Science

On Mars, the Frost Is Made of CO2

This is Mars’s Hellas Chaos, an area covered in wind-blown dunes and flat-topped mesas. The dusting of white is in fact carbon dioxide frost—so, pretty chilly then![ESA]

Report: Europe’s Upping Its Space Game 

Elon Musk’s private space company, SpaceX, has been coming on in leaps and planetary-sized bounds of late, so much so that it’s apparently threatening our friends across the pond. According to a report in the Wall Street Journal, the EU is about to invest in a whole new generation of low-cost rockets in order to…

A Freeze-Dried, Irradiated And Thermostabilized Thanksgiving Dinner

Astronauts on the space station get holiday feast, although the adjectives are less “juicy” and more “irradiated.” The menu is irradiated smoked turkey, thermostabilized candied yams, freeze-dried green beans, mushrooms, and cornbread dressing, and a thermostabilized cherry-blueberry cobbler for dessert. Top image: A freeze-dried, irradiated, and thermostabilized thanksgiving dinner. Credit: NASA/Butch Wilmore The very first…

This Is What Astronauts Will Eat For Thanksgiving

Irradiated smoked turkey? Check. Thermo-stabilized candied yams? Present. Freeze-dried cornbread dressing? Of course! This is what the American astronauts aboard the ISS will be feasting on today. Every year, U.S. astronauts aboard the ISS sit down to a special Thanksgiving meal. But, as International Space Station Food System Manager Vickie Kloeris explains in the video…

Cows With Human Chromosomes Can Now Make Human Antibodies 

Cows are big hulking creatures—not so great for tipping over while drunk, but great for turning into living factories that make massive quantities of antibodies. Scientists have inserted a modified human chromosome to cows that can now make human antibodies for hantavirus. Other deadly disease like Ebola and MERS could come next. Antibodies are proteins…

Be Thankful For the Invisible Belt That Saves Earth From Radiation

Well, here’s something cosmic to be thankful for this weekend. A NASA-led study of the Van Allen radiation belts has uncovered new information about the invisible “shield” that keeps harmful ultrarelativistic electrons from the Earth. In a study published in Nature, scientists from MIT and the University of Colorado at Boulder detail their analysis of…

The Grandfather of the Space Shuttle Looked Like a UFO

On this day in 1975, the venerable X-24B, an experimental aircraft that paved the way for the Space Shuttle’s lifting body design, made its 36th and final test flight in the skies over southern California. To honor that aviation milestone, here is the story of how the plane came to be. The following post originally…

This supercomputer simulation of magnetic field loops on the sun reveal in unprecedented detail how solar winds for and swirl. The colors represent magnetic field strength from weak (blue) to strong (red). [NASA]

The First 3D Printer in Space 3D-Printed Its First Object

While you were probably wishing Thanksgiving break would start already, the astronauts on the International Space Station made history. They 3D-printed a spare part for the 3D printer. In space. We obviously saw this one coming, since a SpaceX Dragon cargo ship dropped off a 3D printer custom-manufactured by Made In Space earlier this month.…

What It Feels Like to Fly in NASA’s Crazy Zero-Gravity Plane

Last week we showed you how NASA simulates space here on Earth, with everything from advanced virtual reality to monstrous thermal vacuum chambers. But all of that still can’t prepare you for how an object, or an experiment, will behave in zero gravity. Sometimes you just have to fly. Luckily, NASA doesn’t have to spend…

Look at This Ball of Molten Metal Levitating in Space

This is perfect sphere of liquid metal, suspended using a strong magnetic field so that it can levitate in space. Oh yeah, and it’s aboard the International Space Station. With all things science seemingly colliding in a single image, you’d be forgiven for thinking this was just a case of NASA showing off. But in…

Can the Design of Hospitals Help Patients Recover Faster?

Can the way hospitals are designed improve the experiences of staff and visitors, and even the recovery of patients? Lucy Maddox finds out. “If one room can alter how we feel, if our happiness can hang on the colour of the walls or the shape of a door, what will happen to us in most…

A shimmering, multi-color beacon—like some kind of cosmic lighthouse—this is the Egg Nebula as photographed by the Hubble Space Telescope. The bright shafts of light are pumped out as a central star dies, creating the beautiful colors as they pass through the clouds of gas and dust. [ESA]

5 More Crowdfunded Projects That Defy All Logic and Reason

Online panhandling is out of control. With Kickstarter and Indiegogo’s tendencies to wash their hands of the garbage on their sites, scams and impossible projects are in a golden age. While fantastically impossible bullshit abounds, these are but a few of the most egregious. https://gizmodo.com/5-crowdfunded-projects-that-defy-all-logic-and-reason-1541715259 Now don’t get us wrong, going after your dreams and/or…

Europa Remastered: This 90s Space Image Has Been Retouched By NASA

It’s not just old rock albums that get remastered when technology moves on: this image of Jupiter’s ice-covered moon, Europa, has just been given a revamp by scientists from NASA. The mosaic image of the moon was first captured in the late 1990s, but now it’s been remastered using more modern image processing techniques. The…

The Soyuz TMA-15M rocket launches from Baikonur Cosmodrome in Kazakhstan just last night. The craft will carry three astronauts up to the International Space Station where they’ll undertake a five and a half month mission. And install a coffee machine. [NASA]

SpaceX Is Testing Autonomous Space Rocket Landing Ships

Elon Musk’s list of crazy/brilliant inventions is getting pretty lengthy, but he’s decided to add to the list with the Saturday afternoon unveiling of “X-wing config” wings for the Falcon 9 rocket, and a self-piloting ship to act as a landing pad for the reusable rockets. The grid fins are the small waffle-shaped wings you…

How Iron Man’s Arc Reactor (Probably) Works

Since the Iron Man arc reactor is a fictitious device, and it has no official scientific explanation in the Iron Man canon that I’m aware of, we might as well something up. Now, I’m mixing real science and fake science here. So physics nerds and comic-book nerds: Deal with it. The Stark Arc Reactor is…

This radar image of Tokyo was acquired by the European Space Agency’s Sentinel-1A satellite earlier this year. The data is so accurate that it can monitor ground movements down to a few millimetres—which helps urban planners know where they can and can’t build. [ESA]

How You Can Get Temperatures Below Absolute Zero

It used to be that scientists all agreed that it was impossible to achieve temperatures below absolute zero, but now they realise that’s not entirely true. This video explains how you can reach temperatures below absolute zero. The phenomenon is made possible by playing with entropy and energy, to change the way groups of particles…