SpaceX will be getting to the moon a bit more than a month from now, far earlier than expected. But it’s all by accident, and it’ll cause a bit of a mess. SpaceX, the rocket company started by Elon Musk, has been selected by NASA to provide the spaceship that will take its astronauts back […]
Few pleasures compare to a long cool drink on a hot day. As a glass of water or other tasty drink makes its way to your digestive tract, your brain is tracking it — but how? Scientists have known for some time that thirst is controlled by neurons that send an alert to put down […]
A Japanese company is pushing ahead with plans to launch a private moon lander by the end of 2022, a year packed with other moonshot ambitions and rehearsals that could foretell how soon humans get back to the lunar surface. If the plans hold, the company, ispace, which is based in Tokyo, would accomplish the […]
“We know that increased vaccination and infection are strengthening our defenses against Covid,” Thomas Frieden, a former chief of the U.S. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, wrote Monday on Twitter. “I’m more optimistic about our ability to tame the pandemic than at any point since its emergence.” “Unless, of course, a worse variant emerges, […]
Hippopotamuses are some of the most unfriendly creatures in the animal kingdom. “Apart from mosquitoes, they are the most dangerous animal in Africa, the ones that kill the most people,” said Nicolas Mathevon, a professor of animal behavior at the University of Saint-Etienne in France. “People underestimate them. They swim very fast and don’t hesitate […]
A second phase of the lighting efficiency rules was scheduled to go into effect in 2020, which would have eliminated virtually all incandescent bulbs, including the recent generation of halogens, from store shelves. But in 2017, the industry sued, setting up a settlement with the Trump administration that set the path for a rollback of […]
WASHINGTON — Dr. Rochelle Walensky was stunned. Working from her home outside Boston on a Friday night in late July, the director of the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention had just learned from members of her staff that vaccinated Americans were spreading the coronavirus. Vaccines had been the core of President Biden’s pandemic strategy […]
To figure out how Callichimaera used its eyes, Ms. Jenkins and Dr. Luque used the abundance of available Callichimaera specimens to put together a growth sequence. They compared this with 14 living species from across the crab family tree. They were surprised to find that — unlike other crab species — Callichimaera retained its large […]
If a rock falls on Mars, and no one is there to see it, does it leave a trace? Yes, and it’s a beautiful herringbone-like pattern, new research reveals. Scientists have now spotted thousands of tracks on the red planet created by tumbling boulders. Delicate chevron-shaped piles of Martian dust and sand frame the tracks, […]
Booster shots of the Pfizer-BioNTech and Moderna vaccines are not just reducing the number of infections with the highly contagious Omicron variant, they’re also keeping infected Americans out of hospitals, according to data published on Friday by the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention. The extra doses are 90 percent effective at preventing hospitalization with […]
