A seasonal mechanic driving through Yellowstone National Park stopped his pickup truck to avoid hitting a bison, but the bison hit him anyway. Kyle Weber was headed home after a summer working at gas stations in Yellowstone Park. On Thursday morning, he left Canyon Village in his old Ford Ranger and drove south toward Fishing … Read more
The cosmos oscillates between predictable stability and wild chaos, unsettling our sensitive brains. In our local solar abode, the stability of the planets “is the question around which celestial mechanics was built.” Presumably even before such words existed, when our ancient relatives wondered about the twinkling fires in the night sky. Millennia later, Isaac Newton, … Read more
Northrop Grumman’s Cygnus XL robotic spacecraft departed the International Space Station today (Oct. 9) after a six-month stay. Northrop Grumman’s unmanned Cygnus XL freighter was released by the station’s massive Canadarm2 robotic arm today at 12:44 p.m. EDT (1644 GMT), as the duo flew 260 miles (418 kilometers) over the Pacific Ocean. The departing vehicle … Read more
A spacecraft doomed to sink to Earth within weeks has shared new cosmic images. NASA’s Neil Gehrels Swift Observatory was launched in 2004 to detect and monitor gamma-ray bursts, but after 21 years of scientific operations, its low-Earth orbit began to rapidly decay due to increased solar activity. An image shows NGC 1097, a spiral … Read more
And the data it provided sheds light on the origins of fast radio bursts. NASA, ESA, CSA, STScI, T. Nanayakkara (USYD). Image processing: J. DePasquale (STScI) In 2024, scientists detected the most distant fast radio burst we have ever seen to date, thanks to observations made by the MeerKAT ground-based telescope array. Fast radio bursts … Read more
German paleontologist Dolf Seilacher had not yet won his Crafoord (the prestigious honor bestowed by the same Swedish academy that awards the Nobel Prize) when he was collecting specimens in Puerto Rico back in the 1980s. The research station had removed a gigantic Bathynomus isopod, a huge insect-like crustacean about 32.2 centimeters (12.7 inches) long, … Read more
Just when you thought the sun might be taking a breather, another powerful eruption was unleashed, and the northern lights forecast became even more promising. A fourth coronal mass ejection (CME) erupted from the sun on October 8, during a powerful M-class solar flare from the restless sunspot region AR4549. This brings the number of … Read more
CAPE CANAVERAL, Fla. — Four astronauts returned to Earth from the International Space Station on Thursday after rushing there eight months ago to replace an ill colleague and his crew. SpaceX brought back American, French and Russian pilots with a splashdown in the Pacific off the coast of Los Angeles. NASA’s Jessica Meir and Jack … Read more
The spectacular eruption of a volcano on land is a display worthy of the big screen (which may explain why the fire phenomenon often appears in disaster movies). Clouds of smoke billow into the sky, molten rock explodes upward like fireworks, and angry orange lava flows down the mountainside. A strange sight, but one that … Read more
Great Danes and Mastiffs rarely live more than a decade, while Chihuahuas can live twice as long. It’s not clear exactly why large dogs die younger than small ones, but new findings may help solve that mystery. The research, published Thursday (Oct. 8) in the journal Science, analyzed a chemical code written on top of … Read more