Uplifting Echoes

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…

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…

I spent years assuming my personality was fixed — then I learned what neuroplasticity actually means and realised I had been maintaining myself like a finished product instead of a living system - Space Daily

The adult human brain contains somewhere between 86 and 100 billion neurons. Each of those neurons can form thousands of synaptic connections. For most of the twentieth century, scientists believed that after a certain point in childhood, the architecture of …

A Radical Innovation Helped Archaic Humans Survive a Harsh Ice Age - ScienceAlert

A brainy human relative who lived during an ice age nearly 150,000 years ago adapted to the bitter cold by developing a sophisticated stone-tool industry, according to a new study of a crystal-studded rib bone found in China.

Extreme 8.5-minute orbit reveals white dwarf being torn apart by its binary companion - Phys.org

A team of U.S. astronomers has observed a binary pair of white dwarfs where one star is actively devouring material from the other. Led by Emma Chickles at MIT, the researchers revealed one of the clearest views yet of how ultracompact white dwarf binaries ex…

The human genome contains traces of ancient viruses that infected our ancestors millions of years ago — and some of those viral leftovers were later repurposed into genes that help make human pregnancy possible - Space Daily

Both halves of this claim are well supported, and neither rests on a single study. About 8 percent of the human genome, by the standard estimate, consists of sequences left behind by ancient retroviruses. And among those sequences are a small number of genes …

Massive 'X' and 'V' shapes will appear on the moon tonight — here's how to see them - Space

Here's when to see a pair of massive letters shining on the lunar surface around May's first quarter moon phase.