the dramatic rings of Saturn have long puzzled astronomers, as has the steep tilt of the rings and the planet’s rotation axis relative to its orbit around the sun. Scientists now show that the rings and the tilt are intimately linked, and that […]
Researchers estimate the environmental impacts of 57,000 common store-bought food products
We’re all capable of slowing down the effects of a warming Earth, and it could be as simple as how we stock our pantries. An international team of scientists has evaluated the environmental impacts of more than 57,000 food products – the stuff you typically find as you wander the aisles of your local grocery. […]
Pollution exposure in infancy alters gut microorganisms, may boost disease risk
September 6, 2022 – Exposure to air pollution in the first six months of life impacts a child’s inner world of gut bacteria, or microbiome, in ways that could increase risk of allergies, obesity and diabetes, and even influence brain development, suggests new CU Boulder research. The study, published this month in the journal Gut Microbes, is the […]
Webb takes its first exoplanet image
For the first time, astronomers have used the NASA/ESA/CSA James Webb Space Telescope to take a direct image of an exoplanet. The exoplanet is a gas giant, meaning it has no rocky surface and could not be habitable. The image, as seen through four different light filters, shows how Webb’s powerful infrared gaze can easily capture […]
WMO predicts first “triple-dip” La Niña of the century
Geneva, 31 August 2022 – It is likely that the protracted La Niña event will last until at least the end of the year, becoming this century’s first “triple-dip“ La Niña, spanning three consecutive northern hemisphere winters (southern hemisphere summers), according to a new update from the World Meteorological Organization. The WMO El Niño/La Niña […]
Webb inspects the heart of the Phantom Galaxy
New images of the spectacular Phantom Galaxy, M74, showcase the power of space observatories working together in multiple wavelengths. In this case, data from the NASA/ESA/CSA James Webb Space Telescope and the NASA/ESA Hubble Space Telescope compliment each other to provide a comprehensive view of the galaxy. The Phantom Galaxy is around 32 million light-years […]
Hidden Microearthquakes Illuminate Large Earthquake-Hosting Faults in Oklahoma and Kansas
Using machine learning to sift through a decade’s worth of seismic data, researchers have identified hundreds of thousands of microearthquakes along some previously unknown fault structures in Oklahoma and Kansas. The newly identified microearthquakes allowed the seismologists to map and measure earthquake clusters in the region, which has experienced unusual levels of seismicity due to […]
Scientists have calculated what can unbalance El Niño
Physicists and mathematicians of the Ural Federal University (UrFU) have calculated how external factors affect the behavior of El Niño – atmospheric and oceanic processes in the Pacific region. In the mathematical model, they accounted for wind, humidity, temperature, ocean currents, and other parameters that can lead to unpredictable El Niño results. This is a […]
New model developed to predict landslides along wildfire burn scars
A wildfire followed by an intense rainstorm is often a recipe for disaster. Without vegetation to cushion rainfall, water runoff can turn into a fast-moving, highly destructive landslide, called a “debris flow,” which often has the power to wipe out cars, homes and highways — sometimes resulting in casualties. Northwestern University researchers supported by the U.S. National […]
How the brain gathers threat cues and turns them into fear
LA JOLLA (August 16, 2022)—Salk scientists have uncovered a molecular pathway that distills threatening sights, sounds and smells into a single message: Be afraid. A molecule called CGRP enables neurons in two separate areas of the brain to bundle threatening sensory cues into a unified signal, tag it as negative and convey it to the […]
How the Earth is Changing
Climate change is a complicated phenomenon with a variety of both abrupt and gradual effects that scientists are working hard to uncover. Emerging findings on how various ecosystems are responding to a changing climate, stemming from long-term research conducted through the National Science Foundation’s 40-year-old Long-Term Ecological Research (LTER) program, have now been published in […]
Mountain events could improve safety with ultra-high resolution weather models
In late May of 2021, 172 runners set out to tackle a 100-kilometer (62-mile) ultramarathon in northwestern China. By midday, as the runners made their way through a rugged, high-elevation part of the course, temperatures plunged, strong winds whipped around the hillslopes and freezing rain and hail pummeled the runners. By the next day, the […]
Risk of death rises as climate change causes nighttime temperatures to climb
Excessively hot nights caused by climate change are predicted to increase the mortality rate around the world by up to 60% by the end of the century, according to a new international study that features research from the UNC Gillings School of Global Public Health. Ambient heat during the night may interrupt the normal physiology […]
Tonga Eruption Blasted Unprecedented Amount of Water Into Stratosphere
The huge amount of water vapor hurled into the atmosphere, as detected by NASA’s Microwave Limb Sounder, could end up temporarily warming Earth’s surface. When the Hunga Tonga-Hunga Ha’apai volcano erupted on Jan. 15, it sent a tsunami racing around the world and set off a sonic boom that circled the globe twice. The underwater eruption in […]