FILE PHOTO: Tourists take pictures of a NASA sign at the Kennedy Space Center visitors complex in Cape Canaveral, Florida April 14, 2010. REUTERS/Carlos Barria (Reuters) – NASA on Thursday selected space firms SpaceX, Blue Origin and Dynetics to build lunar landing systems that can carry astronauts to the moon by 2024, the White House’s
Science
CHAMBLON, Switzerland (Reuters) – In the battle against coronavirus, Swiss soldiers are using smartphones to test a new contact tracing application that could prevent infections while also protecting users’ privacy. A Swiss soldier shows on a mobile device the contact tracking application created by the Swiss Federal Institute of Technology Lausanne (EPFL), using Bluetooth and
WASHINGTON (Reuters) – The sun appears to be far less active than similar stars in terms of brightness variations caused by sunspots and other phenomena – a “boring” personality, according to scientists, that may not be a bad thing for us Earthlings. FILE PHOTO: A medium-sized (M2) solar flare and a coronal mass ejection (CME)
WASHINGTON (Reuters) – The huge African predator Spinosaurus spent much of its life in the water, propelled by a paddle-like tail while hunting large fish – a “river monster,” according to scientists, that showed that some dinosaurs invaded the aquatic realm. Tools lie at the excavation site of Spinosauru in the Kem Kem region of
LONDON (Reuters) – One of the world’s largest lunar meteorites goes on private sale at Christie’s on Thursday, valued at 2 million pounds ($2.49 million). An undated picture shows a moon rock in unknown location. CHRISTIE’S IMAGES LTD/Handout via REUTERS The moon rock, weighing over 13.5 kg, was probably struck off the surface of the
WASHINGTON (Reuters) – When paleontologist Thomas Mörs was peering into a microscope while sorting through tiny 40 million-year-old fossils unearthed on Seymour Island near the tip of the Antarctic Peninsula, he came across quite a surprise – hip and skull bones of a frog. Paleontologists working at the site on Antarctica’s Seymour Island where fossils
WASHINGTON (Reuters) – The world’s ants, bees, butterflies, grasshoppers, fireflies and other land-dwelling insects have been suffering population drops of about 9% per decade but freshwater bugs such as dragonflies and mosquitoes have been rallying, researchers said on Thursday. FILE PHOTO: A bee lands on a bluebell in a garden in West London, Britain, April
FILE PHOTO: A lander for China’s Mars mission is seen before a hovering-and-obstacle avoidance test at a test facility in Huailai, Hebei province, China November 14, 2019. REUTERS/Jason Lee BEIJING (Reuters) – China’s space agency on Friday unveiled the name of its first Mars exploration mission, coinciding with China’s annual Space Day and the 50th
WASHINGTON (Reuters) – Scientists have discovered that a comet called 2I/Borisov – only the second interstellar object ever detected passing through the solar system – is surprisingly different in its composition from comets hailing from our celestial neighborhood. The interstellar comet 2I/Borisov travels through our solar system in an artist’s impression obtained by Reuters April
WASHINGTON (Reuters) – A wondrous lineage of crocodile relatives that developed into fast-swimming seagoing predators at a time when dinosaurs dominated the land adapted to life in the open ocean with a pivotal evolutionary modification also present in whales. A life reconstruction of the Jurassic Period marine crocodile relative Cricosaurus is seen in this image
(Reuters) – From tinkling harmonies as the virus disarms cells to clashing and stormy as it replicates, U.S. scientists have translated the novel coronavirus’ spiked protein structure to music in an effort to better understand the pathogen. FILE PHOTO: The ultrastructural morphology exhibited by the 2019 Novel Coronavirus (2019-nCoV), which was identified as the cause
(Reuters) – NASA on Friday set a launch date of May 27 for its first astronaut mission from U.S. soil in nearly ten years. FILE PHOTO: A SpaceX Falcon 9 rocket, carrying the Crew Dragon astronaut capsule, lifts off on an in-flight abort test , a key milestone before flying humans in 2020 under NASA’s commercial
ALMATY (Reuters) – NASA astronauts Andrew Morgan and Jessica Meir will take an unusual – and more exhausting – route home after safely landing in the Kazakh steppe on Friday, a Russian healthcare official said, because of lockdowns caused by the novel coronavirus. A capsule carrying Morgan, Meir and Russian cosmonaut Oleg Skripochka touched down
WASHINGTON (Reuters) – For human beings, “stink flirting” may not sound like a prudent dating strategy. For ring-tailed lemurs, it is the way to go. FILE PHOTO: Ring-tailed lemurs stand together at the Haifa zoo in northern Israel March 27, 2010. REUTERS/Baz Ratner/File Photo Scientists on Thursday described the results of a comprehensive study of
WASHINGTON (Reuters) – A reddish-colored cigar-shaped interstellar object called ‘Oumuamua that is tumbling through our solar system may be wreckage from a planet ripped apart when it roamed too close to the faraway star it once orbited, according to researchers. A tidal disruption process that can give rise to ‘Oumuamua-like objects is seen in an
WASHINGTON (Reuters) – Scientists have observed the biggest supernova – stellar explosion – ever detected, the violent death of a huge star up to 100 times more massive than our sun in a faraway galaxy. FILE PHOTO: An artist’s impression of supernova SN2016aps, provided by Northwestern University April 13, 2020. Aaron Geller/Northwestern University/Handout via REUTERS.