Vaccine Inequality Has Shut Vulnerable People Out of Plans to Save the Planet

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For decades a global economic system based on the conversion of nature into profit has been accelerating inequality, environmental destruction and climate change. Hundreds of millions of people are vulnerable to (seemingly) natural disasters, including pandemics caused by the emergence of novel pathogens. By exacerbating xenophobic nationalism and precipitating vaccine apartheid, COVID-19 has intensified these … Read more

Stunning image shows galactic dance of stars swirling around a supermassive black hole

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Young stars surround a supermassive black hole in a stunning new image captured by an instrument designed to search for dark energy. The image shows a face-on view of the galaxy NGC 1566, which is nicknamed the Spanish Dancer for its dramatic swirling shape. The photograph comes from an instrument called the Dark Energy Camera, … Read more

China says moonbound rocket stage was not from 2014 lunar mission: report

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China says a rocket stage set to slam into the moon on March 4 isn’t from one of its missions, contradicting several recent reports. Several independent observations suggest the rocket is from the Chang’e 5-T1 mission in 2014, following a misidentification that said the stage was part of a SpaceX Falcon 9 rocket that launched … Read more

We Need a Global Plastics Treaty to Stop an Environmental Disaster

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A dump truck’s worth of plastic enters our oceans every minute. Tiny bits of plastic are in many of the foods we eat, to the point we may be ingesting about a credit card’s weight of the material every week. As with climate change, we’re running out of time to solve the plastics problem. According … Read more

This Maine Farm is Harvesting the Sun’s Power While it Picks the Blueberries

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Carey: I’m standing on a hillside. All around me are short shrubs with purple stems and waxy leaves. A brisk December wind moves through the lowbush blueberry bushes. But among the plants sits an odd sight… row after row of solar panels.  You’ve heard of solar farms. And you’ve heard of blueberry farms. But a … Read more

The dark side of online space disinformation | Science

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Theoretical cosmologist Katie Mack spends a lot of time on Twitter. Mack, at North Carolina State University, joined the platform to talk about science under the moniker “Astro Katie” more than a decade ago. Since then, her fun and informative posts about space have earned her nearly half a million followers. Unfortunately, she says, there … Read more

Fly around SpaceX’s giant Starship rocket in this stunning drone video

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A stunning drone video from SpaceX shows the company taking apart the fully stacked Starship it plans to launch into orbit later this year. The waterside view on Twitter, posted Saturday (Feb. 19), shows the giant Starship rocket on a crane next to the Super Heavy booster that will attempt the company’s first orbital flight.  … Read more

Rogue planets: How wandering bodies in interstellar space ended up on their own

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This article was originally published at The Conversation. The publication contributed the article to Space.com’s Expert Voices: Op-Ed & Insights. Joanna Barstow, Ernest Rutherford Fellow, The Open University We now know of almost 5,000 planets outside the solar system. If you were to picture what it would be like on one of these distant worlds, or exoplanets, your mental … Read more

‘Burning’ hydrogen plasma in the world’s largest laser sets fusion records

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The secret behind a record-breaking nuclear fusion experiment that spit out 10 quadrillion watts of power in a split second has been revealed: a “self-heating” — or “burning” — plasma of neutron-heavy hydrogen inside the fuel capsule used in the experiment, according to researchers.  Last year, scientists at the Lawrence Livermore National Laboratory in Northern California announced the record … Read more