Scientists are debating landing sites for NASA’s Mars 2020 rover, which will look for signs of life on the Red Planet. (Credit: NASA/JPL-Caltech)
Battle lines are being drawn on the Red Planet. Last week, more than 200 scientists from around the globe gathered in Los Angeles to debate the best place to send NASA’s Mars 2020 rover. The choice of landing site will steer the direction of Mars research for the next several decades.
Similar in design to Curiosity, the as-yet-unnamed rov ...read more
Saturn’s Moon Dione. (Credit: NASA/JPL-Caltech/Space Science Institute)
Saturn’s moon Dione appears to be getting its tiger on. The world is decorated with long, bright stripes, according to a new study, something astronomers say is unlike anything else they’ve seen in the solar system.
After first noticing these stripes, researchers from the Planetary Science Institute and the Smithsonian began trying to figure out where they came from and why they exist.
Unusual L ...read more
(Credit: Jens Beste/Shutterstock)
To step outside on a moonlit night is to see the darkness pushed back. The reflected sunlight from our natural satellite during a nearly full moon is enough to limn the nighttime landscape in silver and allow even human eyes to penetrate the gloom. But we can always do better, right? If one moon is good, surely two is even better. One Chinese researcher thinks so, at least. Wu Chunfeng, head of the Tian Fu New Area Science Society ...read more
A new study found that men who hit the gym may give their kids a genetic head start. (Credit: 4 PM Production/Shutterstock)
When most people think of pre-conception health, they think of women. But new research shows that men’s lifestyle choices may also play a significant role in having healthy kids.
A new study published this week in the journal Diabetes suggests that men who exercise moderately before conception have healthier children and that the benefits last well in ...read more
John Chater tastes a pomegranate at a research field site in California. (Courtesy UC-Riverside)
There’s a lot more to pomegranates than their reputation in the U.S. would suggest. The fruits are known for their bittersweet juice, hard seeds, and their exploding-puzzle-box configuration that can leave kitchens looking like crime scenes.
Around the world, pomegranates take on many different forms. They can be sweeter, softer, or come in different flavors and colors: pink, yellow, or even ...read more
Copernicus Sentinel-2B image of Öræfajökull in Iceland, seen in 2017. ESA-Antti Lipponen.
Over the past few days, news out of Iceland is that Öræfajökull, one of Iceland’s largest and most powerful volcanoes, is getting restless. The volcano is “accumulating magma” and an eruption was coming! It sounds bleak, doesn’t it? The volcano that produced the island’s largest known explosive eruption is showing signs that 291 years of relativ ...read more
(Credit: lkin Zeferli/shutterstock)
John Carpenter’s iconic horror film “Halloween” celebrates its 40th anniversary this year. Few horror movies have achieved similar notoriety, and it’s credited with kicking off the steady stream of slasher flicks that followed.
Audiences flocked to theaters to witness the seemingly random murder and mayhem a masked man brought to a small suburban town, reminding them that picket fences and manicured lawns cannot protect us from the un ...read more
This New Years, the New Horizons spacecraft will make a historic flyby of Ultima Thule, a Kuiper belt object. Leading up to the flyby, scientists are collecting incredible data from the craft. (Credit: NASA)
This New Year’s, the New Horizons spacecraft will make a historic flyby of Ultima Thule — an ancient Kuiper belt object (KBO) located on the far edge of our solar system.
In the summer of 2015, New Horizons completed a flyby of Pluto and its moons, stretching the human reach fa ...read more
After the two successful touchdown rehearsals and data collected with landers and rovers, scientists know just how difficult it will be to touchdown successfully on Ryugu’s surface. (Image Credit: JAXA)
Hayabusa2’s close encounter with the asteroid Ryugu continues to amaze and surprise. Its two successful touchdown rehearsals have given scientists remarkable up-close looks at the asteroid’s surface, giving the spacecraft its best shot at a successful touchdown in 2019.At a pr ...read more
(Credit: Andrey_Popov/shutterstock)
Trillions of bacteria call the human gut home. The bugs affect not only our digestion but our hormones and immune systems, too. Now researchers show most of the microbes that colonize mammals’ guts pass down from generation to generation. The few that don’t tend to be the kind that makes us sick. The discovery suggests pathogens evolved to spread between individuals instead of through inheritance.
Generation to Generation
Andrew Moeller, an ...read more
