A giant star died, blasting its guts out into space. But before the star detonated, some stellar thief had already stolen the giant’s skin. Now, astrophysicists think they’ve identified the culprit: another star blasting its own guts out nearby. Supernovas are fairly common in space. Most very large stars endContinue Reading
CAPE CANAVERAL, Fla. — SpaceX delivered its 13th batch of Starlink satellites to orbit Tuesday (Oct.6), following a two-week delay due to bad weather. The two-stage Falcon 9 rocket blasted off from Pad 39A at NASA’s Kennedy Space Center at 7:29 a.m. EDT (1129 GMT), hauling a full stack ofContinue Reading
The Royal Swedish Academy of Sciences has decided to award the Nobel Prize in Physics 2020 with one half to Roger Penrose, University of Oxford, UK, “for the discovery that black hole formation is a robust prediction of the general theory of relativity” and the other half jointly to ReinhardContinue Reading
The new coronavirus can linger on human skin much longer than flu viruses can, according to a new study from researchers in Japan. SARS-CoV-2, the virus that causes COVID-19, remained viable on samples of human skin for about 9 hours, according to the study. In contrast, a strain of theContinue Reading
The 2020 Nobel Prize in chemistry went to two women who developed a gene-editing tool called CRISPR-Cas9, which snips DNA like a pair of molecular scissors. The technique “has not only revolutionized basic science, but also resulted in innovative crops and will lead to ground-breaking new medical treatments,” Claes Gustafsson,Continue Reading
Three scientists won the 2020 Nobel Prize in physiology or medicine for their discovery of hepatitis C, a blood-borne virus that can cause chronic inflammation of the liver, leading to severe scarring and cancer. The researchers Harvey Alter, Michael Houghton and Charles Rice “made seminal discoveries that led to theContinue Reading
The CDC has updated its COVID-19 guidance to acknowledge that the virus can sometimes spread via small droplet particles that linger in the air. The Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) has updated its COVID-19 guidance to acknowledge that the virus can sometimes spread via “airborne transmission,” or smallContinue Reading
It might be time to ditch your old Teflon cookware. Spending each morning at the kitchen sink scraping at the charred remains of breakfast gets tedious after a while. Non-stick cookware may seem like an appealing alternative — but is it safe? Usually when people inquire about the safety ofContinue Reading
Manatees have been visiting the Lone Star State for tens of thousands of years. Today’s manatees often summer off the coast of Texas and Florida, heading farther south toward warmer waters in the winter. Now, new fossils suggest that their ice age ancestors may have made the same migrations. EightContinue Reading
The stuff that makes up our universe is tricky to measure, to put it mildly. We know that most of the universe’s matter-energy density consists of dark energy, the mysterious unknown force that’s driving the universe’s expansion. And we know that the rest is matter, both normal and dark. AccuratelyContinue Reading