Nearly 240,000 miles from Earth, Nasa is preparing a new kind of transportation hub where spacecraft could one day arrive, wait, dock and depart without a single runway, road or parking bay. The Gateway space station, planned for lunar orbit as part of the Artemis programme, is expected to host Orion crew capsules, lunar landers…
Representative Image (Canva) The human brain is one of the first organs to break down after death, making the discovery of preserved brains at archaeological sites particularly puzzling. Yet thousands of ancient human brains have survived long after other soft tissues disappeared, sometimes remaining as the only preserved soft tissue in otherwise skeletonised remains. New…
Electra takes a different approach to hybrid aviation. Instead of a traditional engine operating the propellers, the aircraft has a gas-powered generator in the nose. (Image: MIT News) A class project at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT) in 2017 studied a new type of aircraft; now, it has ballooned into a $850 million Ohio…
In Houston, the heat is part of the setting. During the FIFA Fan Festival, though, some of the infrastructure around the event had a rather different experience of the Texas summer. Roofs treated with a thin cooling film stayed dramatically cooler than nearby untreated metal surfaces, even while sitting beneath direct sunlight.The material was not…
Image(s): Left/ Princeton University/Right/Wikipedia While a desk covered in books, papers and unfinished notes may be seen as a sign of an untidy mind, the great scientist Albert Einstein had a different view of this assumption. In particular, he asked, “If a cluttered desk is a sign of a cluttered mind, of what, then, is…
When archeologists found the tooth it was already damaged, measuring only 23 millimeters. Its crown had been split by agricultural activity into two parts. (Image Courtesy: N. Marković) It sat on a museum shelf for nearly twenty years, unseen, mistaken for something far more common. But now a closer look at a tiny, worn tooth…
Huacas de Moche (Image Credit: Canva) Archaeologists working at the Huacas de Moche Archaeological Complex in northern Peru have uncovered the burial of an infant estimated to be about 1,500 years old. The child, approximately 1.5 years old, was buried with a funerary assemblage that included two whistles, a rattle and a sculptural vessel. Researchers…
11-year-old Touren Pope finds 48-million-year-old turtle fossil in WyomingPhoto credit: Craig Thomas, BLM Rock Springs Field Office What began as a routine family rock-hounding trip in southwest Wyoming turned into a paleontological headline when 11-year-old Touren Pope noticed something unusual poking out of the ground. What he’d spotted was the fossilized shell of a softshell…
Mountain yellow-legged frog. Image Credit: US Fish & Wildlife Service More than 3,000 endangered mountain yellow-legged frogs and tadpoles have been released into California’s mountain ranges in 2026, giving a once widespread amphibian another chance to survive in the wild. The reintroduction, carried out by the ‘San Diego Zoo Wildlife Alliance’ and its partners, is…
When humans leave Earth, even something as basic as knowing which way is up can become confusing. That made fish surprisingly useful subjects for space research. In 1973, Nasa sent two mummichogs and 50 eggs aboard Skylab 3, giving scientists a chance to watch both adult fish and young that developed entirely in orbit. Soon…
In 1929, local homesteader and photographer Benjamin Loomis and his wife, Estella, formally gave 40 acres of valuable mountain land to the United States government. The donation included a hand-built museum and a working seismograph station beside Manzanita Lake. The deal was the first known case in American history of a privately built museum being…
PC: New Zealand’s Forest and Bird In 1965, Geoff Harrow walked into the Kaikōura mountains following a story about an unusual seabird nesting somewhere high above the valleys. He did not find the colony on his first attempt. The next morning, on a steep deer track, a decomposing bird provided the clue he needed. It…
