Science

Twenty-eight more Starlink satellites are now in Earth orbit after launching from Florida on Tuesday night (July 29). A SpaceX Falcon 9 rocket lifted off at 11:37 p.m. EDT (0337 GMT on July 30) rom Space Launch Complex 40 (SLC-40) at Cape Canaveral Space Force Station in Florida. After a nine minute climb into space, the 28 Starlink broadband internet …

A viral claim is circulating on social media platforms that the whole world will go dark for six minutes on the upcoming August 2, 2025. Some posts even claim that this event won’t happen again for 100 years. Denying all rumours, experts say the claim is not true and that there will be no blackout on August 2, 2025. Instead, …

Meet the potato’s unexpected ancestor: the tomato.  That’s right, a fruit. Potatoes and tomatoes don’t look alike, smell alike or taste alike, but in a study published Thursday in the journal Cell, scientists said that the potato evolved from a tomato ancestor around 9 million years ago. “We’ve finally solved the mystery of where potatoes came from,” corresponding author Sanwen …

CAPE CANAVERAL, Fla. — SpaceX scrubbed today’s (July 31) launch attempt of the Crew-11 astronaut mission for NASA. Launch officials called the scrub just over a minute before liftoff, due to a bank of cumulus clouds that appeared over in the skies over NASA’s Kennedy Space Center here. “Unfortunately, the weather is just not playing alongside with today’s excitement on …

A ‘vibrant oasis’ of chemical-eating creatures found in the deep Pacific  Reuters ‘Communities’ of strange, extreme life seen for first time in deep ocean  yahoo.com Fields of worms and snowy microbial mats: Deep-sea submersible discovers flourishing ecosystem  NBC News Flourishing chemosynthetic life at the greatest depths of hadal trenches  Nature Scientists discover a whole new type of ecosystem 30,000 feet deep  The Washington Post Source …

Zealandia, a submerged landmass primarily located beneath the Pacific Ocean, has long intrigued geologists and researchers. For years, it was largely overlooked, its true nature shrouded in mystery due to its mostly submerged form. Now, after years of exploration and research, Zealandia is officially recognized as Earth’s eighth continent. A major milestone was achieved with the comprehensive mapping of this …

Bottom dwellers have never been more spectacular. In a tiny, high-tech submersible sunk deeper than the height of Mount Everest, scientists have discovered a flourishing ecosystem some 30,000 feet below the surface of the Pacific Ocean. The Chinese-led research team found spiky, bright marine worms darting through fields of crimson tubes, itself another kind of worm, poking out of the …

When you buy through links on our articles, Future and its syndication partners may earn a commission. (Main) An illustration of a planetary system developing around a free-floating rogue planet (Inset) the JWST. | Credit: Midjourney Our parochial view of planets orbiting a central star — so familiar because it is the layout seen in the solar system — could …

Random mating between wild tomato plants and potato-like species 8 million to 9 million years ago may have given rise to one of our favorite carbs: the potato. Together with 107 extant, wild potato species, the cultivated potatoes we know today (Solanum tuberosum) belong to the lineage Petota. New research suggests that this lineage, or group of closely related species, …

This article was originally published at The Conversation. The publication contributed the article to Space.com’s Expert Voices: Op-Ed & Insights. If you happen to find yourself in the Southern Hemisphere with binoculars and a good view of the night sky on a dark and clear summer night, you might just be able to spot the Sculptor galaxy. And if your …