Rate of relative evolution of brain mass. Credit: Nature Ecology & Evolution (2024). DOI file: 10.1038/s41559-024-02451-3 The largest animals don’t have proportionally larger brains, and humans are an exception to this trend, according to a study published in Nature Ecology & Evolution has revealed. Researchers from the University of Reading and the University of Durham … Read more
Scheme of nonclassical mechanical states of a resonator-qubit combination. A transmon qubit capacitively couples to acoustic mechanical modes of a separate sapphire slab, one of which is shown as a series of blue and red antinodes. Nonclassical mechanical states emerge from this interaction. Three vignettes reproduce Wigner functions of i) a squeezed vibrational state, ii) … Read more
Source: Pixabay/CC0 Public Domain Astronauts Suni Williams and Butch Wilmore spent an unexpected Fourth of July aboard the International Space Station, but it was hardly a patriotic display of technical prowess. The two NASA astronauts arrived at the space station on June 6 for what was supposed to be an eight-day mission. But their return … Read more
The crew of a NASA mission to Mars left the spacecraft after a year-long journey, never leaving Earth. The four volunteer crew members spent more than 12 months in NASA’s first simulated Mars environment at the Johnson Space Center in Houston. They left the artificial alien environment around 5 p.m. Saturday. Kelly Haston, Anca Selariu, … Read more
by Brian PD Hannon In this image taken from NASA video, Kelly Haston, a crew member of the first CHAPEA mission, speaks before other members, from left, Ross Brockwell, Nathan Jones and Anca Selariu, Saturday, July 6, 2024, at the Johnson Space Center in Houston, Texas. The crew of a NASA mission to Mars emerged … Read more
Four volunteer crew members who spent more than 12 months in NASA’s first simulated Mars environment at the Johnson Space Center in Houston have emerged from the artificial alien environment By means of BRIAN PD HANNON Associated Press July 7, 2024, 6:55 AM ET • 3 min read The crew of a NASA mission to … Read more
Credit: CC0 Public Domain The melting of one of North America’s largest ice fields has accelerated and could soon reach an irreversible tipping point. That’s the conclusion of new research colleagues and I who have published on the Juneau Ice Field, which straddles the Alaska-Canada border near Alaska’s capital, Juneau. In the summer of 2022, … Read more
Model selection between the original BMS symmetries (dashed lines) and the extended BMS symmetries (solid lines) with Einstein Telescope (ET) and Cosmic Explorer (CE). Evidence for the simulated symmetry group (log Bayes factor) is shown against observation time. Credit: Physical assessment letters (2024). DOI: 10.1103/PhysRevLett.132.241401 As predicted by general relativity, the passage of gravitational waves … Read more
To find out how migratory birds find their way, sparrows were translocated from autumn stopovers along the Dutch North Sea coast to Switzerland (red, 1948–1957) and Spain (blue, 1959–1962). Source: Biology Letters (2024). DOI: 10.1098/rsbl.2024.0217 Young, naive starlings search for their wintering areas independently of experienced conspecifics. Starlings are very social birds all year round, … Read more
Orbital configuration of Mars Express (red) and trace gas orbiter (blue) during a typical mutual radio occultation observation, with a black and white arrow indicating the direction of radio communication between the two spacecraft. Credit: Radio science (2024). DOI: 10.1029/2023RS007873 Using the repurposed equipment, a team including researchers from Imperial College London measured parts of … Read more