A rare “planetary parade” returns to the evening sky this week
A parade of planets is about to take six of Earth’s neighbors into the night sky at once. But it’s not easy to see. According to NASA, if you have a clear, unobstructed sky looking due west on Saturday, February 28, Saturn’s two inner planets, Venus and Mercury, will be visible in the night sky, […]
Why is there a desert next to the sea?
When you imagine a desert, you probably imagine a vast, empty landscape far from water. But surprisingly, some of the driest places on Earth are right next to the ocean. The Atacama River in Chile and the Namib River in southern Africa both run along coastlines. So how did this extreme desert form in a […]
Scientists may have witnessed a star collapsing directly into a black hole without exploding first
The theory is that a star could collapse directly into a black hole without first exploding as a supernova. In fact, this is relatively common. However, despite this, astronomers have found little observational evidence to support this. But it could also have happened in our neighbor, the Andromeda galaxy, and astronomers almost missed it. In […]
‘We have not yet reached the limit of human longevity,’ research suggests
For more than a century and a half, life expectancy has steadily increased in the richest countries. In the 20th century, remarkable increases in life expectancy have been noted, correlating with declines in infectious diseases and advances in cardiovascular medicine. But for several years, experts have been puzzled by one question: when does this clever […]
“Thermodynamic computers” can mimic AI neural networks – using orders of magnitude less energy to generate images
Scientists have built a “thermodynamic computer” that can generate images from random disturbances, or noise, in data. In doing so, they mimicked the generative artificial intelligence (AI) capabilities of neural networks, collections of machine learning algorithms modeled after the brain. Above absolute zero, the world becomes noisy with energy fluctuations called thermal noise. These fluctuations […]
Scientists propose new plan to ‘capture’ Comet 3I/ATLAS, but we need to act quickly
The arrival of 3I/ATLAS in our solar system has led to several proposals for rendezvous missions to study it up close. As the third interstellar object (ISO) ever detected, the wealth of information provided by direct study will be groundbreaking in many ways. However, the architecture of a mission to intercept an interstellar comet poses […]
A 2,000-year-old skull reveals ancient Vietnamese people permanently blackened their teeth – a stylish habit that continues today
In some parts of Vietnam, shiny black teeth have been considered a high standard of beauty since at least the late 1800s. But now archaeologists have traced the practice back 2,000 years and discovered that ancient humans used abundant iron resources to dye pearly whites black. In a study published January 22 in the journal […]
“Proof by blackmail”: AI confidently solves “impossible” math problems. But will that convince the world’s top mathematicians?
The 2025 Secret Conference brought together the world’s leading mathematicians to test OpenAI’s latest large-scale language model, o4-mini. Experts at the conference were surprised at how the model’s responses sounded like real mathematicians when performing complex proofs. Ken Ono, a professor of number theory at the University of Virginia, said at the time: “I’ve never […]
Boeing Starliner mission failure was the highest-ranking accident that put stranded astronauts at risk, says report
NASA has placed Boeing’s failed 2024 Starliner capsule test flight in the same category as the Challenger and Columbia shuttle disasters and the Apollo 13 mission, according to a new report released by the agency. The space agency has classified the failed flight, which left two NASA astronauts unexpectedly stranded in space for nine months […]
Archaeologists in a ‘race against time’ uncover Roman footprints on Scottish coastline before being washed away by the tide
A couple walking their dog along a cliff-faced Scottish coast after a heavy storm discovered a series of unusual tracks in the damp ground that looked like ancient human or animal footprints. Their discovery sparked an archaeological race against time to document and study the prints before they disappeared into the waves. “It’s very rare […]