Holy cow!It may have been living in the shadow of its younger sibling Perseverance for the last few months, but NASA’s Curiosity rover has just provided evidence of a key ingredient for life on Mars.
Scientists using NASA’s Curiosity rover measured the total organic carbon – a key component in the molecules of life – in Martian rocks for the first time.
A geomagnetic storm could probably arrive on June 29th. Astronomers have noticed a massive solar eruption but are not very sure if it is headed towards the Earth, Newsweek reported.
Astronomers predicted that Sunspot AR3038 would burst and give off a Class-M flare. Instead, it has continued to grow further.
Synthetic biology is the engineering and redesign of biological systems and could have a range of applications in modern day life.
The mission proposal calls for nuclear fission power. Breakthroughs would boost China’s overall exploration capabilities.
One of the largest comets known is approaching our planet on the only trip through the inner solar system it will make during our lifetimes.
Five years ago, the Hubble Space Telescope spotted a large comet at the farthest distance ever, as it was approaching the sun from way out between the orbits of Saturn and Uranus. Now, that giant space snowball is coming in for its closest pass by Earth in just a few weeks.
Comet C/2017 K2 will be at its nearest point to us on its current swing through the inner solar system on July 14. Even at its closest, however, it will still be farther away from us than the average distance between Earth and Mars. This will likely make it difficult to see the comet without at least a small telescope, despite its substantial stature.
If you need the hardware.
A separate study used metasurfaces as a telephone of sorts to help two people text simple messages, all without lifting a finger.
Direct brain-to-brain communication isn’t new. Previous studies using non-invasive setups had participants playing 20 questions with their brain waves. Another study built a BrainNet for three volunteers, allowing them to play a Tetris-like game using brainwaves alone. The conduit for those mindmelds relied on cables and the internet. One new study asked if metasurfaces could do the same.
Continue reading “Metasurfaces Open the Door to Telekinesis and Telepathy With Technology” »
Aging binary systems could be giving birth to second-generation planets.
When a Sun-like star exhausts the helium fuel in its core, it enters its death throes. Starved for fuel, it swells to a red giant, likely swallowing its innermost planets, and begins burning scraps of leftover hydrogen to helium. Periodically, these helium ashes reignite, causing the star to once again burn brightly and throw off its outer layers into space.
This volatile phase of stellar life is called the asymptotic giant branch (AGB). With so much happening, it would seem like a terrible environment for the delicate process of forming planets. But over the past couple decades, astronomers have begun to suspect that under some circumstances, this stage could result in a new disk of material surrounding the star, giving rise to a second generation of planets.
Continue reading “Astronomers spot signs of planets forming around dying stars” »
