Science

Nearly 300 workers at NASA’s Michoud Assembly Facility have been laid off after the company that employed them lost its contract with the space agency, according to a notice the company sent to the Louisiana Workforce Commission. Syncom Space Services, which provided operations and facilities maintenance at Michoud and the Stennis Space Center in Mississippi for nearly 10 years, said …

It is 50 years since the last hurrah of the Apollo program, with a mission that saw the final launch of an Apollo vehicle, and a subsequent docking with a Soviet Soyuz spacecraft in orbit. The mission was the first and only spaceflight of Deke Slayton, one of the original Mercury 7 group of astronauts, who had been disqualified from …

In an unexpected discovery, researchers have found that wild tomatoes in the Galápagos Islands seem to be evolving in reverse. This fascinating phenomenon, previously thought to be rare, suggests that evolution isn’t always a straightforward process. The finding, which challenges conventional wisdom, could lead to exciting breakthroughs in genetic research. Tomatoes Turning Back Time on the Galápagos A team of …

A top scientist on Earth’s polar systems says we may have passed a terrifying climate threshold in Antarctica — an event described as “beyond worrying.” What’s happening? Louise Sime, a leading scientist at the British Antarctic Survey, recently told the Guardian that she believes we may have already crossed a tipping point in West Antarctica. The region holds enough ice …

You can use up all the storage on your phone or max out your computer’s drive, but can you use up all the memory space in your brain? Despite how you might feel before an exam or after a sleepless night before a work deadline, neuroscientists say that for a typical, healthy brain, memory capacity isn’t fixed or easily used …

Volcanic eruptions can destroy essential infrastructure, ground air traffic for days, wipe out entire cities, disrupt the climate for years, and even wipe out life on Earth, so it’s important to know what causes them to blow. New research has revealed that specific features deep within Earth can be linked directly to such cataclysmic eruptions. Thousands of kilometers below Earth’s …

Scientists have detected the most massive merger of black holes ever. This titanic collision, “heard” in ripples in spacetime called gravitational waves, involves black holes so massive that it could challenge current models of the universe. The merger was detected by the gravitational wave detector network LIGO-Virgo-KAGRA (LVK) on Nov. 23, 2023, during the fourth observing run of these three …

SpaceX CEO Elon Musk‘s plan to terraform Mars is the “stupidest thing” one can pursue, says astrophysicist and author Adam Becker. In an interview last month, Becker explained why the red planet could not and should not be occupied and how billionaires like Musk and Jeff Bezos are selling “sci-fi fantasies.” In his new book ‘More Everything Forever: AI Overlords, …

You are probably familiar with initiatives like Seti@Home, where you donate unused computer power to some science project that needs computer cycles. [Jeff Yoshimi] wants to borrow your most powerful computer: your brain. The reason: cancer research. [Jeff’s] recent book, Gaming Cancer, has three examples: Eterna, Foldit, and Nanocrafter. All three make games out of creating biological molecules. With Foldit, you …

IN A NUTSHELL 🌌 The Quipu superstructure, spanning over 1.3 billion light-years, is the largest known entity in the universe. 🔭 Astronomers utilize X-ray galaxy clusters to map and analyze these massive cosmic formations. 📊 The immense size of superstructures like Quipu can distort critical cosmological measurements, affecting our understanding of the universe’s expansion. ⏳ Despite their current significance, these …