If you’ve been following climate news, you’ve probably heard about an approaching “tipping point” toward climate change — the point of no return after enough small changes brought us to certain disaster. But what if the opposite were just as likely? One group of researchers thinks that a few small, positive changes could “tip” us back in the right direction. They’re calling them “sensitive intervention points,” ...read more
As the latest monster spring storm spun up over the U.S. Four Corners region on April 10, high winds drove huge amounts of dust all the way north to the Upper Midwest, where it fell as dirty snow. You can see the low-pressure center of the cyclone spinning counter-clockwise in the animation above of GOES-16 weather satellite images. Below it, watch for the gargantuan plumes of khaki-colored dust being swept up and driven to the northeast. Also check out the lighter, sand-colored patch ...read more
A research team in Oregon wants to use CRISPR to end inherited disease — even as fears mount over designer babies. ...read more
Israel's Beresheet spacecraft, which was set to land on the moon today, suffered an engine and communications failure, causing it to instead crash into the lunar surface. Details are still emerging about what exactly went wrong. Within the last five minutes or so of the landing procedure, mission control reported temporarily losing telemetry data before regaining it again. Shortly after, the main engine shut off, but engineers managed to restart it. Then, they reported a communications fa ...read more
In 1984, bacteria started showing up in patients’ blood at the University of Wisconsin Hospital and Clinic. Bacteria do not belong in the blood and such infections can quickly escalate into septic shock, a life threatening condition. Ultimately, blood samples revealed the culprit: A microbe that normally lives in the gut called Enterococcus faecalis had somehow infiltrated the patients’ bloodstreams. Doctors typically treat infections with antibiotics, but these bugs proved resi ...read more
Nearly a quarter of Japanese people under age 39 are virgins, according to a new analysis by a team of researchers at the University of Tokyo. The findings, published in BMC Public Health, show that Japanese young adults are having less sex today than their counterparts were decades ago. Both men and women are having their first sexual encounters later in life, and many are entering their 30s as virgins. While Japan’s sexless generation may seem shocking, people in other wealth ...read more
SpaceX's Falcon Heavy launch was delayed again yesterday, this time due to high winds. SpaceX CEO Elon Musk said back on April 5 that because this is the first launch of Falcon Heavy's Block 5, the latest and most powerful version of its boosters, they are being "extra cautious." Mission managers are now targeting this evening, again at 6:35 p.m. EDT, with an approximately two-hour launch window. You can watch the livestream here or on SpaceX's website. [embed]https://www.youtube.com/w ...read more
After a nearly seven-week adventure since its launch, the Israeli Beresheet spacecraft will attempt make history today and touch down on the surface of the moon at 10:25 p.m. Israel time (2:25 p.m. Central). It’s a monumental undertaking and if it succeeds, Beresheet and its creators will join the select ranks of those who have safely landed on the moon - thus far only the United States, China, and the former Soviet Union. NASA and its Deep Space Network are aiding the mission i ...read more
In anthropology, bones don't always tell the whole story. Ancient remains can be so rare that an entire species of hominids can be compressed into one single fragment of bone. Thousands of generations, millions of individuals, epic untold stories — and our only insight is a stray tooth, or a few curving shards of skull. That leaves us without a true view of who these people were, even when it comes to our most recent ancestors, like the Neanderthals or the Denisovans. But a new study ...read more
Space travel, you may have heard, is hard. Hard on the brain, to design ways to slip the surly bonds of Earth in the first place, but also hard on the body, which needs to withstand conditions it was never designed for. If NASA’s serious about sending humans back to the moon and on to Mars, we’ll need to get a much better grasp on how spaceflight affects the human body. And instead of simply flying more and more people to space to find out all the potential effects, scientists have t ...read more