An artist’s concept of a future orbital moon station. (Credit: Boeing)
The International Space Station is entering its twilight years. As such, NASA is making plans for the space station of the future — one that would orbit the moon.
This new lunar outpost will be smaller and more remote than the ISS — orbing beyond Earth’s protective magnetic field. And the station’s goal would be to serve as a transit hub for deep space missions and exploration past low-Earth or ...read more
Pterosaurs were more successful, evolutionarily speaking, than once believed, and were in their prime when done in by the same mass extinction that claimed the non-avian dinosaurs. (Credit Witton MP, Naish D (2008) A Reappraisal of Azhdarchid Pterosaur Functional Morphology and Paleoecology. PLoS ONE 3(5): e2271. doi:10.1371/journal.pone.0002271)
While dinosaurs have a healthy hold on our imagination, their sky-sailing relatives the pterosaurs don’t get nearly as much attention as they sh ...read more
Aurora over the Earth. JPL.
Before we get started, let’s have a cheer for Earth’s magnetic field! I would guess most of you never give it a second thought, unless you’re watching the Northern Lights or maybe using a compass. However, things would be very different on Earth if we didn’t have a magnetic field. But some people fear that the Earth’s magnetic field might be headed for a big change that could bring chaos to modern society, but are their fears well-founde ...read more
(Credit: Shutterstock)
Empathy is widely agreed upon to be one of the most human emotions that we possess. Seriously, no one’s ever complained about too much empathy.
It facilitates human relationships by allowing us to examine, understand and process the feelings and emotions of others. The absence of empathy is often linked to disruptive behavioral problems. Given its import in society, a group of scientists from the University of Cambridge and Institut Pasteur analyzed the results fro ...read more
(Credit: Melkor3D/Shutterstock)
Every year or so, a fresh rash of concern about the Yellowstone supervolcano spreads across the internet. While the likelihood of an eruption there remains remote, if the caldera were to blow, it could be devastating. Previous eruptions there covered much of North America in choking ash, and likely caused sharp drops in temperature that would decimate crops today.
Living through a supervolcano eruption certainly qualifies as a doomsday scenario. But, humanity mi ...read more
The relatively thin atmospheric cocoon that protects us from meteor impacts and radiation also makes for a habitable climate, thanks to the greenhouse gases it contains — carbon dioxide first and foremost. In this photograph captured by an astronaut aboard the International Space Station on July 31, 2011, the oblique angle reveals the atmosphere’s layers, along with a thin crescent Moon illuminated by the Sun from below the horizon of the Earth. (Source: NASA Earth Observatory)
Whe ...read more
(Credit: Greg Lasley)
Klaas-Douwe Dijkstra is no stranger to new insects. The prolific odonatologist has dozens to his name, thanks in large part to a sweeping 2015 paper cataloguing the results of 15 years of work in Africa. That effort added 60 dragonflies and damselflies to the scientific record, and was met with general acclaim from critics.
Most people would be content to coast on the success of a mainstream breakthrough, but Dijkstra returned just months later, dropping a brand ...read more
A New York engineer is wheeled away in December 2013, after a train he was driving crashed. Lack of sleep could have been a factor. (Credit: AP Photo/Robert Stolarik)
A train hurtled around a corner at 82 mph, eventually coming off the rails and killing four passengers.
Decades earlier, faulty decision-making resulted in the deaths of the seven-person crew of the Space Shuttle Challenger.
Years before these events, a stuck valve regulating the supply of coolant to a nuclear reactor nearly resul ...read more
NASA’s Juno mission to Jupiter has produced some wild imagery of the giant planet, showing massive swirling cyclones with a 3D effect
This computer-generated image is based on an infrared image of Jupiter’s north polar region that was acquired on February 2, 2017, by the Jovian Infrared Auroral Mapper (JIRAM) instrument aboard Juno during the spacecraft’s fourth pass over Jupiter. (Source: NASA/JPL-Caltech/SwRI/ASI/INAF/JIRAM)
When I first glanced at the image above, I though ...read more
