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Blue Origin says rocket explosion spared fuel tanks and key launch pad parts

Jeff Bezos’ Blue Origin said Tuesday that last week’s rocket explosion spared fuel tanks and some other critical parts of the launch pad.

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N.C. police officer fired, charged after video captures him repeatedly striking woman during arrest

Video shows the 22-year-old officer punching the woman multiple times before another officer intervened and placed the woman in handcuffs

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Video: Woman points gun at civilians, officers inside Ariz. PD lobby before OIS

Surveillance footage from a Scottsdale Police station shows the woman walking in and pointing a gun at the desk attendant and a person waiting for service in the lobby

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Predicting physics without parameter tuning: A faster computational approach

Numerical simulations in physics often require estimating a multitude of parameters, making the process computationally expensive and complex. Researchers at University of Tsukuba have introduced a new method called the multiparameter eigenvalue-problem emulator, enabling reliable predictions based directly on relationships among known data by eliminating the need for parameter estimation. This innovation considerably reduces computational […]

Cutting a photon in two creates an infinite swarm of particles

By definition, elementary particles can’t be broken into smaller pieces. But in a new theoretical study published in Physical Review Letters, Johannes Skaar and colleagues have revealed what would happen if you tried anyway for a single photon. The answer is deeply strange: attempting to cut a photon in two wouldn’t produce two smaller photons, […]

For satellites as small as a briefcase, getting around in space just got a whole lot easier

MIT engineers are testing a new propulsion system that combines the power and speed of conventional chemical thrusters with the precision and fuel-efficiency of electrical thrusters. The system could enable the design of nimbler, more flexible small satellites, which could perform both fast, powerful maneuvers and slower, precise adjustments, depending on the mission and moment […]

Dormant black hole revives in under three years, brightening 10-fold in nearby galaxy

Astronomers monitoring a nearby active galaxy for six years have watched its supermassive black hole dramatically wake up, brightening by a factor of 10 across ultraviolet and X-ray wavelengths. The paper outlining the study was posted to the preprint server arXiv on May 18.

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Astrobiology’s looming statistical crisis

Multi-billion-dollar space telescope programs aren’t only feats of aerospace engineering. They also feature “lies, damn lies, and statistics.” Or at least statistics. They definitely feature those, as does all good observational astronomy. The problem with statistics is, in order to get a clear definitive answer, you need lots of samples. And, to put it mildly, […]

Molecular glasses solve long-standing Arrhenius paradox

Glasses are non-crystalline but solid states of matter in which molecules and atoms are not arranged into a regular crystal lattice, but rather in a disordered pattern. Glassy materials are widely used in various settings, for instance, in the synthesis of pharmaceuticals and the development of electronics or optical devices.

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Icy moons’ ability to host life could be revealed through an ecology-based method

New observatories and spacecraft missions are probing environments in our solar system that could potentially host life but have long remained hidden. Icy moons like Saturn’s Enceladus and Jupiter’s Europa likely contain oceans beneath frozen outer shells. But a layer of ice prohibits space probes from sampling them directly.

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Strange winds on seven hot Jupiters reveal strongest signs yet of exoplanet magnetic activity

A team of astronomers has found the strongest evidence yet that some planets outside our solar system may be magnetic. Using the European Southern Observatory’s Very Large Telescope (ESO’s VLT) and the Gemini North telescope, the researchers measured wind speeds on seven very hot, Jupiter-like exoplanets.

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Meteor as heavy as an elephant causes widespread speculation across New England

When the double boom rang out in New England over the weekend, shaking homes and sending pets fleeing, questions started flooding social media.

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Roman telescope’s massive infrared mirror is ready to fly

NASA has completed its final inspection of the primary mirror on the Roman Space Telescope, which measures 2.4 meters (7.9 feet) in diameter and contains a layer of silver hundreds of times thinner than a human hair, at 400 nanometers.

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ESA selects two new scout-class missions

When it comes to understanding Earth and our changing environment, space is the place. Not only does it give us an overall holistic view of the planet below, but satellite-based imagery can transcend national boundaries and give us an understanding of key changes that often go unseen at ground level.

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An 8,000-Year-Old Human Skeleton Discovered 200 Metres Inside a Flooded Yucatán Cave — And It Was Placed There Deliberately

Cave divers from Mexico INAH led by Octavio del Rio recovered an 8000-year-old human skeleton 200 metres inside a flooded Yucatan cenote near Tulum. Eleventh prehistoric burial from the same cave network. The body was placed there deliberately when the cave was still dry land.

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