A close examination of this year’s military contracts reveals some interesting things. Around this time each year, the US Space Force convenes a Mission Assignment Board to dole out contracts to launch the nation’s most critical national security satellites. The military announced this year’s launch orders Friday, and SpaceX…
Scientists may have additional tools to produce psilocybin to use for medical purposes. Magic mushrooms have been used in traditional ceremonies and for recreational purposes for thousands of years. However, a new study has found that mushrooms evolved the ability to make the same psychoactive substance twice. The discovery…
Ordering DNA for AI-designed toxins doesn’t always raise red flags. On Thursday, a team of researchers led by Microsoft announced that they had discovered, and possibly patched, what they’re terming a biological zero-day—an unrecognized security hole in a system that protects us from biological threats. The system at risk…
Ants carry lactic and acetic acid bacteria that help coagulate milk, as well as formic acid to acidify it. Fermenting milk to make yogurt, cheeses, or kefir is an ancient practice, and different cultures have their own traditional methods, often preserved in oral histories. The forests of Bulgaria and…
“We fully intend to recover the New Glenn first stage on this next launch.” There’s a good bit riding on the second launch of Blue Origin’s New Glenn rocket. Most directly, the fate of a NASA science mission to study Mars’s upper atmosphere hinges on a successful launch. The…
Who needs peer review? Plan offers easier grants to schools that agree to limits. On Wednesday, The Wall Street Journal reported that the Trump administration had offered nine schools a deal: manage your universities in a way that aligns with administration priorities and get “substantial and meaningful federal grants,”…
Goodall’s immersive studies of chimpanzees in Africa redefined what it means to be human. Legendary primatologist Jane Goodall, whose immersive field research living among chimpanzees in the 1960s essentially redefined the relationship between humans and animals, has died at the age of 91. According to the Jane Goodall Institute…
Giant sloths are extinct in part because they were tasty and nutritious. The extinction of the Pleistocene megafauna may be people’s fault after all, according to a recent study. A team of archaeologists recently examined animal bones at sites dating to the waning years of the last Ice Age. Their…
Lots of carbon molecules but little sign of water in a super-Jupiter’s disk. Many of the most interesting bodies in our Solar System aren’t planets, but the moons that orbit them. They have active volcanoes, hydrocarbon oceans, geysers, and moon-wide oceans buried under icy crusts. And, as far as…
The evolution of Taylor Swift’s dialect, a rare Einstein cross, neutrino laser beams, and more. It’s a regrettable reality that there is never enough time to cover all the interesting scientific stories we come across each month. In the past, we’ve featured year-end roundups of cool science stories we…
