Artist’s impression of the Resilience lunar lander ispace A private spacecraft will attempt to land on the moon this week, in what would be the second successful private landing this year and only the third ever. If Japanese space company ispace pulls off the landing, it will also be the first non-US firm to touch…
Pallab Ghosh Science correspondent NASA/Johns Hopkins The heart-shape on Pluto was captured by a spacecraft that will be turned off mid-mission if Nasa cuts are approved The row between US President Donald Trump and billionaire Elon Musk over a major spending bill has exacerbated uncertainty over the future of Nasa’s budget, which was already facing…
Daniela Relph Senior royal correspondent Watch: Prince William speaks French during address ahead of Oceans summit The Prince of Wales has described the challenge of protecting the world’s oceans as “like none that we have ever faced before.” In a speech delivered to the Blue Economy and Finance Forum in Monaco, Prince William said life…
This Hubble Space Telescope image is cluttered with myriad galaxies NASA, ESA, B. Sunnquist, J. Mack, J. Lotz (STScI), HFF Team The following is an extract from our Lost in Space-Time newsletter. Each month, we hand over the keyboard to a physicist or mathematician to tell you about fascinating ideas from their corner of the…
Could you run for 100 hours this year? How about just doing a little more than 15 minutes each day? In fact, these goals are essentially equivalent, but one certainly sounds more ambitious than the other. The correct framing, then, is important when setting a goal. Take averting a sixth mass extinction. It definitely sounds…
A team of scientists from the SETI Institute and the University of California at Davis documented, for the first time, humpback whales producing large bubble rings, like a human smoker blowing smoke rings, during friendly interactions with humans. This previously little studied behavior may represent play or communication. Humpback whales are already known for using…
Sally Ride during STS-7, NASA’s seventh Space Shuttle mission, in 1983 NASA SallyCristina CostantiniDisney+ (from 17 June) In 1983, Sally Ride made global headlines as the first US woman in space and the third woman after cosmonauts Valentina Tereshkova and Svetlana Savitskaya. A new documentary, Sally, directed by Cristina Costantini, sheds light on her extraordinary…
Using advanced computational modelling, a research team led by the University of Oxford, working in partnership with the Instituto Superior Técnico in the University of Lisbon, has achieved the first-ever real-time, three-dimensional simulations of how intense laser beams alter the ‘quantum vacuum’ — a state once assumed to be empty, but which quantum physics predicts…
A strange type of star could be powered by dark matter Artsiom P/Shutterstock Astronomers have found the strongest evidence yet for the existence of dark stars, a type of enormous star in the early universe that is partially powered by dark matter. If confirmed, these hypothesised stars could help explain why we see mysteriously large…
What do you do when food is running low and you are a tiny, millimetre-long worm? The answer, it turns out, is join up with thousands of your fellows to make a tentacle-like superorganism that can bridge gaps to nearby objects or grab hold of larger animals to carry you further afield. Biologists studying nematode…
