Before the Apollo era, the moon was thought to be dry as a desert due to the extreme temperatures and harshness of the space environment. Many studies have since discovered lunar water: ice in shadowed polar craters, water bound in volcanic rocks, and unexpected rusty iron deposits in the lunar soil. Despite these findings, there is still no true confirmation of the extent or origin of lunar surface water.
China launched its first blockchain-based scientific data network on Wednesday to facilitate open and secured sharing of research information, which can help track and optimize the publishing process, as well as curb academic fraud, according to the Computer Network Information Center of the Chinese Academy of Sciences.
U.S. and Bulgarian authorities took control of the dark web site used by the NetWalker ransomware cybercrime group.
Law enforcement agencies dismantled the infrastructure of Emotet, a notorious email-based Windows malware behind several botnet-driven spam campaigns.
Researchers at the University of Basel and Ruhr University Bochum have developed a source of single photons that can produce billions of these quantum particles per second. With its record-breaking efficiency, the photon source represents a new and powerful building-block for quantum technologies.
An international team of researchers has used modeling techniques borrowed from chemistry applications to create a new kind of city simulator. In their paper published in the journal Proceedings of the Royal Society A, the group describes using their models to create simulations of of COVID-19 spread for two real-world cities: Birmingham England and Bogota Columbia.
Past research has identified student engagement, or the extent to which students participate and are involved in classroom activities, as a crucial factor determining both the quality of education programs and the academic performance of individual students. As a result, many educators worldwide are actively trying to devise courses that maximize student engagement.
A new type of rocket thruster that could take humankind to Mars and beyond has been proposed by a physicist at the U.S. Department of Energy’s (DOE) Princeton Plasma Physics Laboratory (PPPL).
The device would apply magnetic fields to cause particles of plasma (link is external), electrically charged gas also known as the fourth state of matter, to shoot out the back of a rocket and, because of the conservation of momentum, propel the craft forward. Current space-proven plasma thrusters use electric fields to propel the particles.
The new concept would accelerate the particles using magnetic reconnection, a process found throughout the universe, including the surface of the sun, in which magnetic field lines converge, suddenly separate, and then join together again, producing lots of energy. Reconnection also occurs inside doughnut-shaped fusion (link is external) devices known as tokamaks (link is external).
Three sun-studying spacecraft captured stunning images of the planets Venus, Earth, Mars and even Uranus.
