Uncertainty continues to swirl around scientist He Jiankui’s gene editing experiment in China. Using CRISPR technology, He modified a gene related to immune function in human embryos and transferred the embryos to their mother’s womb, producing twin girls. Many questions about the ethical acceptability of the experiment have focused on ethical oversight and informed consent. These are important issues; compliance with established standards of practice is crucial for public trust in ...read more

NASA’s OSIRIS-REx spacecraft, the space agency’s first craft to bring samples from an asteroid back to Earth, is set to rendezvous with its target, Bennu, at around noon EST today. A special webcast is scheduled for just before the spacecraft reaches Bennu, at 11:45 a.m. EST. During this webcast, NASA officials and scientists will discuss the mission in depth. OSIRIS-REx (Origins, Spectral Interpretation, Resource Identification, Security-Regolith Explorer) launched in September of ...read more

BAIKONUR COSMODROME, KAZAKHSTAN - It was not even two months ago that a crew confidently told the Russian space commission here that it was ready to perform its duties in space. The journey was supposed to take half a year, but it only ended up being a few minutes. Expedition 57's Soyuz rocket rose from the ground, began to experience some strange vibration, and then triggered an abort. Its two crew members returned home safely, but it left behind a trail of problems for the Russian space pr ...read more

Overwhelmed with holiday shopping? Well, maybe our team can help you out with some gifts that support citizen science! Whether it's a kit or some citizen science project swag, there are a lot of ways to show your support and share the world of citizen science with your friends and relatives. Cheers! The SciStarter Team Pocket Lab Want high dollar lab equipment for less than $100? Try the Pocket Lab -- you can measure motion, acceleration, angular velocity, magnetic field, pressu ...read more

Many years ago, this magazine was owned by the Walt Disney Corporation, and I would sometimes get one of the company's earworm songs caught in my head: "It's a Small World," the musical accompaniment to the ride of the same name at Disney World in Florida. That song has popped up in my brain again recently, but in a very different and more majestic context. We are entering a new stage in the exploration of the solar system, one that inverts the theme of much that came before. Big is out and ...read more

If you think way, way back to your high school biology class, you might remember a little cellular structure called the mitochondrion. Its claim to fame is that it’s the “powerhouse” of the cell — the organelle in charge of creating energy. But it also contains its own DNA, separate from the traditional DNA we think of, which lives in the nucleus of a cell. That nuclear DNA contains genetic information from both of our parents. But in mitochondrial DNA (mtDNA), that genet ...read more

A Strange Supernova Astronomers studying a violent stellar explosion have witnessed a unique supernova phenomenon that’s like nothing they’ve seen before. Researchers discovered the supernova, known as ASASSN-18bt (or SN 2018oh), this past February. And, strangely, within the early stages of the stellar explosion,  researchers saw an unusual burst of light emerge. New analysis of this unique supernova could help researchers gain insight into the still-unclear process of how sta ...read more

The science story of the past week was the claim from Chinese scientist He Jiankui that he has created gene-edited human babies. Prof. He reports that two twin girls have been born carrying modifications of the gene CCR5, which is intended to protect them against future HIV risk. It's far from clear yet whether the gene-editing that He described has actually taken place - no data has yet been presented.  The very prospect of genetically-modifying human beings has, however, led to widesprea ...read more

Earlier today a M7 earthquake struck only 13 kilometers from Anchorage, Alaska. The earthquake was relatively deep, located ~40 kilometers beneath the surface. However, the city of Anchorage has experienced damage from the shaking. Anchorage airport has seen disruptions as the control tower was evacuated (and is apparently running out of a truck right now). More importantly, a tsunami warning was declared for the coast of Alaska, so people are trying to evacuate the area. However, a P ...read more

Moon-bound NASA's going back to the moon. President Trump signed a directive last year which ordered the agency to make plans for a lunar return, and today the agency took another step on that journey by announcing a slew of commercial partnerships aimed at getting payloads off the ground and moon-bound. NASA Administrator Jim Bridenstine announced the nine companies that will be the first to participate in the agency's new Commercial Lunar Payload Services (CLPS) program. The  ...read more