Science & Technology News

Humans may be driving large mammals to extinction

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Better data from the Gaia spacecraft also promises to shed light on mysterious brown dwarfs

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This colorful cloud of glowing interstellar gas is just a tiny part of the Lagoon Nebula, a vast stellar nursery. This nebula is a region full of intense activity, with fierce winds from hot stars, swirling chimneys of gas, and energetic star formation all embedded within a hazy labyrinth of gas and dust.

New genetic evidence suggests these indigenous Southeast Asians are singularly suited for underwater hunting

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NASA's Transiting Exoplanet Survey Satellite (TESS) launched on the first-of-its-kind mission to find worlds beyond our solar system, including some that could support life. Researchers will use spectroscopy to determine a planet's mass, density and atmospheric composition. Water, and other key molecules, in its atmosphere can give us hints about a planets' capacity to harbor life.

Sending a human into space and doing it efficiently presents a galaxy of challenges. Scientists have explored ways to integrate the logistics of space travel by looking at a campaign of lunar missions, spacecraft design, and conducting research, to create a framework to optimize fuel and other resources.

Scientists have examined a slice from a meteorite that contains large diamonds formed at high pressure. The study shows that the parent body from which the meteorite came was a planetary embryo of a size between Mercury to Mars.

Researchers have completed an unprecedented 'dissection' of twin galaxies in the final stages of merging. The new study explores a galaxy called NGC 6240. While most galaxies in the universe hold only one supermassive black hole at their center, NGC 6240 contains two -- and they're circling each other in the last steps before crashing together.

Scientists posit a violent birth of the tiny Martian moons Phobos and Deimos, but on a much smaller scale than the giant impact thought to have resulted in the Earth-moon system. Their work shows that an impact between proto-Mars and a dwarf-planet-sized object likely produced the two moons.

The Swedish furniture has become something of a benchmark for robotics engineers

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Astronomers have revealed the 'DNA' of more than 340,000 stars in the Milky Way, which should help them find the siblings of the sun, now scattered across the sky. This is the first major announcement of an ambitious survey as part of a quest to uncover the formulation and evolution of galaxies -- after the Australian-led Galactic Archaeology survey, called GALAH, commenced three years ago.

In a contaminated Seattle river, what the mammals leave behind may be a good gauge of cleanup efforts

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Astrophysicists have created and compared self-consistent and realistic images of the shadow of an accreting supermassive black hole. The goal was to test if Einsteinian black holes can be distinguished from those in alternative theories of gravity.

Experts describe how rat poison linked to a recent bleeding outbreak does its damage

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An international team of scientists has developed a new instrument to detect planets around the nearest stars. It is the world's largest and most advanced superconducting camera.

Scientists across 50 cities took to the streets against funding cuts and government leaders’ anti-science rhetoric

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In recent history, a very important achievement was the discovery, in 1995, of 51 Pegasi b, the first extrasolar planet ever found around a normal star other than the Sun.

New research examines an interesting light source that was captured by four different telescopes each pointing in a different direction in the sky.

After years of stealthy activity, the start-up is making big moves and revealing its plans to overturn more than a half century of tradition in aerospace manufacturing

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This NASA/ESA Hubble Space Telescope image shows a massive galaxy cluster glowing brightly in the darkness.