Science

Latest COVID Surge Pushes Parents to Next-Level Stress

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The list of U.S. parents’ pandemic burdens this winter is longer and more chaotic than ever: More kids have been infected with the novel coronavirus, or SARS-CoV-2, despite scrupulous safety measures. Outbreaks have occurred in staff-strained schools and daycare centers. Many have faced dreaded returns to remote learning. COVID vaccine boosters remain unauthorized for most … Read more

Massive asteroid safely zooms by Earth, a million miles away

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A huge asteroid made its closest approach of the next two centuries Tuesday (Jan. 18), flying quite safely past our planet. Asteroid 7482 (1994 PC1), which is classified as a near-Earth asteroid, only got within five lunar distances of our planet, the equivalent of 1 million miles (1.6 million kilometers). The Virtual Telescope Project, which … Read more

Watch two Russian cosmonauts take a spacewalk outside the International Space Station today

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Two Russian cosmonauts are planning to take a spacewalk today (Jan. 19) to ready a new International Space Station module for visiting spacecraft, and you can watch it live. Expedition 66 Cmdr. Anton Shkaplerov and flight engineer Pyotr Dubrov, both of the Russian space agency Roscosmos, will spend the day working together outside the International … Read more

Climate change: Last 7 years were the warmest on record

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The UN’s World Meteorological Organization found that 2021 was the seventh hottest year to date, at 1.11°C above pre-industrial levels Environment 19 January 2022 By Adam Vaughan In Palmdale, California, temperatures reached 41.1°C in July 2021 ROBYN BECK/AFP via Getty Images The past seven years were the warmest on record as climate change continued apace, … Read more

Study Finds Protein Structures That Could Be Responsible For The Origins of Life

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The question of how life first sparked into existence on our planet is one we haven’t yet fully answered, but science is getting closer all the time – and a new study identifies the structures of the proteins that may well have made it happen.   To begin with, the team behind the study decided … Read more

Something in Your Eyes May Reveal if You’re at Risk of Early Death, Study Shows

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A quick and pain-free scan of the human eyeball could one day help doctors identify ‘fast agers’, who are at greater risk of early mortality. Getting older obviously has an impact on everybody’s body, but just because two people have the same number of years under their belt doesn’t mean they are physically declining at … Read more

A New Study Calculates The Number of Black Holes in The Universe. It’s a Lot

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Because we can’t see black holes, it’s hard to know exactly how many are out there in the big, wide Universe. But that doesn’t mean we have no means of trying to figure it out. Stellar-mass black holes are the collapsed cores of dead massive stars, and new research incorporating how these stars and binaries … Read more

SpaceX Satellites Have Invaded Astronomers’ Views of The Sky, And It’s Getting Worse

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With the rapid expansion of commercial space, there is a growing number of satellites in orbit around our planet. Most of these are in low-Earth orbit, which is becoming increasingly crowded.   This has led some to be concerned about a catastrophic rise of space debris, as well as a growing frustration by astronomers due … Read more

SpaceX launches 49 Starlink internet satellites, lands rocket at sea

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SpaceX’s Starlink internet megaconstellation keeps growing. A two-stage SpaceX Falcon 9 rocket topped with 49 Starlink satellites lifted off from NASA’s Kennedy Space Center in Florida today (Jan. 18) at 9:02 p.m. EST (0203 GMT on Jan. 19).  About nine minutes later, the rocket’s first stage came down to Earth for a pinpoint touchdown on … Read more