New capabilities allow the rover to do science with less energy from its batteries. Thirteen years since Curiosity landed on Mars, engineers are finding ways to make the NASA rover even more productive. The six-wheeled robot has been given more autonomy and the ability to multitask — improvements designed to make the most of Curiosity’s…
This NASA/ESA Hubble Space Telescope Picture of the Week zooms in on the feathery spiral arms of the galaxy NGC 45, which lies just 22 million light-years away in the constellation Cetus (The Whale). The data used to create this portrait were drawn from two complementary observing programs. The first took a broad view of…
Global talks to develop a landmark treaty to end plastic pollution have once again failed. The UN negotiations, the sixth round of talks in just under three years, were due to end on Thursday but countries continued to negotiate into the night in the hopes of breaking a deadlock. There remained a split between a…
To help manage agricultural practices with fewer or no pesticides, University of Michigan researchers say they need to understand how ecological systems work on agricultural lands. Now, U-M researchers John Vandermeer and Ivette Perfecto have used two ecological theories to describe a tangle of interactions between three ant species and a recently introduced fly that…
Weaver ants have solved a problem that has plagued human teams for centuries: individuals contribute less to tasks when more people join in. New research published in Current Biology on August 12 shows individual weaver ants instead get stronger as their group grows. “Each individual ant almost doubled their pulling force as team size increased…
Fashion meets science. An expert panel discuss the clothing of the future. Source link
A treasure trove of exceptionally preserved early animals from more than half a billion years ago has been discovered in the Grand Canyon, one of the natural world’s most iconic sites. The rich fossil discovery – the first such find in the Grand Canyon – includes tiny rock-scraping molluscs, filter-feeding crustaceans, spiky-toothed worms, and even…
Researchers think that members of the most recently identified “hominin” group (the Denisovans) mixed with early modern humans and passed along parts of their DNA. Evidence points to several separate interbreeding events, each leaving a genetic imprint that influenced the course of human history. In 2010, scientists released the first draft of the Neanderthal genome….
Found using the MIRI instrument on NASA’s Webb telescope, which was managed by JPL through launch, the possible planet would be easier to study than more far-flung worlds. Astronomers using NASA’s James Webb Space Telescope have found strong evidence of a giant planet orbiting a star in the stellar system closest to our own Sun….
Scientists have discovered hundreds of giant sand bodies beneath the North Sea that appear to defy fundamental geological principles and could have important implications for energy and carbon storage. Using high-resolution 3D seismic (sound wave) imaging, combined with data and rock samples from hundreds of wells, researchers from The University of Manchester in collaboration with…
