Conceptual art for NASA’s Deep Space Gateway. Its fate is up in the air due to uncertain funding and mission changes. (Credit: NASA)
In my previous post I started a conversation with spaceflight entrepreneur Charles Miller, who shared his insights about how NASA’s human spaceflight program got been stuck in low-Earth orbit and how we could enter a new era of deep-space adventure. Part one of the interview focused on the role of private industry in radically lowering the cost of get ...read more
2017 is (finally) ending, and that can only mean one thing: the Seriously, Science? Top 10 of 2017, as voted on by you, our dear readers (and by “voted,” we mean “clicked”). Here are your top 10 favorite posts from 2017: apparently, y’all love sex, cute animals, and disgusting things… as do we! (Yes, these are exactly the same topics as 2015 and 2016–some things never change.) Happy New Year!
11. As the weather warms up, watch out for lime di ...read more
The FDA approves a powerful gene therapy to fight a resistant cancer.
Immunotherapy, the hottest field in cancer research, seeks to supercharge the body’s natural defenses against deadly tumors. Two different approaches are driving the buzz, and one of them got a big boost in August when the Food and Drug Administration approved a “living drug” to treat acute lymphoblastic leukemia (ALL) in children and young adults who’ve stopped responding to chemotherapy. The prod ...read more
The solar event that transfixed Americans from sea to shining sea.
Two things were inescapable this summer: the Latin single “Despacito,” and the looming eclipse. The first total solar eclipse in the continental United States since 1979, it was also a uniquely American event, with no other countries getting a peek at totality, and at least a partial eclipse visible in all 50 states. As the moon’s shadow crisscrossed the country on Aug. 21, about 154 million American adults ...read more
Our ancestors’ origin story is being refined.
For decades, schoolchildren across the globe were taught our origin story went something like this: An archaic form of Homo sapiens evolved around 200,000 years ago in Africa. By about 100,000 years ago, the population had become anatomically modern humans who, around 50,000 years ago, headed across Eurasia and met up with our distant cousins the Neanderthals (and the closely related Denisovans, not known to science until 2010). Like a gam ...read more
Researchers in a U.S. lab finally test the revolutionary gene-editing tool in human embryos.
In just a few short years, the gene-editing tool CRISPR-Cas9 has infiltrated biology labs around the world. This summer, scientists working in a U.S. lab announced they’d used CRISPR to modify viable human embryos, which were kept alive just a few days. The research is a first in the United States, though scientists in China have conducted similar experiments. This latest effort, led by resear ...read more
The Saturn probe completes its years-long mission in a fiery descent.
In October 1997, a Titan rocket streaked across the sky and shot a spacecraft called Cassini toward Saturn. The road trip, minus roads, was long, and Cassini didn’t arrive until 2004. But it stayed there till its mission ended on Sept. 15, 2017 — with a bang, and a good deal of whimpering from Earth. Early that morning, engineers at NASA’s Jet Propulsion Laboratory sent Cassini down to meet the planet it ...read more
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The full text of this article is available to Discover Magazine subscribers only.
Subscribe and get 10 issues packed with:
The latest news, theories and developments in the world of science
Compelling stories and breakthroughs in health, medicine and the mind
Environmental issues and their relevance to daily life
Cutting-edge technology and its impact on our future
...read more
A gravitational wave and a flash of light open up a new field of astronomy.
For hundreds of millions of years, two city-sized stars — each outweighing our sun — circled one another in a fatal dance. They were neutron stars, the collapsed cores left behind after giant stars explode into supernovas. Then, 130 million years ago, the dance ended. Their collision was fast and violent, likely spawning a black hole. And a shudder — a gravitational wave — rippled across the ...read more
