Science

Octopuses have gotten a reputation for being cunning camouflagers and intelligent creatures. But some are known for a more ominous reason: They’re deadly. One group — the blue-ringed octopus (genus Hapalochlaena) — is especially dangerous. But what makes this creature so lethal? Blue-ringed octopuses carry a killer concoction called tetrodotoxin (TTX), a potent neurotoxin that can paralyze living things, including …

According to a study, eight Pacific sleeper sharks (Somniosus pacificus) appeared during an experiment in the South China Sea, marking the first known occurrence of the species in this region. The sharks were drawn to a cow carcass dropped 1,629 meters (5,344 feet) deep into the sea as part of a study on the processes that unfold when large animals …

Sixty years ago, NASA’s Mariner 4 captured groundbreaking views of the Red Planet, leading to a steady stream of advances in the cameras used to study other worlds. In 1965, NASA’s Mariner 4 mission brought Mars into American living rooms, where TV sets showed fuzzy black-and-white images of a cratered landscape. The spacecraft took 21 complete pictures — the first …

Sign up for the Starts With a Bang newsletter Travel the universe with Dr. Ethan Siegel as he answers the biggest questions of all. Although we don’t often think about it, the world of science is split in two. We have theorists, on the one hand, who strive to tease observable, measurable predictions out of our best models and ideas …

Sen. Jerry Moran, Republican of Kansas, proposed sending $9 billion to the National Science Foundation. Andrew Harnik/Getty Images Signs that Congress intends to push back on the Trump administration’s wholesale slashing of federal budgets emerged during a Senate meeting Thursday that kicked off the annual appropriations process. Since January, the Trump administration has sought to significantly downsize the federal government via …

On Sunday morning US billionaire Elon Musk’s SpaceX’s Falcon 9 rocket will launch Israel Aerospace Industries (IAI) Dror 1 communications satellite into space from Cape Canaveral in Florida. SpaceX and IAI are joining forces in a second effort to launch a communications satellite into orbit after the fiasco of their previous attempt in 2016, when the Falcon 9 …

HELSINKI —A Chinese Shiyan satellite appears in a low-inclination orbit never before used by the country, after a week-long detection delay and uncertainty over its mission. To continue reading this article: Register now and get3 free articles every month. You’ll also receive our weekly SpaceNews This Week newsletter every Friday. Opt-out at any time. Sign in to an existing account …

NASA Just Flew Through the Sun’s Atmosphere – And What It Saw Is Jaw-Dropping  SciTechDaily NASA’s Parker Solar Probe Snaps Closest-Ever Images to Sun  NASA Science (.gov) Parker Solar Probe captures closest-ever photos of the sun during record-breaking flight  Live Science These are the closest images of the Sun ever seen. NASA’s Sun-grazing spacecraft gets closer than ever before  BBC Sky at Night Magazine …

In 2022, NASA rammed a spacecraft into an asteroid to see if it could alter its orbital period around its parent asteroid. The mission, dubbed the Double Asteroid Redirection Test (DART), aimed to determine whether humanity could theoretically save itself from a catastrophic asteroid impact. DART collided with Dimorphos, a small moonlet orbiting a larger asteroid called Didymos, on September …

Burmese pythons can grow up to 19 feet (almost six metres) in length. Such a big body requires big meals. They eat prey as large as cattle – and they eat them whole. No tearing into bite-size chunks, no chewing. Everything goes down all at once, bones and all. Snakes that are fed a boneless diet suffer from calcium deficiency, so digesting skeletons is important for their health. But how they avoid absorbing …