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Heat to blame for space pebble demise

The dust of comets fills the space between the planets, collectively called the zodiacal cloud. Still, severe breakdown has reduced that dust in size so much that it now scatters sunlight efficiently, causing the faint glow in the night sky known as the “zodiacal light.”

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It’s time to study lunar lava tubes. Here’s a mission that could help

The moon is practically begging to be explored, and the momentum to do so is building. The Artemis Program’s effort to return astronauts to the moon for the first time since the Apollo missions captures a lot of attention. But there are other efforts underway.

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Team proposes using AI to reconstruct particle paths leading to new physics

Particles colliding in accelerators produce numerous cascades of secondary particles. The electronics processing the signals avalanching in from the detectors then have a fraction of a second in which to assess whether an event is of sufficient interest to save it for later analysis. In the near future, this demanding task may be carried out […]

The Mars science helicopter could be an airborne geologist on Mars

After more than 70 successful flights, a broken rotor ended the remarkable and groundbreaking Ingenuity helicopter mission on Mars. Now, NASA is considering how a larger, more capable helicopter could be an airborne geologist on the Red Planet. For the past several years scientists and engineers have been working on the concept, proposing a six-rotor […]

Japan’s space agency says it hopes to forge a profitable launch business with its new H3 rocket

Japan’s space agency and its prime contractor said Thursday they hope to be able to forge a profitable launch business with their new H3 rocket after its first successful flight last month in an increasingly competitive market dominated by Space X.

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Russia’s space agency aborts launch of 3 astronauts to the International Space Station; all are safe

Russia aborted the launch of three astronauts to the International Space Station moments before they were scheduled to lift off Thursday, but the crew was safe, officials said.

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Secrets of the Van Allen belt revealed in new study

A challenge to space scientists to better understand our hazardous near-Earth space environment has been set in a new study led by the University of Birmingham.

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Astronomers confirm a new ‘Trojan’ asteroid that shares an orbit with Mars

Using observations made with the Gran Telescopio Canarias (GTC) a study led from the Instituto de Astrofísica de Canarias (IAC) and the Universidad Complutense de Madrid (UCM) has confirmed that the asteroid 2023 FW14, discovered last year, is accompanying the red planet in its journey round the sun, ahead of Mars and in the same […]

Hubble finds that aging brown dwarfs grow lonely

It takes two to tango, but in the case of brown dwarfs that were once paired as binary systems, that relationship doesn’t last for very long, according to a recent survey from NASA’s Hubble Space Telescope.

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NASA’s Chandra identifies an underachieving black hole

Astronomers have revealed that a brilliant supermassive black hole is not living up to expectations. Although it is responsible for high levels of radiation and powerful jets, this giant black hole is not as influential as many of its counterparts in other galaxies.

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Scientists investigate how cerium is produced in the universe

Cerium is a rare Earth metal that has numerous technological applications, for example, in some types of lightbulbs and flat-screen TVs. While the element is rare in Earth’s crust, it is slightly more abundant in the universe. However, much is unknown about how it is synthesized in stars.

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High-efficiency hollow-core optical fiber cable for medical procedures

A research group led by Prof. Jiang Haihe from the Hefei Institutes of Physical Science of the Chinese Academy of Sciences has designed a 6-hole microstructure anti-resonant air-core fiber (AR-HCF) with a larger core diameter of 78 μm.

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BWC: Suspected car thief continues to flee even after being bitten by LAPD K-9

The suspect fled in the stolen vehicle, then on foot, before being taken in by a K-9 team

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Method to detect dark matter could lead to a better understanding of galaxy evolution

Everyone loves a two-for-one deal—even physicists looking to tackle unanswered questions about the cosmos. Now, scientists at the Department of Energy’s SLAC National Accelerator Laboratory are getting just such a twofer: Particle detectors originally developed to look for dark matter are now in a position to be included aboard the Line Emission Mapper (LEM), a […]

Coalescence-fragmentation cycles based on human conflict

In 1960, Lewis Fry Richardson famously observed that the severity of a wartime event is described by a simple power law distribution that scales according to the size of the conflict. Statisticians have since proposed various modifications, but they continue to agree that the casualty count in a violent conflict tends to scale with the […]