Apr 17th, 2021 - The three astronauts are in good health Professor and 'Future of Humanity' author explains significance of NASA rover touching down on the Red Planet After 185 days aboard the International Space Station , two Russian cosmonauts and a NASA astronaut returned to Earth early Saturday morning. NASA's Kate Rubins and Roscosmos' Sergey Ryzhikov and Sergey Kud-Sverchkov landed in the steppes of Kazakhstan at 12:55 a.m. EDT after departing the station in the Soyuz MS-17 spacecraft at 9:34 p.m. EDT. NASA, INTERNATIONAL ASTRONOMERS ANNOUNCE UNPRECEDENTED DATA ON FAMOUS SUPERMASSIVE BLACK HOLE M87 In ... [Read More]

Apr 17th, 2021 - A massive seizure in the Philippines of 200 tonnes of illegally harvested giant clam shells has highlighted the growth of an illicit trade that has proliferated due to a crackdown on the sale of elephant tusks. Authorities in the country, which is home to the world's giant tropical clam species, said shells worth around 1.2 billion pesos ($25 million) were found in the sting in the western province of Palawan on the remote Green Island in the Sulu Sea, local news outlet Rappler reported. Four suspects were arrested, and the seizure included the tridacna gigas, the world's largest clam ... [Read More]

Apr 16th, 2021 - Faced with the tragic loss of the Arecibo observatory in Puerto Rico and the often prohibitive cost of satellite missions, astronomers are searching for savvy alternatives to continue answering fundamental questions in physics. At a press conference during the 2021 APS April Meeting, they will reveal new tactics across both hemispheres for illuminating gravitational waves and dark matter . Shining the oldest light in the universe on dark matter At the South Pole, a powerful set of telescopes could add a new function: studying the nature of dark matter and the history of stars. Only ... [Read More]

Apr 16th, 2021 - Two years ago, astronomers acquired the first direct image of a black hole. A coordinated observation campaign of this object is now adding to our understanding of this black hole and its tumultuous surroundings. Located at the core of elliptical galaxy M87, this supermassive black hole carries the mass of 6.5 billion Suns. In April 2019, the Event Horizon Telescope (EHT) Collaboration released a direct image of this object , in what was an unparalleled achievement for astronomers. Our understanding of the M87 black hole has taken a major leap forward owing to an extensive multi-wavelength ... [Read More]

Apr 16th, 2021 - An inscription found on a 3,500-year-old vessel suggests that a standardized script arrived in Canaan earlier than previously thought A 3,500-year-old inscription on a pottery shard found in Israel is offering scholars new clues about the development of the alphabet that formed the basis for many modern writing systems. The discovery appears to be the oldest writing ever recorded in Israel, reports Rossella Tercatin for the Jerusalem Post . Archaeologists found the fragment during excavations at Tel Lachish in south central Israel in 2018. Using radiocarbon dating of barley grains found ... [Read More]

Apr 16th, 2021 - Researchers in the Netherlands have established an entanglement-based network between three quantum processors for the first time. Three nodes that can store and process quantum bits were linked to create the world's first rudimentary quantum network. Researchers in the Netherlands have successfully connected three separate quantum processors in what is effectively the world's first multi-node quantum network. This paves the way for a large-scale quantum internet that governments and scientists have been dreaming up for decades. QuTech, a quantum research institute based in Delft, has ... [Read More]

Apr 16th, 2021 - Although antibodies induced by SARS-CoV-2 infection are largely protective, they do not completely protect against reinfection in young people, as evidenced through a longitudinal, prospective study of more than 3,000 young, healthy members of the US Marines Corps conducted by researchers at the Icahn School of Medicine at Mount Sinai and the Naval Medical Research Center, published April 15 in The Lancet Respiratory Medicine . "Our findings indicate that reinfection by SARS-CoV-2 in health young adults is common" says Stuart Sealfon, MD, the Sara B. and Seth M. Glickenhaus Professor of ... [Read More]

Apr 16th, 2021 - This is the first attempt to calculate total T. rex numbers. During the late Cretaceous period, Tyrannosaurus rex prowled Earth in great numbers — in fact, as many as 2.5 billion of these dinosaur kings lived over a period of about 2.5 million years, tramping through North America as they hunted prey and flashed their serrated, banana-size teeth, a new study finds. Finding this number was no easy feat, according to the researchers. After considering many factors, including the apex predator's population density and home range, they determined that about 20,000 adult T. rex individuals were ... [Read More]