Posts

Missions near the Moon will start when NASA’s Orion spacecraft leaves Earth atop the world’s most powerful rocket, NASA’s Space Launch System. After launch from the agency’s Kennedy Space Center in Florida, Orion will travel beyond the Moon to a distance more than 1,000 times farther than where the International Space Station flies in low-Earth orbit, and farther than any spacecraft built for humans has ever ventured. To accomplish this feat, Orion has built-in technologies that enable the crew and spacecraft to explore far into the solar system....

Plants can help spruce up a home or office space, but claims about their ability to improve the air quality are vastly overstated, according to research out of Drexel University. A closer look at decades of research suggesting that potted plants can improve the air in homes and offices reveals that natural ventilation far outpaces plants when it comes to cleaning the air. “This has been a common misconception for some time....

Although stopping climate change is challenging, it is imperative to slow it down as soon as possible by reducing greenhouse gas emissions. But how can we meet the growing energy demand while reducing our use of polluting fossil fuels? Geothermal energy is an efficient, non-polluting solution but in certain cases geothermal operations must be handled with care. Reaching the most powerful sources of available energy means drilling deep into the layers of the earth’s crust to find geothermal fluids with high energy content (hot water and gas released by magma)....

Scientists in Japan have identified a nerve pathway involved in the processing of rewarding and distressing stimuli and situations in mice. The new pathway, originating in a bundle of brain stem nerve fibers called the median raphe nucleus, acts in opposition to a previously identified reward/aversion pathway that originates in the nearby dorsal raphe nucleus. The findings, published by scientists at Hokkaido University and Kyoto University with their colleagues in the journal Nature Communications, could have implications for developing drug treatments for various mental disorders, including addictions and major depression....

Researchers had previously identified patches of melt at a similar depth. But a new study led by The University of Texas at Austin revealed for the first time the layer’s global extent and its part in plate tectonics. The research was published today (February 6, 2023) in the journal Nature Geoscience. The molten layer is located about 100 miles from the surface and is part of the asthenosphere, which sits under the Earth’s tectonic plates in the upper mantle....

The results of the study, published in the journal Science, mark the first realization of previously predicted class of ultrahigh thermal conductivity materials. Boron arsenide is not a naturally occurring material, so scientists must synthesize it in the lab, the researchers said. It also needs to have a very specific structure and low defect density for it to have peak thermal conductivity, so that its growth happens in a very controlled way....

This faint radio emission, which has constant brightness irrespective of the radio frequency, extends for tens of thousands of light-years across the host galaxy of quasar 3C 273, an iconic cosmic lighthouse. This discovery may help unlock secrets of galaxy evolution and star formation. As a result of achieving high imaging dynamic range, a team of astronomers in Japan has discovered for the first time a faint radio emission covering a giant galaxy with an energetic black hole at its center....

Even in their normal state, these materials are pretty peculiar. Now, an experiment at the Department of Energy’s SLAC National Accelerator Laboratory has probed the normal state more accurately than ever before, and discovered an abrupt shift in the behavior of electrons in which they suddenly give up their individuality and behave like an electron soup. A research team from SLAC and Stanford University described the results in the journal Science....

All available telemetry during and after the flight suggests that the activity was a success and that the loss of link was due to a challenging radio configuration between Perseverance and Ingenuity during landing. However, before planning our next flight, we need transfer the missing data from Flight 17 from helicopter to rover, and then to Earth, so we can confirm vehicle health. Based on the telemetry we have, the vehicle performed nominally across the board during its 117-second flight 33 feet (10 meters) above the surface of Mars....

With a current estimation of more than 60 Mio. infected people and more than 1.4 Mio. recorded deaths worldwide, COVID-19 — the disease caused by the coronavirus SARS-CoV-2 and is classified as a pandemic by the WHO — poses a threat to public health, national economies, and society as a whole. Although effective vaccines are becoming available, we still need a better understanding of the molecular mechanisms underlying the etiology of COVID-19 to enable more effective therapies in the future....

When the coronavirus pandemic hit the world in the spring of 2020, feelings of being capable or efficacious against the SARS-CoV-2 virus were a key factor in driving compliance with the authorities’ guidelines. This is the result of a new study based on large surveys across eight Western democracies, published in British Journal of Health Psychology. The extent to which we personally felt informed and capable of acting clearly affected the extent of our behavior to prevent COVID-19 infection, e....

The international team of astronomers, led by Jessica Spake, a Ph.D. student at the University of Exeter in the UK, used Hubble’s Wide Field Camera 3 to discover helium in the atmosphere of the exoplanet WASP-107b This is the first detection of its kind. Artist’s impression of WASP-107b Spake explains the importance of the discovery: “Helium is the second-most common element in the Universe after hydrogen. It is also one of the main constituents of the planets Jupiter and Saturn in our Solar System....

CW Leonis glowers from deep within a thick shroud of dust in this image from the NASA/ESA Hubble Space Telescope. Lying roughly 400 light-years from Earth in the constellation Leo, CW LEonis is a carbon star — a luminous type of red giant star with a carbon-rich atmosphere. The dense clouds of sooty gas and dust engulfing this dying star were created as the outer layers of CW Leonis itself were thrown out into the void....

Early space probes visiting the Jovian system have raised more questions than answers. But thanks to Juice, many of those answers are now within reach. ESA is launching the spacecraft in April 2023 on an eight-year journey to the distant planet. To uncover the hidden secrets of these mysterious worlds, Juice is equipped with the most powerful science instruments ever sent to the outer Solar System. The spacecraft will face many dangers along the way: radiation, extreme temperatures, and the vast gravitational pull of Jupiter, all while operating hundreds of millions of kilometers from Earth....

NASA’s Kepler space telescope has witnessed the effects of a dead star bending the light of its companion star. The findings are among the first detections of this phenomenon — a result of Einstein’s general theory of relativity — in binary, or double, star systems. The dead star, called a white dwarf, is the burnt-out core of what used to be a star like our sun. It is locked in an orbiting dance with its partner, a small “red dwarf” star....

Terms Cryonics is the low-temperature freezing (usually at −196 °C or −320.8 °F or 77.1 K) and storage of a human corpse or severed head, with the speculative hope that resurrection may be possible in the future. Cryopreservation (cryo-preservation or cryo-conservation) is a process where organelles, cells, tissues, extracellular matrix, organs, or any other biological constructs susceptible to damage caused by unregulated chemical kinetics are preserved by cooling to very low temperatures (typically −80 °C or −193 °F using solid carbon dioxide or −196 °C or −320....

But can different behaviors be favored by natural selection in different environments? Scientists have long believed the answer was yes, but without much backing from empirical data. Now, a paper authored by Oriol Lapiedra demonstrates a link between individual variation in risk-taking behavior and survival of animals in changing environments. Lapiedra worked on the research as a postdoctoral fellow in the lab of Jonathan Losos while both were still at Harvard....

A new study provides the first cause-and-effect evidence that neurons in this area can help humans to recognize only faces, not body parts or objects. The scientists published their findings in The Journal of Neuroscience. This feat was accomplished by the unusual collaboration between a researcher and an epilepsy patient, Ron Blackwell, an engineer in Santa Clara, California, who came to Stanford University in Palo Alto, California, in 2011 seeking a better treatment....

The European Space Agency (ESA) has recently announced that its two major space observatories of the 2030s will have their launches timed for simultaneous use. These missions, Athena, the next generation X-ray space telescope and LISA, the first space-based gravitational wave observatory, will be coordinated to begin observing within a year of each other and are likely to have at least four years of overlapping science operations. According to the new study, published this week in Nature Astronomy, ESA’s decision will give astronomers an unprecedented opportunity to produce multi-messenger maps of some of the most violent cosmic events in the Universe, which have not been observed so far and which lie at the heart of long-standing mysteries surrounding the evolution of the Universe....

“MAVEN obtained hundreds of such images in recent months, giving some of the best high-resolution ultraviolet coverage of Mars ever obtained,” said Nick Schneider of the Laboratory for Atmospheric and Space Physics at the University of Colorado, Boulder. Schneider is presenting these results on October 19 at the American Astronomical Society Division for Planetary Sciences meeting in Pasadena, California, which is being held jointly with the European Planetary Science Congress....