How Scientists Are Planning to Grow Food on Other Planets
Growing plants off-world is an essential, and increasingly likely, part of exploring the cosmos. ...read more
Author: Vishay Singh
The Pediatrician Who Woke America Up to the Lead Crisis
Thanks to one man's perseverance, we know even small doses of lead can permanently harm growing kids. ...read more
I Tried to Find What Truth and Beauty Looked Like in My Brain
Advances in brain imaging technology are getting closer to revealing the shape of our thoughts. ...read more
20 Things You Didn’t Know About the Amazon
A forest, a company, a mighty river. ...read more
Why Babies Are So Cute — And Why We React the Way We Do
Cute kittens, lambs and more stir emotions rooted in our evolutionary history. ...read more
This Spacecraft Will Detect if Exoplanet Skies are Cloudy, Hazy or Clear
NASA is adding an instrument to the European Space Agency's ARIEL spacecraft.(Credit: ESA/STFC RAL Space/UCL/Europlanet-Science Office) NASA announced last week that it will contribute to a European Space Agency mission scheduled to launch in 2028. The spacecraft, called ARIEL (for Atmospheric Remote-sensing Infrared Exoplanet Large-survey), will be the first space mission dedicated to studying exoplanet atmospheres. During its primary mission lasting some four years, ARIEL will stud ...read more
SpaceX Launches 60 more Starlink Satellites to Orbit
The Falcon 9 rocket taking off for the Starlink mission on November 11. (Credit: SpaceX/Flickr) On November 11, SpaceX launched a Falcon 9 rocket carrying another 60 Starlink satellites, which will eventually provide internet service worldwide. The launch from Cape Canaveral Air Force Station made history by reusing a record number of rocket parts. But even with that feat in aerospace design, the launch wasn’t celebrated by everyone. According to SpaceX’s plans, Starlink w ...read more
How Could We Find a Wormhole Hiding in the Milky Way?
A new study outlined a possible method to search for a wormhole at the center of the Milky Way, where a supermassive black hole, like the one seen in this artist's concept, resides. (Credit: NASA/JPL-Caltech) If there was a wormhole in the center of our galaxy, how could we tell? Two physicists propose that carefully watching the motions of a star orbiting the Milky Way's supermassive black hole might help scientists start to check. The researchers published the idea in a recent paper&nb ...read more
Why People In Ancient Times Didn’t Get the Plague
What happened to make plague able to cause devastating epidemics, as in this depiction from 1349? (Credit: Pierart dou Tielt/Wikimedia) One of civilization’s most prolific killers shadowed humans for thousands of years without their knowledge. The bacteria Yersinia pestis, which causes the plague, is thought to be responsible for up to 200 million deaths across human history — more than twice the casualties of World War II. The Y. pestis death toll comes from three wide ...read more
How the Nile River Has Stayed In One Place for 30 Million Years
The Nile River seen at sunrise. (Credit: Kirsty Bisset/Shutterstock) Thousands of years ago, ancient Egyptians built their agricultural systems around the dependable movement of the Nile. Those rhythms date back much further than any human relative has been alive, scientists now find. New research shows that the Nile has kept about the same course for its entire 30 million year existence. This is likely thanks to a reliable flow of rocky material just below the Earth's surface, which cont ...read more