SpaceX just popped another Starship test tank. The Starship SN7.1 tank was destroyed on purpose Tuesday night (Sept. 22) at SpaceX’s South Texas facilities, during a pressure test designed to take the stainless-steel hardware to its bursting point. SpaceX has performed several other such tests, including one this past JuneContinue Reading
Famous for the first-ever image of a black hole, M87* is now revealing how it changes over time Astrophysicists have gotten their first direct view of a supermassive black hole’s appearance changing over time. The black hole at the center of the galaxy M87, about 55 million light-years away fromContinue Reading
Have you ever heard the story of a wizard battle that supposedly took place when an early church was constructed? Or how about the story of a border guard who defied King Herod’s orders and spared Jesus’ life? Scholars have now translated these and other “apocryphal” Christian texts (stories notContinue Reading
Rescue efforts are underway to pull the surviving whales back into deeper water. More than 450 pilot whales have become stranded off of Tasmania’s west coast, in what is the worst whale stranding event the Australian island has ever seen. Earlier this week, 270 pilot whales were found stranded onContinue Reading
Humans spend about a third of our lives sleeping, and scientists have long debated why slumber takes up such a huge slice of our time. Now, a new study hints that our main reason for sleeping starts off as one thing, then changes at a surprisingly specific age. Two leadingContinue Reading
The coronavirus pandemic has reached another bleak milestone in the United States. The coronavirus pandemic has reached another bleak milestone in the United States: More than 200,000 people have died of COVID-19 in the country as of Tuesday (Sept. 22), according to Johns Hopkins University. After the virus first appearedContinue Reading
Solar wind electrons smash water molecules to make the comet’s version of the northern lights Comet 67P/Churyumov-Gerasimenko has its own version of the northern lights. Observations taken by the Rosetta spacecraft reveal the comet’s aurora, which — unlike Earth’s eye-catching light shows — shimmers in invisible ultraviolet light, researchers reportContinue Reading
This young boy died at the turn of the first millennium. Just after the turn of the first millennium A.D., a young child living in Egypt contracted a deadly illness — most likely pneumonia — and died. His tiny body was prepared for mummification and burial; some of his organsContinue Reading
A new approach to space housekeeping sends charged dust particles flying The NASA Artemis missions aim to send astronauts to the moon by 2024. But to succeed, they’ll need to solve big problems caused by some tiny particles: dust. Impacts on the moon’s surface have crushed lunar rock into dustContinue Reading
An international team of astronomers today announced the discovery of a rare molecule — phosphine — in the clouds of Venus. On Earth, this gas is only made industrially or by microbes that thrive in oxygen-free environments. Astronomers have speculated for decades that high clouds on Venus could offer aContinue Reading