TUESDAY PUZZLE – This is a wonderful first grid from Bryan Kaproth-Gerecht. It’s packed with enough thematic elements to make for a great Sunday puzzle, but it’s presented with such finesse that the complexity of its construction may not hit you until the last minute, as was my experience. It’s also still a Fair Tuesday … Read more
Nancy Grace Roman was a pioneer as NASA’s first female executive and the space agency’s first chief astronomer in the 1960s and 1970s. Known as the “mother of the Hubble Space Telescope,” a new telescope bearing her name will launch on August 30. But the folks at Fox Business were a little confused by the … Read more
It’s not a story anyone would have believed if it weren’t so thoroughly documented. A pod of orcas in Antarctica is chasing a Weddell seal that has taken refuge on a small ice floe. The killer whales swim shoulder to shoulder to create a wave that drags the seal from the ice to the water. … Read more
Dark matter, the elusive, invisible matter that astronomers say makes up about 85% of the mass of the universe, does not interact with light. Scientists only suspect it’s there because of the way things we can see interact with it. But now, a team in China says it has found the most direct evidence of … Read more
Topline Researchers at Southern Illinois University have engineered microbes that can break down discarded plastic bottles and crop waste and turn them into protein-rich cookies, a step-by-step biological transformation that could address the problems of plastic pollution, a looming global food crisis and help sustain deep space missions with humans on board. A cookie is … Read more
The Webb Space Telescope has helped astronomers peer into the distant cosmos, revealing a population of galaxies that had reached their massive size just 500 million years after the Big Bang. A closer look at those ancient galaxies suggests they may be even larger than previously estimated, challenging current models of the early universe. In … Read more
In August 2006, astronomers at the International Astronomical Union (IAU) democratically voted to reclassify Pluto as a dwarf planet, but 20 years later, with our increased knowledge and understanding of planetary systems, is it time to reconsider this controversial decision? Should Pluto be called a planet again? For several years before the IAU vote, there … Read more
2026-08-24T12:45:01.991Z What will happen during each stage of the partial lunar eclipse? A partial lunar eclipse turns the moon red in the sky of Sri Lanka. (Image credit: Photo by Thilina Kaluthotage/NurPhoto via Getty Images) A partial lunar eclipse has five distinct phases that occur simultaneously for everyone on the night side of the Earth … Read more
Cookies produced from recycled plastic may seem like something straight out of a dystopian sci-fi plot. But researchers say they have managed to create such a product as part of a NASA-funded project aimed at feeding astronauts on future space missions. The technology uses specially designed yeasts to transform plastics and agricultural waste into proteins, … Read more
For 28 days in early 2025, WASP-127b held one of planetary science’s most striking records. Atmospheric material around the equator of this distant gas giant was inferred to be moving at close to 9 kilometres per second, or approximately 33,000 kilometres per hour. That is around 16 times the strongest winds commonly quoted for Neptune, … Read more