(Credit: Discover; Pavel Chagochkin/Shutterstock)
(Inside Science) -- Shields made of a material so light it is sometimes called "frozen smoke" could help make areas on Mars livable, a new study suggests.
Currently, the surface of Mars is too cold for water to stay liquid, often thought of as a key prerequisite for life as we know it. Moreover, its atmosphere is too thin to shield against hostile ultraviolet radiation, which is dangerous to life.
Scientists have suggested a number of s ...read more
Ochre engraving on a rib fragment from China is the oldest evidence for the material's symbolic usage, say researchers behind the find (top: photograph; bottom: illustration). (Credit: Francesco d’Errico and Luc Doyon)
Two pieces of animal bones with ochre engraving, found in central China, are the latest evidence that members of the human family used the material to express abstract ideas much earlier than once believed — and much further from Africa.
Researchers studying the ...read more
An animation of GOES-16 satellite imagery acquired in the infrared reveals the evolution of Tropical Storm Barry on Friday, July 12, 2019. The crackling white and blue areas are indicative of lightning activity. (Source: RAMMB/CIRA GOES-16/17 Loop of the Day)
Tropical Storm Barry is now expected to make landfall as a hurricane.
As I'm writing this Thursday afternoon, July 12, Barry is churning slowly over the northern Gulf of Mexico, strengthening as it tarries over warm water. As it nea ...read more
A malnourished child at a camp in Bangladesh. (Credit: Pahari Himu/Shutterstock)
One in four children will never grow to a normal height. In developing countries, the number can be as high as one in three. The problem? Malnutrition.
Now scientists have developed a diet that can boost key colonies of gut bacteria in malnourished kids. The finding is important because past research has shown these bacteria are essential for healthy growth and development. The study paves the way for a new ...read more
The hunt for intermediate-mass black holes (IMBH) has picked up over recent years, and there are now dozens of promising candidates. This artist's concept depicts a 2,200 solar mass IMBH suspected to reside in the heart of the globular cluster 47 Tucanae, located some 15,000 light-years from Earth. (Credit: B. Kiziltan/T. Karacan)
Black holes have long served as fodder for science fiction — and for good reason. These unimaginably dense objects contain so much matter trapped in such a sm ...read more
LEMUR can climb walls with special gripping feet, and is only one of a suite of climbing NASA robots. (Credit: NASA/JPL-Caltech)
NASA has built many adventurous robots that can fly in space, land on alien planets, roll across Martian and lunar terrain, and even fly helicopter-style across far-off worlds. But the next big challenge is climbing and clambering across rough or steep terrain, a common sight whether on rocky Mars or icy Enceladus.
To that end, NASA’s Jet Propulsion Labora ...read more
This galaxy, which sits about 2.5 billion light-years away, hosts two supermassive black holes (inset), visible because of the heated gas, dust, and stars around them. The two black holes are on a collision course, but astronomers still aren't sure whether they will - or can - merge. (Credit: A.D. Goulding et al./Astrophysical Journal Letters 2019)
By now, merging black holes and the gravitational waves they produce are a scientific surety. Astronomers have observed several black hole merger ...read more
Archaeological sites in the Nuuk Region along Greenland's southern coast, shown here, are among those in the most danger from climate change. (Credit: XPixel/shutterstock)
Hailing from Norway, Sweden and Denmark, the seafaring pirates best known as Vikings, or Norsemen, raided and colonized Europe from the ninth to eleventh centuries. They also established settlements throughout the Arctic including in Greenland. Now researchers say that climate change is threatening the cultural history of ...read more
Cambridge researchers have a new lettuce-picking robot. Its success underlines the challenges of automating vegetable picking. (Credit: leungchopan/shutterstock)
A skilled human can pick a head of lettuce every 10 seconds. Just reach down, slice a mature head off its stalk, bag it, toss it in the cart. Easy, right?
Tell that to wannabe veggie-picking robots. For them, it’s actually quite a challenge.
Earlier this week, a team from the University of Cambridge published their lates ...read more
(Credit: LightField Studios/Shutterstock)
The best poker players in the world can cash in on millions of dollars in a game. Played in casinos, poker clubs, private homes and on the internet, the game demands skill and strategy.
Now scientists have created an artificial intelligence (AI) bot that can best even the top human players. And this new AI won at six-player poker. Bots were already dominant at two, or three-player poker, but six players is much harder. The feat represents a ...read more
