Wastewater Monitoring Offers Powerful Tool for Tracking COVID and Other Diseases

In 2020 experts at the U.S. Biomedical Advanced Research and Development Authority (BARDA) and other public health agencies watched a presentation that many thought was impractical at the time. Several companies proposed to regularly sample wastewater from sewers and treatment plants and run tests to detect SARS-CoV-2—the virus that causes COVID-19. People excrete the virus … Read more

SpaceX to launch 47 Starlink satellites, land rocket Thursday morning: Watch it live

SpaceX will launch 47 satellites and land the returning rocket on Thursday morning (March 3), and you can watch the action live. A two-stage Falcon 9 rocket carrying 47 Starlink internet satellites is scheduled to launch from Kennedy Space Center in Florida Thursday at 9:35 a.m. EST (1435 GMT). About nine minutes later, the Falcon … Read more

You can watch an asteroid zoom safely by Earth in a live webcast today

A huge asteroid will safely fly by Earth today (March 3), and you can watch it live online.  The Virtual Telescope Project is planning to stream live telescope views of the asteroid 138971 (2001 CB21) during its approach. The space rock is technically classified as “potentially hazardous”, but there’s no need to worry. The asteroid … Read more

A Cat in Pennsylvania Caught The Delta Variant. But It’s Not All Bad News

SARS-CoV-2 is not picky about its host. Since the virus first started spreading among humans, it has jumped from our species to pets, livestock, and even wild animals. Cats appear to be particularly susceptible to contracting COVID, although they often don’t show symptoms, and it’s unlikely that they can pass the virus back to us. Even … Read more

OneWeb pulls employees out of Baikonur Cosmodrome after Russian demands: report

It doesn’t look like OneWeb’s next batch of internet satellites will get off the ground anytime soon. Thirty-six OneWeb broadband spacecraft had been scheduled to launch on Friday (March 4) atop a Soyuz rocket from Baikonur Cosmodrome in Kazakhstan, which is managed jointly by the Russian Aerospace Forces and Roscosmos, Russia’s federal space agency. But … Read more

Scientists Can Now Trace Earth’s History in Individual Grains of Sand

Grains of sand on a beach can tell us more than you might think about the history of the planet, new research reveals – something to think about the next time you’re heading to the coast for a swim or splash around.   Scientists have developed a new metric to determine what they call the … Read more

Stunning Loops of Plasma Observed on The Sun May Not Be What We Thought

A well-studied solar phenomenon may not be quite as simple as we we thought it was. New simulations suggest that what we thought were loops of plasma known as coronal loops erupting out from the surface of the Sun along magnetic field lines may, at least sometimes, be wrinkles in corrugated sheets of plasma.   … Read more

Plastic pollution: Ambitious global treaty agreed in Nairobi

A legally binding agreement between 175 countries encompasses all stages of plastic’s life cycle, from production to consumption and disposal Environment 1 March 2022 , updated 2 March 2022 By Adam Vaughan Plastic garbage collected on Eastern Island in Midway Atoll National Wildlife Refuge All Canada Photos / Alamy One hundred and seventy-five countries have … Read more