There is a very small chance that an asteroid capable of taking out an entire city could strike Earth in less than eight years. But even if this asteroid is hurtling our way, humanity is now able to defend itself against such a threat, experts say.
Virginia has made significant investments in the restoration of oyster reefs in the Chesapeake Bay, and now a study led by William & Mary’s Batten School & VIMS suggests those management practices are literally paying off in the Rappahannock River. The study, recently published in the Journal of Environmental Management, was led by Batten School of Coastal & Marine Sciences Ph.D. student Alexandria Marquardt, who presented the results to the Virginia Marine Resources Commission’s (VMRC) Shellfish Management Advisory Committee on February 19.
Optical atomic clocks can increase the precision of time and geographic position a thousandfold in our mobile phones, computers, and GPS systems. However, they are currently too large and complex to be widely used in society.
The Standard Model (SM), the main physics framework describing elementary particles and the forces driving them, outlines key patterns in physical interactions referred to as gauge symmetries. One of the symmetries it describes is the so-called U(1)Y hypercharge: a gauge symmetry that contributes to the electric charge of particles before electromagnetic and weak forces become distinct (i.e., before the electroweak phase transition).
The chance that an asteroid capable of wiping out a city will hit Earth in eight years has been cut in half to around 1.5 percent, according to new calculations from NASA.
Before Apollo astronauts set foot upon the moon, much remained unknown about the lunar surface. While most scientists believed the moon had a solid surface that would support astronauts and their landing craft, a few believed a deep layer of dust covered it that would swallow any visitors. Until 1964, no closeup photographs of the lunar surface existed, only those obtained by Earth-based telescopes.
Is NASA still Moonbound, or will the next giant leap mean skipping straight to Mars?
How prepared are we to deflect an asteroid heading towards Earth? This question is answered by two studies just published in Nature Communications, the result of a collaboration between Politecnico di Milano, Georgia Institute of Technology and other international institutions. The research analyzes the historical results of NASA’s DART (Double Asteroid Redirection Test) mission, which hit the asteroid Dimorphos on September 26, 2022, marking the first practical demonstration of planetary defense.
An international team of astronomers reports the detection of the first pulsar by the Globular Clusters GMRT Pulsar Search (GCGPS) survey. The pulsar, designated PSR J1617−2258A, was found in the globular cluster NGC 6093. The discovery was detailed in a research paper published Feb. 13 on the arXiv pre-print server.
Every Martian year (which last 686.98 Earth days), the red planet experiences regional dust storms that coincide with summer in the southern hemisphere. Every three Martian years (five and a half Earth years), these storms grow so large that they encompass the entire planet and are visible from Earth.
Stars form in regions of space known as stellar nurseries, where high concentrations of gas and dust coalesce to form a baby star. Also called molecular clouds, these regions of space can be massive, spanning hundreds of light-years and forming thousands of stars. And while we know much about the life cycle of a star thanks to advances in technology and observational tools, precise details remain obscure. For example, did stars form this way in the early universe?
In an effort to learn more about astronaut health and the effects of space on the human body, NASA is conducting a new experiment aboard the International Space Station to speed up the detection of antibiotic-resistant bacteria, thus improving the health safety not only of astronauts but patients back on Earth.
Ever since physicist Ernest Rutherford discovered the atomic nucleus in 1911, studying its structure and behavior has remained a challenging task. More than a century later, even with today’s high-tech tools for researching nuclear physics, mysteries of the universe abound.
Debris from a SpaceX Falcon 9 rocket that blasted off in the United States on February 1 entered the Earth’s atmosphere over Poland on Wednesday, the Polish space agency said.
We typically think of the Oort cloud as scattered ice balls floating far from the sun, yet still tied to it gravitationally. Occasionally, some wayward gravitational perturbation will knock one of them a weird way and create a long-period comet, which might briefly delight us lowly humans by providing something interesting in the sky to look at.
For those who missed the memo, UFOs (unidentified flying objects) are now called UAPs (unidentified aerospace-undersea phenomena). The term UFO became so closely tied to alien spacecraft and fantastical abduction stories that people dismissed the idea, making any serious discussion difficult. The term UAP is a broader term that encompasses more unexplained objects or events without the alien spaceship idea truncating any useful or honest discussion.
We often forget how wonderful it is that life exists, and what a special and unique phenomenon it is. As far as we know, ours is the only planet capable of supporting life, and it seems to have arisen in the form of something like today’s single-celled prokaryotic organisms.
Research Fellow Dr. Babak Bakhit has encountered one of his most challenging projects to date—contributing to the European Space Agency’s (ESA) JUpiter ICy moons Explorer (JUICE) mission.
SpaceX has found a new parking spot off of the Bahamas for its droneships that catch boosters from launches from the Space Coast.
Using ESA’s XMM-Newton satellite and NASA’s Chandra X-ray observatory, astronomers have observed a young stellar object known as HL Tauri. Results of the observation campaign, presented Feb. 11 on the arXiv pre-print server, yield important insights into long-term X-ray variability and properties of this object.
