Rendering of the Neutron rocket on the launch pad. Rocket Lab chief executive Peter Beck on Thursday provided an update on the company’s plans to develop a medium-lift rocket, named Neutron. In a slickly produced video, Beck shared the company’s thinking about how best to develop a reusable rocket that could remain competitive for decades. […]
Enlarge / Costumed people attend Anime NYC at the Jacob K. Javits Convention Center in New York City on November 20, 2021. (credit: Getty | Kena Betancur ) US health officials have identified a second case of the omicron coronavirus variant in a Minnesota man, the Centers for Disease Controls and Prevention announced Thursday. Unlike […]
Enlarge / US President Joe Biden at the White House on December 01, 2021, in Washington, DC. (credit: Getty | Anna Moneymaker ) President Joe Biden will announce plans today to increase protections against COVID-19 this winter as the delta coronavirus variant continues to ravage the country and the worrisome omicron variant looms. Biden will […]
Enlarge / Top row: the hallucination and actual structure. Bottom row: the two structures superimposed. (credit: Anishchenko et. al.) Chemically, proteins are just a long string of amino acids. Their amazing properties come about because that chain can fold up into a complex, three-dimensional shape. So understanding the rules that govern this folding can not […]
Enlarge / Dr. Anthony Fauci, director of the National Institute of Allergy and Infectious Diseases and the chief medical adviser to the particular president, delivers an update on typically the Omicron COVID-19 variant during the daily press briefing at the White House on December 1, 2021 in Washington, DC. The first case of the omicron […]
Enlarge / The first test firing of a flight version of SpaceX’s Raptor rocket engine. (credit: Elon Musk/Twitter) Last Friday, as most Americans slept off their tryptophan hangovers, headed to the mall for Black Friday shopping, or tried in vain to avoid political discussions with visiting family members, SpaceX founder Elon Musk was instead at […]
Enlarge / A rendering of SpaceX’s Starship traveling to the Saturn system. (credit: SpaceX) Jennifer Heldmann stared at the computer screens on her desk, watching as a rocket’s upper stage slammed into a crater near the South Pole of the Moon. In the name of science, a 2.3-ton chunk of steel struck the Moon with […]
Enlarge / Screengrab of Jesse Woolston’s latest piece, The Dynamics of Flow, debuting at Art Basel Miami Beach later this week. (credit: Jesse Woolston) Multimedia artist, composer, and sound designer Jesse Woolston has had a recurring dream for much of his life about encountering a black hole, “falling inward, and waking up terrified.” (Who wouldn’t wake […]
Enlarge / A Merck sign stands in front of the company’s building on October 2, 2013, in Summit, New Jersey. (credit: Getty | Kena Betancur) In a 13-to-10 vote, advisors for the Food and Drug Administration narrowly supported authorizing Merck’s Thor-inspired antiviral pill molnupiravir for use against severe COVID-19. The FDA’s panel of advisors—the Antimicrobial […]
Enlarge / Itokawa, the original source of the dust grains examined in a new study. (credit: ISAS, JAXA) About a decade ago, we were surprised to discover that there’s a fair amount of water on the surface of the Moon. Given that the Moon has no atmosphere and receives enough solar radiation to boil any […]