A huge sheet of ice has broken off from one of the largest remaining floating glacier tongues in Greenland, creating an iceberg the size of Manhattan in the Arctic Ocean. The spectacular calving of the Petermann Glacier was captured by satellites in August, giving scientists a stunning view from space of the glacier’s shifting and … Read more
In reality, empty space is never truly empty. Even a quantum field in its lowest energy state, the vacuum, has inevitable fluctuations arising from the Heisenberg uncertainty principle: certain pairs of properties cannot have precisely defined values at the same time. In real-world terms, this means that a quantum field should look like a static … Read more
2026-08-27T10:09:26.409Z Tonight’s the night! Don’t miss the deep partial lunar eclipse (Image credit: Created in Canva Pro) The wait is almost over! Tonight, Aug. 27-28, a spectacular deep partial lunar eclipse will sweep across the full Sturgeon Moon, with up to 96.2% of the lunar surface slipping deep into Earth’s dark umbral shadow at maximum … Read more
When most people look out the window of an airplane, they admire the fluffy clouds floating slowly past them. But when observers at the New England Aquarium’s aerial survey look from a plane, they are scouring the seas for marine animals swimming far below. And on August 16, the team received a great reward. While … Read more
Astronomers have discovered a new ocean world outside the solar system that orbits extremely close to its parent star. This means that the extrasolar planet, or “exoplanet,” is in hot water, both literally and figuratively. The exoplanet orbits the star HD 176071 located about 335 light years away, and is approximately two and a half … Read more
NASA stripped the guts out of old spy satellites to build the innovative Nancy Grace Roman Space Telescope, but how? And why? Years of hard work and anticipation are culminating as we near NASA’s launch of its next-generation space telescope. The Roman Space Telescope, which will lift off next Sunday (August 30) aboard a SpaceX … Read more
Two weeks after a total solar eclipse captivated sky watchers in southern Europe, a near-total lunar eclipse will unfold Thursday night for people across North and South America. Lunar eclipses occur when the Earth slides between the Sun and the Moon and casts a shadow on the lunar surface. During this week’s event, almost the … Read more
Clues emerging from DNA could reveal the mystery of human ancestors missing from the fossil record but present in the genes of people living today. Years ago, scientists found evidence that our species, Homo sapiens, had interbred with now-extinct human relatives, including Neanderthals and Denisovans. But some lineages have been difficult to identify because, unlike … Read more
For decades, scientists have used the human pelvis to study a basic question about our evolution: How did our ancestors balance walking upright with giving birth to babies with big brains? Neanderthal pelvises challenge a long-held idea about childbirth and walking. Credit: Jaroslav A. Polák / Zollikofer et al., Proceedings of the National Academy of … Read more
SpaceX’s launch from Florida early this morning (August 25) was memorable in more ways than one. The mission, which sent 29 Starlink Internet satellites skyward from Cape Canaveral Space Force Station at 5:33 a.m. EDT (0933 GMT), was the 100th flight of 2026 for SpaceX’s Falcon 9 rocket. It was also the 37th flight of … Read more