NASA's Voyager 1 is about to become humanity's first object to reach one light-day from Earth as it pushes ever deeper into interstellar space.
Thanks to the gravitational lensing caused by a massive galaxy cluster and high-resolution images from the James Webb Space Telescope (JWST), astronomers discovered an exploding star when the universe was 4.9 billion years old. The discovery paper, posted to the arXiv preprint server on Oct. 23, presents a prediction for when the rest of the distorted images of SN Ares will arrive.
Earth is approximately 4.5 billion years old, according to estimates. However, rocks dating back to the planet's earliest days are extremely rare. Hence the excitement over the discovery in northern China of some of the oldest known rocks on Earth, dating back 3.95 billion years. And one of the reasons for all the attention is that they're revealing new clues about how Earth's crust formed and evolved.
Lake Baikal in Siberia holds around 20% of the world's surface freshwater, making it the most voluminous freshwater lake (Lake Superior on the United States–Canada border is the largest by surface area). This makes the lake one of the most important environments for biodiversity—in fact, it was designated a UNESCO World Heritage site in 1996 because of this. Yet it has shown considerable decline over the last century, with aridification spreading across East Asia.
How unequal were prehistoric societies? And how can archaeologists measure wealth in cultures that left behind no written records, no tax registers and no census data?
In propulsion system design, engineers have long faced a trade-off between solid and liquid rocket fuels. Each has advantages and disadvantages, and in an effort to try to min/max the efficacy of different types of fuel, researchers have long placed an emphasis on a hybrid between solids and liquids—in other words, they've been working with gels. Unfortunately, gels have their own sets of problems to deal with.
In his Alaskan community, fisherman Bob Candopoulos has long welcomed tourists to his business that's showcased by a sign featuring a king salmon.
California was bracing Friday for a storm series packing heavy rain and surf that could once again flood coastal communities and potentially send monster waves pounding shores.
SpaceX's Starship spacecraft was "healthy" as it orbited the Earth and on track to return Saturday to its Texas launch site, where Elon Musk's company was planning to "catch" the vehicle for the first time.
