Isar Aerospace is not hurting for money, but it is sorely lacking in the currency of flight experience. Isar Aerospace still commands top position among a new generation of European rocket startups, but the company’s efforts to launch a critical test flight of its Spectrum rocket continue to encounter…
Will the Sun roast Earth’s plants or starve them? It’s a bit worrying when a scientific paper begins, “How long will life on Earth survive?” But in this case—a study by Jacob Haqq‐Misra of Blue Marble Space and Eric Wolf at the University of Colorado Boulder—the billion-plus-year timeline under…
University of Leicester historian thinks Eilmer of Malmesbury saw two different comets: in 1018 and 1066 Early in the 11th century, a young Benedictine monk named Eilmer jumped from the 150-foot tower of his abbey in the small English town of Malmesbury, wearing a pair of crude wings he’d…
Researchers have quantified the length and mass of arbuscular mycorrhizal fungal networks globally. Hidden underground around the world lie 110 quadrillion kilometers of arbuscular mycorrhizal fungal networks—webs of ultra-thin threads that, if connected in a single line, would stretch almost a billion times the distance between the Earth and…
A pending report on climate attribution may be setting the stage for conflict. Founded during the US Civil War to provide advice to the government, the National Academies of Science have become one of the most prestigious scientific organizations. Its primary function is to prepare comprehensive reports on scientific…
“Some missions are using more than what their paperwork would say.” NASA pushed its Deep Space Network beyond its limits during the Artemis I mission nearly four years ago. The global array of deep space communications antennas couldn’t keep up with the routine demands of 40 robotic science missions…
Archaeologists found apparent scrape marks inside a skull; long bones may have been sharpened into tools. Very little is known about funerary practices in Iron Age Britain, since few human remains have survived. However, the environment in northwest Scotland is more conducive to preserving bone from that period. Archaeologists…
Alaska’s multibillion-dollar fishing industry and vulnerable coastal communities at risk. The upcoming loss of a deep-ocean monitoring system is triggering deep anxiety in Alaska, the nation’s top fish-producing state, where temperatures are warming twice as quickly as the global average. The National Science Foundation announced plans in May to…
Our ancestors’ genomes were built through successive waves of gene transfers. We tend to view ourselves and the complex cells that build us as a distinct branch of the tree of life from the compact, seemingly featureless cells of bacteria and archaea. But we’ve found that our genome is…
For days after the stunning incident, the ADA had doubled-down on the choice. Amid intense backlash, the head of the American Diabetes Association posted a video Wednesday apologizing for the organization’s decision on Friday to forcefully remove five leading diabetes scientists from the association’s annual meeting. The scientists were ejected…
