Covid origins: A detailed look at the coronavirus’s first days at a Wuhan market

Three recent studies give a detailed picture of how the coronavirus pandemic began and strengthen the case that the virus came from animals at the Huanan seafood market Health | Analysis 28 February 2022 By Michael Le Page Members of the Wuhan Hygiene Emergency Response Team leave the closed Huanan seafood market in January 2020 … Read more

Cosmic detectives investigate the origins of Milky Way material

By studying light from hundreds of thousands of stars in the Milky Way, scientists have revealed where the pieces that make up our galaxy came from.  In a new study, scientists broke the light coming from 600,000 stars into spectra that determine the stars’ chemical composition. In doing this, they were able to reveal which … Read more

The Mysterious Origins of King Tutankhamen’s Space Rock Dagger Just Got Clearer

You may already know the legend of King Tutankhamen’s space dagger – an iron weapon forged from the rock of meteorites, and entombed with the ancient Egyptian pharaoh. Now a new study has revealed more details about this most fascinating and mysterious of artifacts.   A thorough chemical analysis involving high-resolution photography and X-rays has … Read more

In photos: Michael Strahan’s launch into space on Blue Origin’s New Shepard

Liftoff of NS-19 on Dec. 11, 2021. (Image credit: Blue Origin) Blue Origin’s third crewed spaceflight brought a full complement of people into space on New Shepard for the first time, starring “Good Morning America” host Michael Strahan. On Dec. 11, 2021, a 10-minute flight successfully launched and landed from Blue Origin’s facilities near Van … Read more

Powerful, nearby black holes could help to explain universe’s origins

The Haro 11 galaxy. Like Tololo 0440-381, this nearby galaxy gives off a type of radiation that scientists think resembles the characteristics of the earliest stars in the universe. Haro 11 is about 300 million light-years away in the constellation Sculptor.  (Image credit: ESA/Hubble/ESO and NASA) Nearby galaxies and their black holes could hold the … Read more

Study Finds Protein Structures That Could Be Responsible For The Origins of Life

The question of how life first sparked into existence on our planet is one we haven’t yet fully answered, but science is getting closer all the time – and a new study identifies the structures of the proteins that may well have made it happen.   To begin with, the team behind the study decided … Read more

Help discover the origins of meteor showers by spotting shooting stars

By Layal Liverpool Marius Heil/EyeEm/Getty Images I WANT to hunt for shooting stars, but it’s cold outside so I’m starting the search from my living room. You can do the same by joining the Radio Meteor Zoo project online. If you have ever seen a shooting star, you were probably witnessing a small solid object … Read more

Origins of Drug-Resistant Superbug Weren’t What We Thought, Surprise Discovery Shows

An evolutionary battle between fungi and bacteria on hedgehogs’ skin gave rise to a type of antibiotic-resistant bacteria long before humans started using the antibiotics that were thought to lead to such superbugs, a new study reveals.   Researchers traced some lineages of the superbug MRSA, or methicillin-resistant Staphylococcus aureus, to a parasitic fungus found … Read more

Winner of Blue Origin’s $28 million auction to fly with 5 ‘space warriors’ next year

The identity of Blue Origin’s spaceflight auction winner is no longer a mystery. Justin Sun, the founder and CEO of the blockchain platform Tron, announced today (Dec. 22) that he’s the person who paid $28 million for a seat aboard Blue Origin’s first crewed spaceflight. That mission launched on July 20, carrying Blue Origin founder … Read more

What time is Blue Origin’s New Shepard launch with GMA host Michael Strahan?

Blue Origin’s third crewed mission, which will send Good Morning America anchor Michael Strahan and five other people to suborbital space, is expected to launch early Saturday morning (Dec. 11).  Liftoff is expected from Blue Origin’s Launch Site One at 9:45 a.m. EDT (8:45 a.m. local time or 1445 GMT), but that is subject to … Read more