Humans are creatures of rhythms. As far as we know, humans have always sung and always danced. We can recognize a song by its rhythm alone, regardless of whether it is played fast or slow.
NASA’s Artemis II astronauts fired their engines and blazed toward the moon Thursday night, breaking free of the chains that have trapped humanity in shallow laps around Earth in the decades since Apollo.
For the first time since the Apollo era, humans are preparing not just to visit the moon, but to live and work there for weeks, months—and eventually years.
New research suggests that neutrinos in the early universe may have transformed into a previously unknown form of radiation. A study from Washington University in St. Louis offers a new way to explain certain puzzling observations about how the universe evolved.
During the Artemis II mission launched Wednesday, NASA will test out a pair of new solar radiation forecasts, developed at University of Michigan Engineering, designed to protect astronauts venturing away from Earth. The forecasts will provide warnings of harmful solar radiation released by solar flares and eruptions up to 24 hours in advance. NASA’s Space Radiation Analysis Group (SRAG) is examining how new solar particle forecasting technologies might provide a faster response to changing space weather conditions during the Artemis missions, which will mostly fly outside the natural shielding provided by Earth’s magnetic field.
Using preliminary data from the Vera C. Rubin Observatory, scientists have discovered over 11,000 new asteroids. The data were confirmed by the International Astronomical Union’s Minor Planet Center (MPC), making this the largest single batch of asteroid discoveries submitted in the past year. The discoveries were made using data from Rubin’s early optimization surveys and offer a powerful preview of the observatory’s transformative impact on solar system science.
The search for life on Mars involves the efforts of scientists from many different disciplines. An important aspect of that search is to study Martian sedimentary rocks for information about the planet’s environment when it is likely that the surface environment hosted abundant water and therefore more habitable, around three to four billion years ago. Now, research published in the journal Geology shows evidence of an intense sandstorm that swept through Mars’s Gale crater over three billion years ago.
Scientists have discovered that a highly unusual giant planet—sometimes called “forbidden”—could have an atmosphere with fewer heavier elements than its host star. University of Birmingham astrophysicist Dr. Anjali Piette worked with an international research team to analyze James Webb Space Telescope data from the exoplanet TOI-5205 b. This is a Jupiter-sized planet orbiting a star about four times the size of Jupiter and about 40% the mass of the sun.
The four Artemis astronauts circling Earth were awaiting the green light from NASA on Thursday to head for the moon and carry out the first crewed lunar flyby in more than 50 years.
NASA’s moonbound astronauts have reason to celebrate, and not just because their launch went so well. Their toilet is now working.
Researchers at the Institute of Water and Environmental Engineering (IIAMA) at the Universitat Politècnica de València have developed an advanced system for seasonal forecasting of meteorological droughts that enables these events to be predicted up to six months in advance, providing a key tool for water management and early warning in semi-arid regions, such as the Júcar river basin.
Researchers at IPhT (CEA, CNRS) and the Universitat Autònoma de Barcelona have shown that gravity—and with it, supersymmetry—emerge as logical necessities whenever a massive spin-3/2 particle exists in nature. Two principles are enough: causality, the fact that no signal can travel faster than light, and unitarity, the requirement that probabilities are conserved in quantum mechanics. The structure of supergravity is not assumed: it bootstraps itself.
The European Space Agency will negotiate future participation in NASA missions after the US space agency revamped its lunar program, the ESA head told AFP Wednesday.
Four astronauts blasted off aboard a massive NASA rocket Wednesday on a long-anticipated journey around the moon, the first crewed lunar flyby in more than 50 years.
Scientists have discovered a new species of miniature marsupial frog in the Peruvian Amazon that carries its young in a natural pouch on its back, a research institute reported Wednesday.
In a society increasingly shaped by self-checkouts, GPS navigation and touchscreen ordering kiosks, new research shows face-to-face conversation may be quietly fading. A new study published in Perspectives on Psychological Science suggests that people are losing 338 spoken words every year and have been for at least a decade and a half.
An international team led by Monash University has uncovered evidence of a rare form of exploding star, helping to shed light on one of the most cataclysmic events in the universe. At the end of their lives, most massive stars collapse into black holes—objects with gravity so strong that not even light can escape.
Artemis II, NASA’s first crewed mission to the moon in more than 50 years, represents a shift from short visits toward sustained exploration, where understanding lunar geology and resources becomes as important as the engineering that gets astronauts there. Artemis II is currently scheduled to launch Wednesday, April 1, at 6:24 p.m. EDT, with backup launch opportunities through early April if needed.
Elon Musk’s SpaceX has filed papers with US regulators that set the stage for what could be the largest-ever public stock offering, a source familiar with the matter told AFP on Wednesday.
In 2024, NASA’s Perseverance rover found surprising levels of Nickel in the Martian bedrock of an ancient river channel, called Neretva Vallis, which flowed into the Jezero crater. A new study, published in Nature Communications, has taken a closer look at the data collected from the region and researchers are seeing what could be remnants of ancient Martian life.
