Through November 1, students can submit their ideas for naming the Red Planet rover currently known as Mars 2020. (Credit: NASA/JPL-Caltech) Pathfinder. Opportunity. Curiosity. NASA’s iconic Mars rovers have a history of lofty names. But for the Mars 2020 rover, that iconic name is still missing. Now students have a chance to be a part of the naming process by submitting their name ideas. U.S. students in grades K through 12 are eligible to enter their ideas in the “Name the R ...read more

Earth seen from space. NASA. There isn't another planet in the solar system like Earth. If you were an alien explorer coming into our neck of the galaxy, you'd find a system with four large gas giants, lots of small, rocky objects without much other than rocks, a few larger rocky objects with some ice and four rocky objects with reasonable atmospheres. A cursory scan of the surface of those last objects would find that two of the four are covered almost entirely in basalt -- an iron and m ...read more

(Credit: Iakov Filimonov/Shutterstock) It’s no surprise that English sounds different than Japanese. Different characters, syllables and grammatical rules are just the tip of the iceberg for what sets these languages apart. But there is one commonality between the two: The amount of information a native speaker will convey in a given amount of time is almost exactly the same. In a report published today in Science Advances, researchers found that, across 17 different languages, roug ...read more

(Credit: Mitch Gunn/Shutterstock) In American football, players repeatedly suffer major blows to the head. As a result of these repeat hits, many athletes suffer from chronic traumatic encephalopathy (CTE), a degenerative brain disease that manifests as depression, dementia, aggression and suicidal behavior years to decades after the trauma. But the researchers behind a new study say that a single traumatic brain injury can also have lasting consequences on brain health. A team of scient ...read more

Roland Griffiths (left) and Matthew Johnson (right) (Credit: Johns Hopkins Medicine) The launch of a new privately-funded research center dedicated to investigating the therapeutic benefits of psychedelic drugs was announced today at Johns Hopkins University. The Center for Psychedelic and Consciousness Research will be dedicated to understanding how psychedelics alter consciousness, behavior and brain function. The bulk of the research will focus on psilocybin, the active ingredient in ...read more

This star-forming region is one of many in M33 that's birthing new stars from massive clouds of dust and gas. (Credit: ESA/Hubble and NASA) Astronomers have witnessed a rare event: the birth of massive stars 2.73 million light-years away in the Triangulum Galaxy (Messier 33). At the center of two giant colliding gas clouds are some 10 young stars with masses tens of times that of the Sun. Their discovery indicates that such cloud-cloud collisions are a main pathway to creating giant stars in ...read more

The Mars 2020 rover will be equipped with a helicopter, as seen in this artist's concept, that will fly above the Red Planet's surface like no craft before it. (NASA/JPL) Just under a year before launch, NASA’s unnamed Mars 2020 rover is getting ready for its big mission with the new addition of the Mars Helicopter Scout. The Helicopter Scout will be the first rotorcraft to fly on another planet. And though the mission is considered high-risk, it could also come with a high reward. I ...read more

The Astro suit designed by ILC Dover. (Credit: ILC Dover) Fifty years after Neil Armstrong stepped on the moon wearing an ILC Dover-made spacesuit, the Delaware-based aerospace manufacturing company is coming out with two brand-new designs. The company announced two new spacesuits on Aug. 28 called Astro and Sol. Unlike other suits the company has produced, like the extravehicular mobility unity (EMU) and the Apollo suit, these new spacesuits are built with adaptability in mind. A ...read more

Charles II, the last of the Spanish Hapsburgs. Generations of inbreeding left him infertile, in addition to numerous additional health problems. (Credit: Wikimedia Commons) Inbreeding, or mating between two closely-related people, is a strong taboo across the world. There's good reason for this, of course. The potential for sexual abuse and lasting trauma is high, and the odds of inheriting rare genetic diseases goes up exponentially among children who are the result of inbreeding. But in ...read more

(Credit: l i g h t p o e t/Shutterstock) Prominent scientists can be guiding beacons for an entire field. Their work can define research for years to come, and sets a precedent for successive generations. The life of an eminent researcher is obviously a boon to science. But, says a new study, their death might be important as well. Now researchers discover the death of a science superstar also has a major impact on research. Reporting in the August issue of the American Economic R ...read more