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The extraordinary physiological challenges facing amputee John McFall in space

The UK Space Agency has announced an agreement with Vast—a US commercial space company—that could send British astronaut John McFall into orbit as early as 2027. If the mission goes ahead, he would become the first person with a physical disability to live and work in space.

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Astrochemical model digs into the universe’s missing sulfur

Sulfur is one of the most abundant elements in the universe. If you peer into a diffuse interstellar cloud, you find loads of it—about the amount expected based on fusion patterns in the stars it was born in. However, if you look at a dense, cold molecular cloud—the kind where those stars actually form—it seems […]

NASA’s proposed Early eVolution Explorer mission aims to solve the radius valley mystery

A debate has been raging among planetary scientists for more than a decade—why are there so few exoplanets with a radius of about 1.8 times that of Earth? Exoplanets are currently largely grouped into two distinct categories—”super-Earths” are below that size and have rocky interiors, whereas “sub-Neptunes” are above that size limit and appear puffier. […]

The hidden physics complicating interstellar lightsails

If we’re to reach another star, chemical propulsion will not get us there in any reasonable time frame. We’re going to need a different propulsion technology, and one of the most promising seems to be a solar sail. These giant reflective surfaces form the basis of many interstellar mission concepts. Combined with giant lasers pushing […]

Brothers follow three-generation legacy into Mo. police department

Nicholas and Michael Menendez will join the St. Louis PD after serving in the Army and graduating from the academy, following the footsteps of their mother, father and grandfather

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Light-programmed system projects 28-layer 3D images in single shot

Researchers at the UCLA Samueli School of Engineering and CNSI (California NanoSystems Institute), led by Professor Aydogan Ozcan, introduced a snapshot 3D image projection system that integrates a digital encoder with a passive diffractive optical decoder, jointly optimized end-to-end through deep learning. The hybrid architecture projects multiple distinct images onto closely spaced axial planes in […]

Cop severely wounded by gunman who menaced bus rider awarded NYPD Medal of Honor

Det. Brett Boller had three months on the job when he confronted a man who had been arguing with another passenger over a bus seat and subsequently shot Boller in the midsection

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NASA’s Chandra discovers possible supernova remnant in galactic center

Using data from NASA’s Chandra X-ray Observatory, astronomers may have found a supernova remnant in an intriguing neighborhood in the middle of our galaxy. A paper describing these new findings was published in The Astrophysical Journal.

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Calif. police K-9 catches suspect who hit fire hydrant during pursuit

The suspect evaded a traffic stop and fled at around 70mph before crashing into the fire hydrant; Yuba City K-9 Rook nabbed the suspect after he fled on foot

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Unique chromium beam experiment unlocks cosmic ray origins and galactic chemistry

When a star dies, it generates an explosion of elemental nuclei and hurls them into space. Those elements, called cosmic rays, travel at nearly the speed of light, and eventually some of them encounter manmade detectors. Recording how many of each of these elements show up helps scientists better understand cosmic processes—but despite incredible research […]

South African telescope detects record‑breaking signal from the early universe

Astronomers using the MeerKAT radio telescope in South Africa have discovered the most distant hydroxyl megamaser ever detected, opening a new radio astronomy frontier. A hydroxyl megamaser is a natural space laser, and this one is located in a violently merging galaxy more than 8 billion light-years away.

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David Kipping has new take on the existence of advanced life in the universe and the numbers are not encouraging

Between the mid-1970s and early 1980s, two physicists, Michael Hart and Frank Tipler, published a controversial series of papers arguing that extraterrestrial intelligence didn’t exist. As they argued, the likelihood that extraterrestrial civilizations (ETCs) would have had enough time to develop advanced computing, spaceflight and self-replicating machines (Von Neumann probes) means they would have colonized […]

TRACERS spacecraft maps solar energy’s route into Earth using cusp electrons

Physicists led by the University of Iowa have documented in the finest detail to date how energy from the sun interacts with Earth’s magnetic field, which could yield greater insight into solar effects on Earth that drive space weather.

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Q&A: Tracing the origins of supermassive black holes

Sarah Pappert is a Ph.D. candidate in astrophysics at the TUM School of Natural Sciences and conducts research at the Max Planck Institute for Extraterrestrial Physics. She is supervised by Prof. Dr. Reinhard Genzel and Prof. Dr. Frank Eisenhauer, who holds a TUM Distinguished Affiliated Professorship at the TUM School of Natural Sciences. Her research […]

When motion prevents order in active matter systems

Pack enough string-like objects together, and they will begin to align with one another. But replace the strings with worms or bacteria living in your gut, and this self-organization becomes much more difficult. A team of University of Amsterdam (UvA) researchers has demonstrated that activity can fundamentally alter one of the most important phase transitions […]