In 2010, a Japanese mission called Hayabusa returned to Earth from a seven-year space journey. It brought back not only images and data from its adventure, but also actual samples, small grains of rock from its target, the asteroid Itokawa. Just a handful of space missions have ever returned to Earth at all, let alone brought back pieces of their destinations. So Hayabusa’s samples are highly prized, and have been studied by many teams across the world. Now, researchers from Ari ...read more

A largely complete, roughly 300,000-year-old skull from southeastern China appears to be the latest evidence challenging the dominant model of human evolution. The Hualongdong skull's unique combination of features make the fossil a tantalizing clue to East Asia's diverse hominin history. Researchers excavating a collapsed cave site unearthed the skull, formally known as Hualongdong 6 (HLD 6), along with additional partial fossils of archaic humans and animals, plus assorted sto ...read more

On the mountainous Tibetan Plateau, small groups of nomadic herders still make a living two miles or more above sea level. Most of us would be poorly-equipped to deal with that altitude for long periods of time, but the Tibetans there have unique genetic adaptations that let their bodies function in the thin air. Mysteriously, those genes seem to come from another species of human, the Denisovans, a little-understood group of hominins who died out tens of thousands of years ago. ...read more

The Earth has always been in the path of rocks from space. When the solar system was forming, the early Earth was pelted with rocks so frequently that it left the surface molten. In fact, the creation of the Moon was caused by a massive impact of a "rock", albeit a Mars-sized rock. These days, there are many fewer impacts (thankfully) but the threat still remains that an asteroid we might not even know about yet could strike the planet. This week, as part of the 2019 Planetary Defense Confer ...read more

We've reached another "will they or won't they?" cliffhanger in the long-running soap opera, When Will Humans Return to the Moon? Last May, NASA administrator Jim Bridenstine promised that a crew would be landing there by 2028. "To many, this may sound similar to our previous attempts to get to the Moon," he admitted. "However, times have changed. This will not be Lucy and the football again." A month ago, Vice President Pence added a big plot twist, now declaring that "it is the stated pol ...read more

As the animation of satellite images above shows, this past winter has brought desperately needed snowfall to a large portion of the American West. It consists of images captured by NASA's Terra satellite, centered on the Colorado Rockies — one on April 18 of last year, and the other this past April 19th. All that extra white stuff tells the tale better than any statistics. And looks aren't deceiving. For Colorado as a whole, snowpack looks to be about the third highest on record. I ...read more

Kurlansky, Mark and Stockton, Frank (Illustrator).  World Without Fish.  Workman Publishing Company, 2014. 208 pages. Paperback $US10.46 Day-to-day encounters of fish—at the grocery store, through an aquarium—passively reinforce a notion of triviality about aquatic life until we are prompted to take a pause and spare a thought for a breathtaking world beyond the shore. This month’s selection in our ongoing book review series, World Without Fish, prompts such reflecti ...read more

In the hot and sticky suffocation of summer, air conditioners are a breezy balm. And as climate change heats Earth, the need for them is only rising. Yet the cold air blowers consume a ton of energy. But now researchers say they have a solution for these energy hogs that actually helps the climate. In a new analysis, scientists argue for using air conditioning units to capture carbon dioxide straight from the atmosphere and transform it into fuel. The idea is that these renewable-ener ...read more

Chronic fatigue syndrome (CFS) is a debilitating condition that leaves its suffers with many questions but few answers. CFS's causes are poorly understood, there’s no cure, and there isn't a definitive way to screen for it. Now, scientists say they've taken a big step toward developing a test to diagnose this confusing and complex disorder that leaves patients with symptoms that range from extreme exhaustion, chronic pain, persistent brain fog, and more. In a new study pub ...read more

The great Age of Exploration may be over on Earth, but it’s just getting going on Titan, Saturn’s largest moon. It's a world larger than even the planet Mercury. NASA's Cassini spacecraft surveyed the moon (along with Saturn and its other moons) for 13 years, and even deployed a lander, Huygens, to Titan’s surface. But although Cassini’s mission ended in 2017, its data lives on, and planetary scientists continue to learn more about the history and surf ...read more