While Matt Damon relied on potatoes grown in his crew’s biowaste in the hit film The Martian, researchers say it’s a simple desert moss that could be crucial to the emergence of life on Mars. Scientists in China say they have found it Syntrichia dogfish – a moss found in areas such as Antarctica and … Read more
Corner down icon An icon in the shape of a downward-pointing corner. Locals discovered this mummified wolf in the thawing permafrost in Siberia. Northeastern Federal University Researchers are studying a 44,000-year-old mummified wolf found in the permafrost in Russia. The wolf may be able to tell scientists about its lifestyle and diet during the Pleistocene. … Read more
Researchers investigated three mysterious objects in the early universe. Shown here are their color images, compiled from three NIRCam filter bands aboard the James Webb Space Telescope. They are remarkably compact at red wavelengths (giving them the name “little red dots”), with some evidence of spatial structure at blue wavelengths. Credit: Bingjie Wang/Penn State; JWST/NIRSpec. … Read more
NASA’s Perseverance rover, known as Percy, is designed to explore Mars’ Jezero Crater as part of NASA’s Mars 2020 mission. It successfully landed on the Red Planet on February 18, 2021 and has been providing scientists with crucial information ever since. Recently, the rover attracted a lot of scientific attention because it discovered something truly … Read more
They once carried a sun god through the sky, kept watch over golden treasures and even protected the mighty Zeus with their sharp beaks; myths about griffins flourished in many ancient civilizations and continue in popular culture to this day. The prevalence of such monstrous, beaked hybrids in various cultures has led some researchers to … Read more
Chinese space officials said Thursday they welcomed scientists from around the world to apply to research the moon rock samples the Chang’e 6 probe brought to Earth on a historic mission, but noted there were limits to that collaboration, especially… By means of HUIZHONG WU Associated Press June 27, 2024, 05:03 ET • 3 minutes … Read more
Have you ever wondered what it would look like if a robot ripped your face off, gently placed it on its unfeeling exoskeleton, and then looked at you with a chilling smile that made you wonder how humanity had strayed so far from all that is good and right? Well, you need to wonder no … Read more
A team of physicists from the University of California, Berkeley, has developed an unprecedentedly precise instrument designed to hunt for dark energy, the elusive force accelerating the expansion of the universe. Their experiment – the results of which were published today in the prestigious journal Nature – focuses on a hypothesized particle known as the … Read more
Early one morning in late October 2013, Gerard Talavera, an entomologist, spotted something highly unusual: a flock of painted lady butterflies stranded on a beach in French Guiana. The painted lady, or the species Vanessa cardui, is one of the world’s most common butterflies, but is not found in South America. Yet there they lay … Read more
The Antarctic ice sheet is melting in a new, worrying way that scientific models used to project future sea level rise have not taken into account. This suggests that current projections could significantly underestimate the problem, according to a new study. Scientists from the British Antarctic Survey found that warm ocean water seeps under the … Read more