In the fall of 2008, SpaceX’s Falcon 1 rocket made spaceflight history by becoming the first such private launch vehicle to reach orbit. (Credit: NASA) A version of this article originally appeared on The Conversation In many industries, a decade is barely enough time to cause dramatic change unless something disruptive comes along – a new technology, business model or service design. The space industry has recently been enjoying all three. But 10 years ago, none of those innovatio ...read more

(Credit: Anton Gvozdikov/shutterstock) We see countless people everyday — in stores, in the gym, on television and during our commutes. But how many faces can we actually recognize? For the first time, a paper, published Wednesday (Oct. 10) in the Proceedings of the Royal Society B, has an answer: 5,000, more or less. That’s quite a jump from our evolutionary past. After all, the social circle of our foraging ancestors hovered around 100 to 250, meaning that’s how many faces ...read more

(Credit: tommasso79/Shutterstock) Scientists say they’ve finally found a gene implicated in erectile dysfunction, a discovery that could help illuminate how the condition occurs on the most basic level. The condition is widespread among older men — some estimates put it at 40 percent or higher for men over 40 — and it’s thought to be influenced by a range of factors. Poor body weight, cardiovascular health, a lack of exercise and many other things can all predispose men ...read more

A farmer stands in a field of corn. A new report says humanity must change its diet to feed the world in the coming decades. (Credit: pajtica/shutterstock) In the next 30 years, Earth’s population will increase so much that it will exhaust the planet’s ability to grow enough food, according to a new analysis. And the global food system itself spurs climate change, alters landscapes and drives resource shortages. To top it off, as growing nations begin to eat more lik ...read more

(Credit: Theo Cobb) In 1961, when UFOs were all the rage, a group of top scientific minds met in secret at a rural observatory in West Virginia. At the time, the Green Bank Observatory was the biggest, baddest telescope in the burgeoning practice of radio astronomy. While the list of meeting attendees now reads like a who’s who of the era’s luminaries, the reason they gathered covertly was because of the taboo nature of their topic of discussion. These scientists wanted to find, an ...read more

(Credit: Natasha Breen/Shutterstock) If you lived among the ancient Maya, let’s hope you liked your fish super salty. Archaeologists working at a former Maya salt mine near the coast in Belize say that they’ve found evidence of the fairly large-scale production of salted fish for trade at markets further inland. In the jungle, where seafood was a luxury and food wouldn’t keep well, the salty fish could have been a valuable commodity. It’s further evidence that producing ...read more

(Credit: agsandrew/shutterstock) Scientists are making science fiction a reality. For the first time, three people have read each other’s minds, researchers report in a new study recently posted to the preprint server arXiv. The new interface combines noninvasive brain imaging and brain stimulation to let multiple people communicate through their thoughts. Its creators say the fresh tech could allow humans to solve problems using a “social network” of connected brai ...read more

(Credit: kolikovv/Shutterstock) If you’re a fish, it sucks to have a hole ripped in your mouth by a hook. Actually, researchers found, it sucks less. New research out today in the Journal of Experimental Biology found that fish can’t suck up food as well after having a hole poked in their mouth by a fishing hook. The team, led by Tim Higham at UC-Riverside, focused on marine shiner perch for their study. These perch are a common target for anglers and belong to a broader group of f ...read more

Greenhouses and food production will be an important component of any future martian settlement. Credit: NASA/CASE FOR MARS A visit to Mars is almost guaranteed within the next decade or so, with everyone from NASA to warring tech billionaires setting their sights on the Red Planet. And long-term occupation may not be much farther behind. But before we do, there are many obstacles to overcome, some highly technical. But one of them is a challenge humans have been tackling almost since our ance ...read more

This visualization compares the orbits of “The Goblin” and other, similar objects.(Credit: Illustration by Roberto Molar Candanosa and Scott Sheppard, courtesy of Carnegie Institution for Science) Astronomers have found a dwarf planet out beyond Neptune called “The Goblin” because of its initial discovery around Halloween. The Goblin, officially named 2015 TG387, joins other small objects far out in our solar system, and it adds to a tantalizing theory about anothe ...read more