Canberra, Australia (SPX) Jun 21, 2022
Physicists at The Australian National University (ANU) have developed tiny translucent slides capable of producing two very different images by manipulating the direction in which light travels through them. As light passes through the slide, an image of Australia can be seen, but when you flip the slide and look again, an image of the Sydney Opera House is visible. The pair of images crea

Los Alamos NM (SPX) Jun 21, 2022
New scientific results confirm an anomaly seen in previous experiments, which may point to an as-yet-unconfirmed new elementary particle, the sterile neutrino, or indicate the need for a new interpretation of an aspect of standard model physics, such as the neutrino cross section, first measured 60 years ago. Los Alamos National Laboratory is the lead American institution collaborating on the Ba

Greenbelt MD (SPX) Jun 21, 2022
Greenland's fjords harbor a unique group of polar bears that rely on glacial ice, a NASA-funded study reports in Science. Polar bears throughout the Arctic depend on sea ice as a platform for hunting seals. As human-caused climate change warms the planet and Arctic sea ice melts away, polar bears are scrambling to find ice to hunt on. But in Southeast Greenland, researchers found that bear

Duesseldorf, Germany (SPX) Jun 21, 2022
A team led by evolutionary biologist Prof. Dr. Sven Gould of Heinrich Heine University Dusseldorf (HHU) has been studying the current state of research on the plant colonisation of land that occurred some 500 million years ago. The findings from this illustrated overview study published by Dr. Mona Schreiber as lead author have now appeared in the latest issue of the journal Trends in Plant Scie

Lhasa, Tibet (XNA) Jun 21, 2022
Construction of the first observatory in the Tibet autonomous region kicked off this week, following a foundation stone-laying ceremony on Sunday for what is said to be the highest observatory in the world. Planning of the project began last March and the observatory is scheduled for completion by June 2024. It will occupy more than 11,000 square meters in Lhasa near the region's Science a

London, UK (SPX) Jun 21, 2022
Due to launch in 2029, Ariel's mission is to understand the links between a planet's chemistry, its evolution and its host star, by characterising the atmospheres of 1,000 known planets outside our solar system. It is the first space mission dedicated to this analysis and will provide a step-change in our understanding of what exoplanets are made of, how they were formed and how they evolv

Beijing (XNA) Jun 21, 2022
Chinese scientists have discovered that the majority of water found on the moon may have originated from its interior rather than from solar wind bombarding its surface with hydrogen ions that eventually formed water, according to a study published in the journal Nature Communication on Tuesday. The discovery may provide critical clues to one of the most hotly debated questions regarding o

Washington DC (UPI) Jun 21, 2022
NASA's fourth attempt Monday to complete a practice launch day exercise for its huge uncrewed moon rocket Artemis 1 was deemed a success at the Kennedy Space Center in Florida. Crews were able to fully load the rocket with super-cold liquid hydrogen propellent and successfully reach the "terminal count" phase for the first time before the countdown was automatically paused at T-minus 29 se

Washington DC (UPI) Jun 21, 2022
SpaceX launched three missions in just over 36 hours, including two from Florida's Space Coast with most recent a two-stage Falcon 9 early Sunday. The third rocket lifted off from Florida's Cape Canaveral Space Force Station at 12:27 a.m. carrying a communications satellite for Louisiana-based Globalstar. Earlier, the company founded by billionaire Elon Musk launched 53 Starlink inte

Washington DC (UPI) Jun 20, 2021
Russian cosmonauts used a cargo ship docked at the International Space Station to maneuver the orbiting lab around space debris from the Russian satellite Cosmos 1408. The Russian Progress MS-20 uncrewed transport cargo spacecraft, identified by NASA as Progress 81, fired its thrusters for 4 minutes and 34 seconds to move the ISS away from the Cosmos 1408 debris on Thursday. "I c