Science

Science

This system is truly extraordinary. We are seeing the radio equivalent of a laser halfway across the universe. This galaxy acts as a lens, the way a water droplet on a window pane would, because its mass curves the local space-time. So we have a radio laser passing through a cosmic telescope before being detected by the powerful MeerKAT radio telescope.

Robert Goddard, a Massachusetts-born physicist, launched the world's first liquid-fueled rocket on this date 100 years ago. It was not an overly impressive flight. The rocket, fueled by gasoline and liquid oxygen, rose just 41 feet into the air, and the flight lasted 2.5 seconds before it struck ice and snow. Nevertheless, this rocket, named "Nell," represented a historic achievement that would help launch the modern age of spaceflight.

The fireflies were most likely to change their own flashing rhythm in response when the LED blinked almost, but not quite, at the same time as the fireflies. The males would speed up their next flash if the LED blinked just before and waited a bit longer for their next flash when the LED blinked right after.

For more than two millennia, mathematicians have produced a growing heap of pi equations in their ongoing search for methods to calculate pi faster and faster. The pile of equations has now grown into the thousands, and algorithms now can generate an infinitude. Each discovery has arrived alone, as a fragment, with no obvious connection to the others. But now, for the first time, centuries of pi formulas have been shown to be part of a unified, formerly hidden structure.

NASA's hard-won reputation for extreme competence is why Artemis, the agency's troubled and long-delayed program to return astronauts to the moon, has been so dismaying-and why everyone is eager to see if the new NASA administrator, Jared Isaacman, can right the ship.

Raccoons have very dense brains, and that likely explains their heightened ability to solve problems and to be behaviorally flexible, says Lauren Stanton, a cognitive ecologist at the University of California, Berkeley. But new research published in Animal Behaviour suggests raccoons will try to solve problems even when they don't expect a food reward for the work.

Four prospective landing sites in the traversable areas of the Sinus Aestuum basin and neighboring Rimae Bode provide a range of diverse geological samples, including volcanic debris, mare basalts, Copernicus crater ejecta and high-thorium materials. Such a collection may provide insights into the geological evolution of the region and enhance our understanding of the lunar mantle composition and volcanic processes.

In the two weeks since the U.S. and Israel launched attacks against Iran, thousands of vessels have experienced navigation interference in the Persian Gulf. Commercial shipping through the strait, which carries roughly 20 percent of the world's oil, has nearly ground to a halt. Though rocket and drone attacks are also to blame, another major hazard is GPS spoofing—the transmission of counterfeit satellite navigation signals.

We're returning to the moon and we're gonna stay. We're gonna build a lunar base. And next up is Artemis II, which is America's moon rocket, it's right behind me, 8.8 million pounds of thrust, we're gonna send four astronauts around the moon in a matter of weeks, safely back to Earth, and then we're gonna set up for missions every year, again in '27 until '28, when we land on moon.

CMCs are a composite material, one in which the fibers are ceramic or carbon, embedded in a ceramic matrix. They are created to overcome the brittleness of traditional ceramics, while providing high-temperature resistance, light weight, and high strength. According to DSTL, they are capable of withstanding temperatures exceeding 1,000°C (1,832°F), and unlike metals, they hold their strength and shape under extreme heat and stress.

While humans have assembled a lot of weather data, flash floods are too short-lived and localized to be measured comprehensively, the way the temperature or even river flows are monitored over time. That data gap means that deep learning models, which are increasingly capable of forecasting the weather, aren't able to predict flash floods.

Sometimes the reason pi shows up in randomly generated values is obvious—if there are circles or angles involved, pi is your guy. But sometimes the circle is cleverly hidden, and sometimes the reason pi pops up is a mathematical mystery!

This could open up some interesting possibilities for therapeutic interventions for depression-like behaviors or maladaptive changes in motivational behaviors down the road where microglia are known to play a really important role.

This study started from a discussion with my co-author and postdoctoral researcher, Sabrina Rondeau, whose recent findings showed that these queens can survive submersion for over a week, which is extraordinary for a terrestrial insect. We wanted to understand how that's even possible.

Discovered in December 2024, asteroid 2024 YR4 was briefly considered the most dangerous asteroid in decades after scientists initially estimated it had a 3.1% chance of colliding with the Earth in 2032. Closer observations quickly ruled out a city killer scenario, but instead astronomers calculated there was a 4.3% chance that the moon lay in the path of impact.

They created an artificial 'mental map', with pleasantness along one axis and bodily reactions along the other, and charted how the brain responded while watching clips from films. The results revealed clear groupings in the way that our brains represent emotion - with guilt, anger and disgust in one corner and happiness, satisfaction and pride in the other.

Their results revealed that women with lower 2D:4D are more likely to be lesbian. Meanwhile, men with higher 2D:4D are more likely to be gay. 'Bisexual women are more similar to heterosexual women in digit ratios, but there may be further nuance,' the researchers explained.

If a signal gets broadened by its own star's environment, it can slip below our detection thresholds, even if it's there, potentially helping explain some of the radio silence we've seen in technosignature searches. This statement from Dr. Vishal Gajjar highlights how stellar environmental factors may cause detectable signals to become invisible to current SETI instruments.

When the Finnish startup unveiled its battery at the Consumer Electronics Show in January, the specifications shocked the battery industry. How could an unknown company leapfrog Toyota, Factorial, and CATL in the solid-state race? The startup claimed 400 watt-hours per kilogram of energy density, a 100,000-cycle lifespan and a charge time of roughly five minutes.

Have you ever watched a mile-long freight train rumble by and wondered how one locomotive can pull more than a hundred fully loaded cars? The locomotive weighs maybe 150 metric tons, and each car is about 100 metric tons, which means it's hauling 10,000 tons. I mean, if you weigh 170 pounds, this would be like pulling three SUVs totaling 12,000 pounds.

The vast majority of animal species on this planet lay eggs, most insects, most fish, most amphibians, most reptiles, all birds, and even a few mammals lay eggs to reproduce. And if you go back far enough, you can see that our ancestors laid eggs for millions of years too.