NASA has selected the four astronauts that will travel to the Moon during the upcoming Artemis 2 mission, which will be humanity’s first crewed return to the Moon in more than 50 years.The four astronauts are: Reid Wiseman, Victor Glover, and Christina Koch of NASA, and Jeremy Hansen of the Canadian Space Agency.“The Artemis 2 crew represents thousands of people working tirelessly to bring us to the stars,” said NASA Administrator Bill Nelson before announcing the crew during a live event ...read more

The seeming existence of an “arrow of time” is one of the greatest unsolved mysteries of modern physics, so the short answer to the question is “we have no idea.” But sometimes, the journey is more fun than the destination.We remember our pasts, but our futures are unknown to us. Causes always lead to effects, and not the other way around. You can do some things with ease, like break an egg or burn a book, but you can’t do the reverse.Arrow of TimeThis phenomenon is called the “arrow ...read more

The Tyrannosaurus is typically depicted with its fearsome fangs on full display. But a paper published in Science states that the theropod dinosaurs, such as Tyrannosaurus rex, actually had thin, lizard-like lips that hid their sharp, serrated teeth.Tyrannosaurus rex bellowing with its mouth shut, like a vocalising alligator. With its mouth closed, all of the enormous teeth of T. rex would be invisible behind its lips. (Credit: Mark Witton)Theropod TeethThe paleontologists and paleoartists who ...read more

Did your mother ever say, "you should eat your greens"? Well, she was right; you should definitely eat your greens — and you should make sure she's eating hers, too.In recent years a growing body of evidence has shown that diet can play an important role in staving off Alzheimer's disease and other dementias. Now scientists are starting to work out the details of what such a diet looks like.You've probably been hearing about the Mediterranean diet for years, based on its known benefits for h ...read more

The recently launched James Webb Space Telescope (JWST) is set to help rewrite our understanding of the cosmos. Already, astronomers have looked further back into the early universe than ever before — and crucial to the telescope capturing light from over 13 billion years ago are its massive mirrors.The primary mirror, with its iconic hexagonal shape, is more than two stories in diameter and consists of 18 separate segments. All of these segments must be perfectly smooth, flat and scratch-free ...read more

You’ve likely been hearing it in the media for weeks now: A giant mass of seaweed, some 5,000 miles wide, is headed for Florida, where it will engulf beaches with tons of icky and decaying seaweed, emitting a noxious gas all the while.Inevitably, stories about this massive swath of seaweed tend to call it a blob, stirring up images of some 1950s B-movie monster coming to absorb the Sunshine State, beaches, tourists, retirees and all. In reality, the so-called blob, while big, is well-known to ...read more

Whether it’s fascination, fear or a mixture of both, sharks capture our imagination. Hollywood hysteria aside, there are a lot of things they do to keep our attention. Sharks can be bulls or tigers. They can be hammers or cookie cutters. Some of the stranger ones can even be bioluminescent ghosts, while others that even can reproduce asexually.But were sharks always this diverse? What were the earliest sharks like, and when did some sharks come to dominate the marine food chain?Ancient SharksI ...read more

Type the question “is LASIK dangerous?” into a search engine, and the top results are from medical providers and eye clinics that assure the procedure is safe.LASIK, which stands for Laser-Assisted In Situ Keratomileusis, is an in-office procedure meant to correct vision so a person no longer has to wear glasses or contacts. It’s a popular procedure, and about 600,000 people undergo it yearly.But last July, the Food and Drug Administration (FDA) began drafting guidance for practition ...read more

As March was drawing to a close, a powerful solar flare exploded from the Sun, causing X-rays and ultraviolet radiation to rocket toward Earth. Peaking at 10:33 p.m. Eastern Time on March 28, 2023, the flare was of the strongest kind — an X-class flare, according to NOAA's Space Weather Prediction Center. Traveling at the speed of light, the radiation reached Earth almost immediately, causing ionization in parts of the upper atmosphere on the sunlit side. This, in turn, triggered a blackout of ...read more