The European Space Agency's Rosetta spacecraft saw material and gases – including oxygen – erupt off the surface of Comet 67P/Churyumov-Gerasimenko. (Credit: ESA/Rosetta/MPS for OSIRIS Team MPS/UPD/LAM/IAA/SSO/INTA/UPM/DASP/IDA)
Space is an inhospitable place. For now, when humans go out in space capsules and stations, they need to bring their own air and water — and do without gravity — during their stay. In the future, if humans want to stay in space long-term (and t ...read more
Jiankui He talks to Matthew Porteus of Stanford during a panel talk in Hong Kong following his presentation about his gene editing experiment on two twins. (Credit: Ernie Mastroianni/Discover)
This past November, Jiankui He, a Chinese scientist, claimed to have edited the genomes of twin girls when they were embryos. Genome editing on human embryos is against the law in the U.S., but not specifically outlawed in China. It is however wrought with ethical concerns because any changes to DNA ca ...read more
Explore one of the least scientifically studied places on the planet: your home!
Our editors picked these five projects to help you and scientists learn more about indoor air quality, microbes, tap water pipes, and living things lurking in your home!
Find more projects you can do at home here.
Cheers,The SciStarter Team
Never Home Alone: The Wild Life of Our Homes
Document the arthropods in and around your home and help make discoveries about the biodiversity indo ...read more
As of the morning of May 31, 2019, smoke from Canadian wildfires covered millions of square miles of North America.
Yesterday, I published a story featuring satellite views of wildfires burning in northern Alberta: Striking satellite imagery reveals multiple wildfires blazing across northern Alberta
Since then, things have gotten worse, with one blaze — the Chuckegg Creek fire — exploding to nearly 1,000 square miles by this morning, up from 580. That means the fire has now sc ...read more
Intuitive Machines is one of three companies announced today that will land NASA science experiments on the moon within the next two years. (Credit: Intuitive Machines)
During a NASA press conference Friday, Thomas Zurbuchen, associate administrator of the agency's Science Mission Directorate, introduced the first three of nine companies awarded contracts to deliver payloads to the moon over the next few years.
Those companies are Astrobiotic of Pittsburgh, Intuitive Machines from Housto ...read more
I spend a lot of time on science Twitter. It's a great source of breaking research news (as long as you curate your Twitter feed carefully), but also a fascinating peek into the human psyche. People who love astronomy naturally connect it to the other things that they are passionate about: politics, family, cats, science fiction...and food. Lots and lots of food.
It's strange that there aren't any constellations dedicated to food, considering how readily the human mind makes the connection. ( ...read more
(Credit: lanatoma/Shutterstock)
The microbes that live in and on our bodies are fundamentally involved in our well-being. How they affect our health, though, is largely unknown due to the number of different bacteria that call us home and the complexity of our interactions with them.
A project from the National Institutes of Health, the Integrated Human Microbiome Project (iHMP) is attempting to dive into those interactions and understand the nitty-gritty of how the microbiome affect ...read more
(Credit: PhotoUG/Shutterstock)
Autism spectrum disorder (ASD) affects at least 1.7 percent of 8-year-olds in the U.S., and it can make social communication like talking and interactions with others difficult. Children with autism spectrum disorder (ASD) have a hard time at school and often engage in repetitive behaviors.
Now, researchers show the collection of bacteria and other microorganisms in the gut known as the microbiome contributes to autism-like behaviors such as decreased social ...read more
A dubious paper just published in Molecular Neurobiology makes the suggestion that all military recruits should be offered genetic testing to assess their risk of PTSD. According to the authors, Kenneth Blum et al.,
We hypothesize that, even before combat, soldiers with a childhood background of violence (or with a familial susceptibility risk) would benefit from being genotyped for high-risk alleles (DNA variants). This process may assist us in identifying potential military candidates who ...read more
Signs of ammonia on Pluto's surface may hint at liquid water underground. (Credit: NASA/JHUAPL/SWRI)
The New Horizons spacecraft, which flew past Pluto in 2015, is still making new findings. Most recently, researchers used its data to find traces of ammonia on Pluto’s surface. Intriguingly, the ammonia lines up with a cracked region called Virgil Fossae, which has mounds of water ice and shows signs of past tectonic activity. Because ammonia is eventually destroyed in environments like ...read more
