The Christophe de Margerie. (Credit: Sovcomflot)
A Russian tanker ship has traversed the Arctic Ocean without the help of a separate icebreaker, marking a first for the Northern Sea Route.
The Christophe de Margerie made the journey from Norway to South Korea in 23 days carrying a shipment of liquefied natural gas (LNG), opening up the frigid route to sustained shipping traffic. Ships normally travel through the Suez Canal to reach Asia from Europe, a trip that takes some 30 percent longer. Th ...read more
Plimpton 322 at the Rare Book and Manuscript Library at Columbia University in New York. (Credit: UNSW/Andrew Kelly)
Researchers in Australia say an ancient Babylonian tablet that’s considered the world’s oldest trigonometric table was a far more powerful tool than it’s given credit for.
The square tablet, known as Plimpton 322, is roughly the size of a cell phone and features four columns and 15 rows of cuneiform numbers written on it. Artifacts dealer Edgar Banks—the m ...read more
A black mamba’s sinister smile. Photo by James Arup
As a species, there is perhaps no topic that fascinates us more than mortality, especially our own. So unsurprisingly, there’s no shortage of science fiction based on the idea of scientifically circumventing our mortal coils, most of which seems rather fantastical. But bringing the dead back to life isn’t as impossible as it might appear. While we’re still a long ways away from Dr. Frankenstein, recent developments in u ...read more
1864 painting of the H. L. Hunley by Conrad Wise Chapman. (Credit: Wikimedia Commons)
On Feb. 17, 1864, naval warfare was changed forever.
That night aboard the U.S.S. Housatonic, master John H. Crosby of the Union Navy saw what he described as a porpoise sliding through the water on a direct course for his vessel just a few hundred feet away.
Three years prior, President Abraham Lincoln had ordered a blockade of all major Confederate ports, and the Housatonic, a sloop-of-war with 12 large can ...read more
SpaceX’s new spacesuit design, apparently modeled by Musk himself. (Credit: SpaceX)
When SpaceX launches its first crewed flights next year, they’ll be crossing the Kármán line in style.
In an Instagram post, CEO Elon Musk unveiled the company’s new space suits, noting the pains that went into creating a design that was both safe and snazzy.
“Was incredibly hard to balance esthetics and function. Easy to do either separately,” he writes.
A sleek ...read more
Here be diamonds. (Credit: NASA)
Some planets in our solar system are hiding a gleaming bounty deep within: showers of diamonds formed via crushing pressures and blazing temperatures.
Uranus and Neptune, the ice giants, are massive balls of mostly hydrogen and helium, with some water and ammonia. The “ices” give them their nicknames, but temperatures soar to thousands of degrees deep inside. Mixed in with the gases is carbon, mostly joined to hydrogen atoms to form hydrocarbon ...read more
A July 2017 eruption of Sinabung in Indonesia captured as it happened by Earth-observing “Doves” launched by Planet Labs. Image by Planet Labs (CC BY-SA 4.0)
One of the most exciting aspects of geosciences in the 21st century is the ability to watch geologic events from space. We can see an eruption or earthquake as it happens—sometimes catching it in the act. We can also roll back the film and look at what things were like in images taken beforehand. It is one of th ...read more
What Mars could have looked like during an ice age 400,000 years ago. (Credit: NASA/JPL)
Given that there are ambitious plans to colonize Mars in the near future, it is surprising how much we still have to learn about what it would be like to actually live on the planet. Take the weather, for instance. We know there are wild fluctuations in Mars’s climate – and that it is very windy and at times cloudy (though too cold and dry for rainfall). But does it snow? Might settlers on Mars ...read more
