NASA’s Hubble Space Telescope, photographed during the first astronaut servicing mission in 1993. (Credit: NASA) On Friday, NASA’s iconic Hubble Space Telescope, our window into the universe since 1990, went into a protective safe mode after one of its gyroscopes failed. Hubble was built with six gyroscopes designed to keep the telescope pointed the same way for long periods of time. These six gyroscopes were replaced during a 2009 repair mission to the telescope. But, ove ...read more

The image shows the heliosphere that wraps around the Sun, its planets and far beyond. The heliosheath is the outermost later of the heliosphere, and is where Voyager 2 is traveling through to get it to interstellar space. (Credit: NASA/JPL-Caltech) When it comes to space exploration, no one has the Voyager missions beat. On October 5, NASA reported that their Voyager 2 spacecraft is nearing our heliosphere’s outer borders, and could soon enter interstellar space. Data shows that th ...read more

In January 2017, eleven field science advocates gathered in an unlikely location: indoors. These individuals were educators, scientists, and web platform developers participating in the Designing Citizen Science for Both Science and Education workshop, hosted by the Biological Science Curriculum Study (BSCS) in Colorado Springs, Colorado. The workshop focused on georeferenced field studies, which are projects that involve the collection of data organized by location. Led by ...read more

Brain surgery is not usually something that people actively seek out. However, there may be an exception: the idea of the removal of the amygdala seems to hold a fascination for many people. Questions about the desirability of an amygdala-free life can be found in many places online. On Quora, there have been many queries about what amygdala removal would entail, and at least one brave user outright asked Can I have my amygdala removed? I came across the question on two other sites within the pa ...read more

(Credit: By Angela Rohde/Shutterstock) If we humans want to slow down global warming due to carbon emissions, clean energy is the way. But, as with all things, there are cons to go along with those pros. New research reports that installing large-scale wind farms across the country could raise the temperature of the continental United States. The study, published in the journal Joule, is based on mathematical modeling done by experts at Harvard University. First, the team created a climat ...read more

An artist’s conception of what an orbital lunar station could look like. (Credit: NASA) It looks like the moon is back in style. Decades after NASA’s last trip to our satellite, both Blue Origin and Lockheed Martin have recently announced plans for lunar landers, and NASA hopes to build a Lunar Orbital-Platform Gateway that would sit in orbit around the moon. The moon is a logical stepping stone for longer missions to Mars and beyond, and it offers a crucial testing ground for ...read more

Hayabusa2 watches the MASCOT lander descend to the surface of asteroid Ryugu. (Credit: JAXA, Tokyo University, Kochi Univ., Rikkyo Univ., Nagoya Univ., Chiba Institute of Technology, Meiji Univ., Aizu Univ., AIST) In yet another historic feat, Hayabusa2’s MASCOT rover has completed its mission to explore, probe and photograph the surface of asteroid Ryugu. The rover spent three asteroid-days, or 17 Earth-hours, hopping across the asteroid and conducting research with an array of high-pow ...read more

A technician scans for radiation with a Geiger counter. (Credit: PRESSLAB/Shutterstock) For decades, studies have shown that even low doses of radiation are harmful to humans. This week, the Associated Press reported that the Trump administration may be reconsidering that. The Environmental Protection Agency seemed to be looking at raising the levels of radiation considered dangerous to humans based on a controversial theory rejected by mainstream scientists. ...read more

A burial at Sungir covered in beads. (Credit: José-Manuel Benito Álvarez/Wikimedia Commons) Some 34,000 years ago, two boys and a middle-aged man were buried in fantastic style. They were laid to rest wearing over 13,000 mammoth ivory beads, hundreds of perforated fox canine teeth and other adornments. Discovered in the 1960s, at the site of Sungir, Russia, the burials also contained spears, figurines and the hollowed out shaft of a woman’s femur, packed with red ochre. Arc ...read more