NASA’s Perseverance Mars rover nabs 8th rock sample on the Red Planet

NASA’s top-notch Red Planet geology rover is moving on to explore an ancient river delta now that its eighth rock sample is secured for future analysis. “Stashing my latest rock core sample (#8!) and finishing up at this location. I’m packing up and making my way to the dry river delta. Off we go,” the … Read more

Are You Better Than a Machine at Spotting a Deepfake?

Vitak: This is Scientific American’s 60 Second Science. I’m Sarah Vitak.  Early last year a TikTok of Tom Cruise doing a magic trick went viral.  [Deepfake Tom Cruise] I’m going to show you some magic. It’s the real thing. I mean, it’s all the real thing. Vitak: Only, it wasn’t the real thing. It wasn’t … Read more

Spot the Hyades star cluster near Taurus constellation tonight. Here’s where to look.

Look up tonight (March 15) to see the Hyades star cluster light up the Taurus constellation in the night sky. The Hyades star cluster is the closest star cluster to Earth, located only 150 light-years away. Viewers can spot the star cluster by looking for the tall, Y-shaped constellation Taurus, the bull, which is situated … Read more

Breathtaking Photos of Mars Terrain Hint at a Mysterious Cyclic Past

A newly released image from a Mars satellite offers a glimpse into the complex past of the now dry and dusty world. From high above the surface of Mars, the orbiting High Resolution Imaging Experiment (HiRISE) homes in on the Danielson Crater, just north of the Mars equator. This region is intensely interesting to space … Read more

People, Not Science, Decide When a Pandemic Is Over

All pandemics end eventually. But how, exactly, will we know when the COVID-19 pandemic is really “over”? It turns out the answer to that question may lie more in sociology than epidemiology. As the world passes the second anniversary of the World Health Organization’s declaration of the COVID pandemic, things seem to be at a … Read more

Ukrainian researchers flee trauma and terror of war | Science

At this time of year Maryna Kravchenko, a population ecologist at Kharkiv National University (KNU), normally heads into the forests of eastern Ukraine to track frogs and toads emerging from hibernation. Instead, after 1 week sheltering from bombs in a basement, she fled with her young children to Germany, where colleagues at Ludwig Maximilian University … Read more

Asteroid spotted just before hitting Earth’s atmosphere wows astronomers

This weekend, an astronomer spotted a small asteroid just hours before the space rock crashed into Earth’s atmosphere and met its fiery demise. On Friday (March 11), astronomer Krisztián Sárneczky was observing the sky at the Piszkésteto Mountain Station, which is part of the Konkoly Observatory near Budapest in Hungary. During his observations, he spotted … Read more

Russia Is Using ‘Digital Repression’ to Suppress Dissent

As Russia’s invasion of Ukraine drags on, an information war is raging alongside the physical fighting. Russia’s recent attempts to spread disinformation have not yet found great success in the West. Within the country, however, President Vladimir Putin’s regime is controlling the narrative through censorship, state control of media and other forms of digital repression. … Read more

African effort to sequence continent’s biodiversity seeks $1 billion over 10 years | Science

When ThankGod Echezona Ebenezer left southeast Nigeria to start a biochemistry Ph.D. at the University of Cambridge in 2013, he soon realized little information on the genomes of plants and animals from Africa were in existing global sequencing databases. To help protect the continent’s biodiversity and aid its agriculture, he and colleagues founded the African … Read more

Why are we seeing more northern lights this year?

This article was originally published at The Conversation. The publication contributed the article to Space.com’s Expert Voices: Op-Ed & Insights. Solar cycle 25 is kicking off in style. Our sun has a cycle of activity and as it becomes more active, there will be more sightings of the northern (and southern) lights. That is what is happening this … Read more