Science

The liftoff of the United Arab Emirates’ Mars orbiter was postponed until Friday due to bad weather at the Japanese launch site. The orbiter named Amal, or Hope, is the Arab world’s first interplanetary mission. The launch was scheduled for Wednesday from the Tanegashima Space Center in southern Japan, but …

Scientists using simulations in the lab have revealed that changes in the direction of the Earth’s magnetic field may take place 10 times faster than previously thought. The study, published in the journal Nature Communications, gives new insight into the swirling flow of iron 2,800 kms below the planet’s surface …

The European Union will plough more money into rocket launches, satellite communication and space exploration to preserve its often unsung successes in space and keep up with the US and Chinese ambitions, its space chief said on Sunday. Over the past decades, Europe has sought to build independent access to …

Billionaire Richard Branson’s Virgin Galactic Holdings Inc said on Monday it has signed up with NASA to develop a program to promote private missions to the International Space Station, sending the shares of the company up about 10%. As part of its agreement with the Johnson Space Center, the space …

A German-Russian space telescope has just acquired a breakthrough map of the sky that traces the heavens in X-rays. The image records a lot of the violent action in the cosmos – instances where matter is being accelerated, heated and shredded. Feasting black holes, exploding stars, and searingly hot gas. …

Scientists have found evidence that large carnivorous dinosaurs lived in Australia. A team of researchers analyzed dinosaur footprint fossils and concluded they belonged to large-bodied carnivorous dinosaurs that were up to three meters high at the hips and about 10 meters long, according to a press release from the University …

Chilean and Argentine researchers have unearthed teeth in far-flung Patagonia belonging to a mammal that lived 74 million years ago, the oldest such remains yet discovered in the South American country, the Chilean Antarctic Institute reported on Thursday. Scientists uncovered the tiny teeth, which belonged to a species called Magallanodon …

Titan, Saturn’s largest moon, is moving away from its planet a hundred times faster than previously established, according to a new study. The giant moon isn’t alone in this behavior; other moons among the 150 known moons in our solar system are also slowly distancing themselves from the planets they …

The Chinese government has removed pangolin scales from its 2020 list of approved ingredients used in traditional Chinese medicine, a move campaigners describe as a “critical step” towards saving the world’s most trafficked mammal. Pangolins are scale-covered insectivores, about the size of a house cat, that is highly valued in …

Lockdowns imposed to curb the spread of COVID-19 have saved millions of lives and easing them now carries high risks, according to two international studies published on Monday. “The risk of a second wave happening if all interventions and all precautions are abandoned is very real,” Samir Bhatt, who co-led …

“As we work to end the pandemic and build back better, we have a once-in-a-generation opportunity – and responsibility – to correct our relationship with the natural world, including the world’s seas and oceans”, Secretary-General António Guterres upheld in his message for the day. We not only rely on the …

Be it quake tremors jolting countries, cyclones storming cities, or the mysterious deaths of bats, these occurrences are sending some people into a frenzy, blaming everything on the “ominous 2020” ever since the coronavirus outbreak, which has infected seven million people across the world. An unidentified flying object was reportedly …

We have created “a perfect storm” for diseases from wildlife to spill over into humans and spread quickly around the world, scientists warn. Human encroachment on the natural world speeds up that process. This outlook comes from global health experts who study how and where new diseases emerge. As part …

Astronomers have confirmed the existence of Proxima b, an Earth-size exoplanet orbiting the closest star to our sun. The European Southern Observatory’s High Accuracy Radial velocity Planet Searcher (HARPS) detected the planet in 2016. The Very Large Telescope based in Chile has a new and more powerful spectrograph named ESPRESSO, …

The bones of a woman of Central Asian descent found at the bottom of a deep well after a violent death in an ancient city in Turkey are helping scientists understand population movements during a crucial juncture in human history. Researchers have dubbed her the “lady in the well” and …

The two NASA astronauts who blasted into orbit on a SpaceX rocket successfully docked Sunday at the International Space Station — just 19 hours after taking off on the historic journey with Elon Musk’s company. Space veterans Doug Hurley and Bob Behnken gave a thumbs up after the brand-new Dragon …

It is just the latest in a series of spectacular failures of prototypes of the Starship heavy-lift rocket. The Starship was being used in ground tests at the company’s South Texas test facilities, as part of an attempt to rush the large metal rocket into flight. The explosion occurred hours …

Researchers say DNA from the five fossils from Bulgaria’s Bacho Kiro cave demonstrated they belonged to anatomically modern Homo sapiens. The research pushes back by thousands of years the arrival of Homo sapiens in Europe. Fragmentary bone fossils and a molar found in Bulgaria dated to roughly 45,000 years ago …

The Trump administration is drafting a legal blueprint for mining on the moon under a new U.S.-sponsored international agreement called the Artemis Accords, people familiar with the proposed pact told Reuters. The agreement would be the latest effort to cultivate allies around NASA’s plan to put humans and space stations …

NASA and SpaceX on Friday urged everyone to stay home for the first home launch of astronauts in nearly a decade because of the coronavirus pandemic. Top officials warned the public against traveling to Florida for the May 27 launch of two NASA astronauts aboard a SpaceX rocket to the …