Chinese scientists suggest harsh environments foster early human creativity - South China Morning Post
The research unveils a more intricate narrative of innovation, intelligence, and human evolution in East Asia.
The Universe Is Full of ‘Impossible’ Black Holes. Scientists Now Know Why - WIRED
There are black holes that are too big to be born from the death of a star but aren’t quite supermassive either. There’s finally evidence for where those came from.
A NASA satellite launched in 1976 carries a Carl Sagan–designed plaque sealed inside its core, mapping Earth's continents 268 million years ago, at launch, and 8.4 million years from now — and that last date is no accident, because it's roughly when the sat - Space Daily
On 4 May 1976, NASA launched a satellite called LAGEOS-1 from Vandenberg Air Force Base in California. It is one of the simplest objects ever put into orbit. It is a sphere about 60 centimetres across, weighing roughly 400 kilograms, with no electronics, no s…
Atomic oxygen in low Earth orbit slowly eats spacecraft surfaces, and the ISS survives because engineers learned to coat, test, and replace the materials most vulnerable to it - Space Daily
Atomic oxygen, the most common particle in low Earth orbit, chemically erodes spacecraft surfaces continuously. The ISS survives only because every external material has been chosen, coated, and scheduled for replacement against this slow molecular attack.
The Vela satellites were built to catch secret nuclear tests, but they accidentally recorded flashes from deep space that opened a new branch of astrophysics - Space Daily
The U.S. military's nuclear detection satellites started catching mysterious gamma-ray flashes in 1967 that did not match any known weapon signature. The discovery stayed classified for six years before it became clear the flashes were exploding stars billion…
Webb just clocked nearly 9,000 young star clusters and found the biggest ones break from their birth clouds in 5 million years, a timing clue that could reshape how astronomers model galaxies growing up - Space Daily
The James Webb Space Telescope has given astronomers a sharper look at how young star clusters escape their birthplaces, and the result cuts against the simple intuition that smaller clusters should clear out faster. In a Nature Astronomy study, researchers u…
The Hubble Deep Field began as a gamble on a tiny patch of sky that had been chosen because it looked almost empty, and it ended by revealing nearly 3,000 galaxies hiding in what seemed like nothing. - Space Daily
In December 1995, the Hubble Space Telescope spent ten days staring at a small, deliberately unremarkable patch of sky. The resulting image contained around 3,000 galaxies. The decision to do it was contested, and the astronomer who pushed it through did so o…
Titan’s atmosphere is thicker than Earth’s, its rivers and lakes are made of methane and ethane, and NASA is sending a nuclear-powered drone there because on Saturn’s largest moon, flying may be easier than driving. - Space Daily
Titan, the largest moon of Saturn, has a denser atmosphere than Earth and a surface where rain, rivers, and seas are made of liquid hydrocarbons rather than water. And NASA is building a rotorcraft to explore it, because Titan’s physical conditions genuinely …
Stephen Hawking’s dad reveals super genius was lazy kid who ‘didn’t study,’ lounged around too much: biography - New York Post
In an upcoming biography of Stephen Hawking, author Graham Farmelo writes about Hawking’s upbringing and his parents, including dad Frank’s 1961 diary entry that said he was worried abo…