Covid-19 news: Nearly 30 million in China are now living in lockdown

By Michael Le Page, Clare Wilson, Jessica Hamzelou, Sam Wong, Graham Lawton, Adam Vaughan, Conrad Quilty-Harper, Jason Arunn Murugesu, Layal Liverpool, Carissa Wong, Alex Wilkins and Alexandra Thompson A police officer wearing personal protective equipment in Manzhouli, China STR/AFP via Getty Images Latest coronavirus news as of 12pm 16 March Covid-19 is surging in China, … Read more

James Webb Space Telescope spotted by Europe’s Gaia spacecraft 1 million miles from Earth (photo)

A star-charting spacecraft spotted NASA’s James Webb Space Telescope while both were working in deep space. The European Space Agency’s Gaia mission and the James Webb Space Telescope both orbit around Earth-sun Lagrange point 2, or L2, a gravitationally stable point between the sun and Earth that is roughly 930,000 miles (1.5 million kilometers) from Earth. … Read more

Huge Crater Under Greenland Glacier Surprises Scientists With Its True Age

An enormous impact crater, hiding deep beneath Greenland’s Hiawatha glacier, is probably the result of a kilometer-wide asteroid that crashed into Earth 58 million years ago. That’s much older than scientists presumed – roughly eight million years after the infamous impact that killed off most dinosaurs.   When the Hiawatha crater was first discovered in … Read more

Big asteroid slammed into Greenland just a few million years after the dinosaurs died out

Hidden under Greenland’s thick ice sheet, scientists found what they thought was the scar of an asteroid impact perhaps just thousands of years old, fresh enough that humans were already on the scene. But after several years of additional research, two separate teams of scientists have determined its age to be far older: 58 million … Read more

Ancient ‘Vampire’ Cephalopod From 330 Million Years Ago Is a First of Its Kind

An exceptional fossil unearthed in Montana has given us the earliest known ancestor of vampire squids and octopuses. The cephalopod, belonging to the vampyropod or octopodiform superorder, pushes back the age of the group by about 82 million years.   This challenges our understanding that octopuses evolved from a Triassic ancestor. Fascinatingly, it has not eight, … Read more

An Asteroid Predicted to Hit Earth in 2023 Has Turned Out to Be Safe

Earlier this year, the discovery of a potentially hazardous asteroid took astronomers on a roller coaster ride. On 6 January 2022, astronomers at the Mount Lemmon Observatory in Arizona discovered an asteroid roughly 70-meters (230 ft) across. Based on their initial observations, it appeared this object – called ‘2022 AE1‘ – could potentially hit Earth on its next pass, on … Read more

The Devastating Loss of Grandparents among One Million COVID Dead

Think of the dead grandparents and everything they’ll miss. All the milestones, the middle school graduations and bar mitzvahs and quinceañeras. All the victories, on soccer fields or piano recital halls. All the ordinary shared moments, dancing to “Baby Beluga,” or making banana bread, building extravagant Lego towers, watching The Wizard of Oz and cuddling … Read more

New sky map showcases more than 4 million galaxies, stars and other objects

Millions of new objects have just been cataloged in a vast new sky map that will lead to more investigations about our universe’s environment, the discovery team says. A map of roughly one-quarter of the northern sky was generated using a pan-European set of telescopes called the Low Frequency Array (LOFAR). It detected objects that … Read more

Covid-19 news: 5.2 million children have lost a relative or caregiver

By Michael Le Page, Clare Wilson, Jessica Hamzelou, Sam Wong, Graham Lawton, Adam Vaughan, Conrad Quilty-Harper, Jason Arunn Murugesu, Layal Liverpool, Carissa Wong and Alex Wilkins White flags that are part of artist Suzanne Brennan Firstenberg’s temporary art installation, “In America: Remember” Brynn Anderson/AP/Shutterstock Latest coronavirus news as of 12pm on 25 February Around 3.3 … Read more

Major James Webb Space Telescope project will map half a million early galaxies

It’s been nearly 350 years since Sir Issac Newton wrote, “If I have seen further it is by standing on the shoulders of giants,” but the sentiment certainly holds true today. Newton’s wisdom is exemplified by a grand project called the Cosmic Evolution Survey, or COSMOS. COSMOS builds on the legacy of the Hubble Space … Read more