For just the second time, physicists working on the Laser Interferometer Gravitational-Wave Observatory (LIGO) have caught the gravitational waves of two neutron stars colliding to form a black hole. The ripples in space time traveled some 500 million light-years and reached the detectors at LIGO, as well as its Italian sister observatory, Virgo, at around 4 a.m. E.T. on Thursday, April 25. Team members say there’s a more than 99 percent chance that the gravitational waves were created f ...read more

Japan’s Hayabusa2 spacecraft dropped an explosive onto its asteroid home, Ryugu, back on April 5, blasting a new crater into its rocky surface so it could investigate what lies beneath. Since then, the spacecraft has been in hiding around the asteroid’s far side, waiting for the dust to settle. Yesterday, it ventured out to survey the damage. The pictures Hayabusa2 returned reveal a crater roughly 66 feet across, larger than even scientists’ most generous expectations. Th ...read more

For a while now, astronomers have been confronting a conundrum. Studies of the early universe, looking at the era just after the Big Bang, tell us that the cosmos should be expanding at one speed. But when astronomers actually measure today's universe, they find a faster rate of expansion. Scientists have known that the universe is expanding for around a century. Astronomers like Edwin Hubble first noticed that every distant galaxy they could measure seemed to be m ...read more

In the world of climate science — and science in general — data is king. The more of it you have, and the higher its quality, the better. And while such trends as the rise in temperatures and sea levels have impeccable data behind them, not every measure of a changing climate has been so lucky. Take the global wind and wave climate, for example, which measures trends in wind speed and wave height in oceans around the globe. Both of these factors affect the interplay between the atmo ...read more

When researchers with the Event Horizon Telescope (EHT) unveiled the first true picture of a black hole on April 10, they finally succeeded in imaging the invisible. The bright ring of the accretion disk and the dark shadow of the event horizon stood out clearly, validating scientists’ theories as to what a singularity looked like. The event was a momentous one for the space artists who have spent decades drawing black holes in the absence of actual confirmation of what they look like. We ...read more

Most people would think that it would be hard to hide the evidence of a massive volcanic eruption. It shouldn't be hard to track down the source of tens of cubic kilometers of ash and debris because it should just get thicker and thicker until you reach the volcano that disgorged the mess. Yet, somehow, it isn't that easy. We live on a geologically active planet where all the processes of weather, tectonics, volcanism and more can quickly disassemble the deposits of an eruption -- even a gia ...read more

When navigating through dark environments, rats swish their whiskers against nearby objects to figure out where they are. As the animals explore, they use this sense of touch to build maps of unfamiliar places. Cockroaches and blind crayfish use their antennae in a similar approach. Now, the go-by-feel strategy has inspired the creation of a robotic catheter capable of finding its way through the beating heart of lives pigs during a surgical procedure without the help of a surgeon’s guidi ...read more

Charred earth, shells, bones and human burials found in mounds on a plain in northern Bolivia are offering scientists new clues about the earliest known inhabitants of the southwestern Amazon. The remains, excavated from raised areas known as “forest islands” on the Llanos de Moxos, an extensive savanna, show the area was inhabited between 10,600 and 4,000 years ago, according to new study published Wednesday in the journal Science Advances. “In the late Holocene, about 2,500 ...read more

Since the birth of the satellite age, scientists noticed that some spacecraft tend to slow down when the sun’s activity is highest, causing them to fall closer to Earth. If the spacecraft don’t carry enough fuel to boost them back to their intended orbits, they can eventually fall back down to Earth. Researchers quickly connected the slow-downs to the northern and southern lights, or auroras. These drifting patterns of colorful light are caused by charged solar particles striking Ea ...read more

The “everything in moderation” mantra sounds like great advice for weight management. Enjoy all your favorite junk food, but stick to reasonable portions and don’t indulge too often. For most of us, that’s easier said than done. Now, a new discovery by a team of scientists at the University of North Carolina (UNC) School of Medicine may help explain why so many of us can’t resist polishing off a jumbo bag of chips or a carton of ice cream in one sitting & ...read more