A New Planet Has Just Been Discovered Orbiting The Nearest Star to The Sun

What appears to be a teeny tiny alien world has just been found orbiting the Solar System’s closest stellar neighbor. The exoplanet candidate, named Proxima d, orbits a star named Proxima Centauri: a small, dim red dwarf star just 4.2 light-years from the Sun.   Amazingly, the exoplanet is just a quarter of the mass … Read more

Yoga: At least one session a week may help to lower blood pressure

A large real-world study adds to clinical trial evidence that people who do yoga tend to have lower blood pressure, which may prevent heart attacks and strokes Health 9 February 2022 By Alice Klein Regular yoga may lead to health benefits Boston Globe Copyright: Aram Boghosian/Boston Globe/Getty Images Practising yoga one or more times per … Read more

Arianespace will launch dozens of OneWeb satellites on a Soyuz rocket tonight. Here’s how to watch.

A Soyuz rocket will carry 34 more broadband satellites for OneWeb to space, and you can watch the launch live. Arianespace‘s first mission of the year will launch Soyuz Flight VS27 from French Guiana at 1:09 p.m. EST (3:09 p.m. local time, or 1809 GMT) on Thursday (Feb. 10). “The total duration of the mission … Read more

Gran Turismo AI: Computer driver can beat some of the world’s best players

An AI trained to win the PlayStation 4 game Gran Turismo Sport has beaten some of the world’s best players by learning to handle the most difficult parts of racing tracks Technology 9 February 2022 By Carissa Wong Gran Turismo Sport is a racing game Polyphony Digital An artificial intelligence has beaten four of the … Read more

Major African Radio Telescope Will Help to Image Black Holes

Astronomers across Africa and Europe have reacted with delight to news that Africa’s first millimetre-range radio telescope is to be built. The Africa Millimetre Telescope will fill a gap in the coverage of the Event Horizon Telescope (EHT), a global network of telescopes that can receive and analyse radio waves of around 1 millimetre in … Read more

NASA’s Parker Solar Probe has captured the first visible-light images of Venus

In between its main mission, the Parker Solar Probe just made a novel contribution to Venusian science. New images from the sun-focused mission, captured during a close flyby of Venus, show the planet in visible light for the first time. With time and analysis, the new images will provide valuable information about the planet’s geology … Read more

Black Hawk: Uncrewed helicopter takes to the skies for the first time

The UH-60 Black Hawk, workhorse of US Army aviation, was flown with no crew for the first time this week, after being fitted with an automated flying system Technology 9 February 2022 By David Hambling A UH-60 Black Hawk helicopter during its first uncrewed flight on 5 February 2022 Ted Carlson/Sikorsky Aircraft The US Defense … Read more

How to Levitate Ice–With Science

Physicists have known how to levitate water for more than 260 years. They just figured out how to levitate ice, too. By pushing a well-known physics phenomenon called the Leidenfrost effect to the extreme, a group of researchers at Virginia Tech caused frozen disks of ice to hover over a hot aluminum surface. Outside of … Read more

China’s Tianwen 1 Mars mission marks 1st full year in orbit

It’s been a year since China’s first-ever independent interplanetary mission reached Mars, and in that time, Tianwen 1 has made major achievements while also delivering a number of surprises. The Tianwen 1 spacecraft entered orbit around the Red Planet on Feb. 10, 2021. Shortly after, the China National Space Administration released epic footage of the … Read more