Science & Technology News

A scientist examined 11 Mars years of image data to understand the seasonal processes that create linear gullies on the slopes of the megadune in the Russell crater on Mars.

New experiments have answered the decades-old question of how pieces of splitting nuclei get their spins

-- Read more on ScientificAmerican.com

A new theoretical study has proposed a novel mechanism for the creation of supermassive black holes from dark matter. The international team find that rather than the conventional formation scenarios involving 'normal' matter, supermassive black holes could instead form directly from dark matter in high density regions in the centres of galaxies. The result has key implications for cosmology in the early Universe.

Even the smallest burial sites could help conserve natural habitats in agricultural landscapes

-- Read more on ScientificAmerican.com

The pandemic infection seems to trigger diabetes in some patients. Here are five plausible explanations as to why

-- Read more on ScientificAmerican.com

The case history of a U.K. man in his 70s shows how selective “pressures” bring about viral mutations

-- Read more on ScientificAmerican.com

Redesigning ship propellors and installing acoustic “curtains” could lower the volume on anthropogenic noise that disrupts ocean life

-- Read more on ScientificAmerican.com

According to a new study, Earth, Venus and Mars were created from small dust particles containing ice and carbon. The discovery opens up the possibility that the Milky Way may be filled with aquatic planets.

New video from NASA's Mars 2020 Perseverance rover chronicles major milestones during the final minutes of its entry, descent, and landing (EDL) on the Red Planet on Feb. 18 as the spacecraft plummeted, parachuted, and rocketed toward the surface of Mars. A microphone on the rover also has provided the first audio recording of sounds from Mars.

Astronomers have discovered that large galaxies are stealing the material that their smaller counterparts need to form new stars.

For only the second time, astronomers have linked an elusive particle called a high-energy neutrino to an object outside our galaxy. Using ground- and space-based facilities, they traced the neutrino to a black hole tearing apart a star, a rare cataclysmic occurrence called a tidal disruption event.

From aboard the Juno spacecraft, an instrument observing auroras serendipitously spotted a bright flash above Jupiter's clouds last spring. The Ultraviolet Spectrograph (UVS) team studied the data and determined that they had captured a bolide, an extremely bright meteoroid explosion in the gas giant's upper atmosphere.

A doctoral student has mined the most recent Gaia survey for all binary stars near Earth and created a 3D atlas of 1.3 million of them. The last local survey included about 200 binary pairs. With such census data, astronomers can conduct statistical analyses on binary populations. For pairs that contain white dwarfs, it's possible to determine the age of their main-sequence companion, and thus of any exoplanets around them.

The annual science education event describes imaginary encounters to teach ecology

-- Read more on ScientificAmerican.com

Upgrades to the SuperNova Early Warning System (SNEWS) detection system offer advance notice of impending blasts

-- Read more on ScientificAmerican.com

Energy from neighboring states could have helped Texans survive their extreme winter storm

-- Read more on ScientificAmerican.com

Scientific American talked to scientists about everything from what efficacy means, to protection against the new variants

-- Read more on ScientificAmerican.com

The largest, most advanced rover NASA has sent to another world touched down on Mars Thursday, after a 203-day journey traversing 293 million miles (472 million kilometers).

NASA’s latest mission to the Red Planet will seek out signs of ancient life, gather samples for return to Earth, and even fly a first-of-its-kind interplanetary helicopter

-- Read more on ScientificAmerican.com

New observations of the first black hole ever detected have led astronomers to question what they know about the Universe's most mysterious objects. The research shows the system known as Cygnus X-1 contains the most massive stellar-mass black hole ever detected without the use of gravitational waves.