Enlarge / Artist’s illustration of NASA’s Psyche spacecraft, set to launch in August 2022. The Psyche mission will explore a metal-rich asteroid of the same name that lies in the main asteroid belt between Mars and Jupiter. (credit: NASA/JPL-Caltech/ASU) Ars Technica had the rare opportunity to tour NASA’s Jet Propulsion Laboratory in California this week, […]
An international team of scientists used synchrotron radiation to image and analyze fossilized fish from the Tanis deposit in North Dakota. Some 66 million years ago, a catastrophic event wiped out three-quarters of all plant and animal species on Earth, most notably taking down the dinosaurs. The puzzle of why so many species perished while […]
An X1.6 class solar flare flashes in the middle of the sun on Sept. 10, 2014. (credit: NASA/SDO) Dark matter is proving to be a rather frustrating topic for physicists, cosmologists, and other outward-looking scientists. All the data for dark matter is gravitational, and the lack of other evidence only draws a box on the […]
Enlarge / Leonardo DiCaprio and Jennifer Lawrence co-star as low-level astronomers in Don’t Look Up (credit: Netflix ) Two low-level astronomers discover a “planet killer” comet hurtling toward Earth but struggle to get anyone to pay attention in Don’t Look Up , a new satirical sci-fi from Netflix. Directed by Adam McKay ( The Big […]
Expand / The Hayabusa2 spacecraft spies its shadow because it descended toward Ryugu to set up two little rovers. Early on Sunday afternoon, the heavens over a lush military complex in central Australia is going to probably soon be brightened by a fireball plummeting to Earth. It’ll be a showy homecoming to its sample return […]