Science

Have you ever wondered about the many experiments taking place on the International Space Station (ISS)? What are astronauts studying in this orbital laboratory? RELATED: ASTRONOMERS CREATE ‘FIFTH STATE OF MATTER’ IN THE INTERNATIONAL SPACE STATION Well, many things, of course, but one of them is the weather: especially the kind of weather events that cannot be seen from Earth. …

SpaceX shared this scenic view of a Falcon 9 awaiting launch. SpaceX SpaceX will transform one of its Falcon 9 rockets into the space equivalent of a crowded Uber when it launches its Transporter-1 ride sharing mission from Cape Canaveral, Florida as soon as Sunday. The payload for this mission includes a cornucopia of small satellites from public and commercial …

SpaceX shared this scenic view of a Falcon 9 awaiting launch. SpaceX SpaceX will transform one of its Falcon 9 rockets into the space equivalent of a crowded Uber when it launches its Transporter-1 ride sharing mission from Cape Canaveral, Florida as soon as Sunday. The payload for this mission includes a cornucopia of small satellites from public and commercial …

To the left is an image of the Jewel Bug Nebula (NGC 7027) taken by the Hubble Space Telescope in 2019 and released in 2020. Further analysis by scientists produced the RGB image to the right, which shows extinction due to dust, as evidenced by the relative strength of two hydrogen emission lines as red; emission from sulfur relative to …

In the middle of the Milky Way lies the largest object we can be sure exists: a supermassive black hole (SMBH) four million times more massive than the sun. Physicists believe that these enormous singularities can reach even larger sizes if they have eaten a large enough galaxy. The largest estimates are somewhere in the order of 10 billion times …

“The system exists against the odds,” said Brian Powell, a computer scientist at NASA’s High Energy Astrophysics Science Archive Research Center about the source of starlight, which mysteriously became brighter and dimmed about 1,900 light-years away. The source, called TIC 168789840, is a system with three pairs of binary stars: three different star couplings, which revolve around three different mass …

New discoveries await diligent paleontologists. For proof, look no further than Jakob Vinther, a scientist at the University of Bristol in England, who recently revealed what could be the field’s first example of a non-avian dinosaur ass. The research, which was published in the journal Current biology, gives a glimpse inside the back of one psittacosaurus, a dog-sized dino whose …

From stellar black holes to exploding comets, NASA’s Transiting Exoplanet Survey Satellite, or TESS, has seen its share of surprises since it began searching the galaxy for exoplanets in 2018. But the source of starlight that mysteriously lit up and dimmed about 1,900 light. years away can top all these discoveries for its science fiction-like grandeur. The source, called TIC …

A new composite image of Jupiter’s atmosphere shows a hot spot that glows brightly in infrared wavelengths. Astronomers and amateur image processors combined data from NASA Juno spacecraft at Jupiter and the Gemini North Telescope in Mauna Kea, Hawaii, to create the epic image. Although scientists have known about hot spots on Jupiter for more than 25 years, views like …

Last weekend, officials discovered the carcass of a huge finback whale in the Mediterranean. The fin whale, or Balaenoptera physalus, is the second largest animal species on Earth. It measured 65 feet long and is estimated to weigh more than 77 tons, one of the largest ever discovered. The length and estimated weight make it one of the largest whale …