Scientists have overcome a surprising obstacle in synthetic biology: they obtained two different genetic codes working inside the same cell. The breakthrough is a step toward building life forms that can make proteins with ingredients that nature never adopted. Here’s what you need to know The finding is important because it goes against one of … Read more
SpaceX’s Falcon Heavy carrying NASA’s Roman Space Telescope crosses the face of the sun as it launches into space from Pad 39A at Kennedy Space Center in Florida in this photo taken by Space.com’s Josh Dinner from a Titusville Hobby Lobby parking lot. This is how he did it. (Image credit: Space.com / Josh Dinner) … Read more
When you buy through links in our articles, Future and its distribution partners may earn a commission. Artist’s illustration of NASA’s Neil Gehrels Swift Observatory, which launched into Earth orbit in November 2004 and will soon fall from space. | Credit: NASA Goddard Space Flight Center Conceptual Imaging Laboratory NASA’s Neil Gehrels Swift Observatory is … Read more
NASA’s Neil Gehrels Swift Observatory has returned to studying the universe after spending months in a low-endurance configuration while awaiting an orbital rescue mission that ultimately failed. Mission controllers restarted two of Swift’s three scientific instruments: its X-ray Telescope (XRT) and its Ultraviolet/Optical Telescope (UVOT), on August 26. Both instruments had been shut down in … Read more
SALT LAKE CITY — Each year, James Karner travels to Antarctica as principal investigator of the Antarctic Meteorite Search to find and collect meteorites for the world to study. Despite these annual pilgrimages, Karner had never witnessed a meteorite fall. That was until the morning of August 13, 2022, when he and many others heard … Read more
Photographer James Balog and his team were near a glacier when his camera captured something extraordinary. They were in Greenland, collecting time-lapse images they had placed around the Arctic Circle over the past few years. They were also there to film scenes for a documentary. And while they were hoping to capture some interesting moments … Read more
On a visit to NASA’s Johnson Space Center in Houston last week, President Trump promised that American astronauts would establish a permanent presence on the Moon before moving on to Mars. “Our nation will conquer… this vast frontier before us… We will explore it, we will dominate it and we will win it,” he said … Read more
The phrase “hidden supervolcano” sounds a bit like an oxymoron, doesn’t it? Supervolcanoes are notoriously eye-catching, due to their enormous size and their tendency to spew enormous amounts of lava, ash and rock into the sky. This one, however, has been quietly buried off the east coast of England for millennia. Their discovery, detailed in … Read more
In November 2025, Earth was shaken by several massive eruptions of solar material that slammed into the magnetosphere. For many, the result was surprising. Much of the world watched in amazement as a solar superstorm lit up Earth’s skies with dazzling auroras down to rare low latitudes. However, the sword was double-edged. The same storm … Read more
Following the successful launch of NASA’s Nancy Grace Roman space telescope on Sunday, the agency held a press conference to discuss the observatory’s upcoming science operations. However, the standard post-launch briefing took a strange turn when the president of the United States unexpectedly intervened to congratulate NASA on the mission it repeatedly tried to scrap. … Read more