"Professor Goddard does not know the relation between action and reaction and the need to have something better than a vacuum against which to react. He seems to lack the basic knowledge ladled out daily in high schools."
--1921 New York Times editorial about Robert Goddard's revolutionary rocket work.

"Correction: It is now definitely established that a rocket can function in a vacuum. The 'Times' regrets the error."
NY Times, July 1969.

— New York Times

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How preppers plan to save us if the whole internet collapses

New Scientist Space - Cosmology - Tue, 11/04/2025 - 11:00am
Recent outages have revealed how vulnerable the internet is, but there seems to be no official plan in the event of a catastrophic failure. Meet the team of hackers who are ready to jump into action
Categories: Astronomy

How preppers plan to save us if the whole internet collapses

New Scientist Space - Space Headlines - Tue, 11/04/2025 - 11:00am
Recent outages have revealed how vulnerable the internet is, but there seems to be no official plan in the event of a catastrophic failure. Meet the team of hackers who are ready to jump into action
Categories: Astronomy

Should We Build An Optical Interferometer On The Moon?

Universe Today - Tue, 11/04/2025 - 10:26am

A new report outlines the benefits and obstacles to a lunar telescope. It comes from the Keck Institute for Space Studies, and presents an idea for a lunar optical interferometer. The authors say it could outperform powerful space telescopes.

Categories: Astronomy

ESA and AfSA join forces for systems engineering training

ESO Top News - Tue, 11/04/2025 - 9:17am

From 7 to 10 October 2025, Europe and Africa took another important step toward deepening their cooperation in space. At the ESA Education Training and Learning Facility in ESEC-Galaxia, Belgium, young engineers from across both continents came together for the Space Systems Engineering Training Course, jointly supported by the European Space Agency (ESA) and the African Space Agency (AfSA).

Categories: Astronomy

COP30: Can Brazil summit get climate negotiations back on track?

New Scientist Space - Space Headlines - Tue, 11/04/2025 - 9:00am
Expectations are low for the UN climate conference in Belém, Brazil, but the host’s pragmatic approach could help make progress on implementation
Categories: Astronomy

COP30: Can Brazil summit get climate negotiations back on track?

New Scientist Space - Cosmology - Tue, 11/04/2025 - 9:00am
Expectations are low for the UN climate conference in Belém, Brazil, but the host’s pragmatic approach could help make progress on implementation
Categories: Astronomy

Gene Editing Helped One Baby—Could It Help Thousands?

Scientific American.com - Tue, 11/04/2025 - 8:00am

In a world first, a bespoke gene-editing therapy benefited one child. Now researchers plan to launch a clinical trial of the approach

Categories: Astronomy

Early Galaxies Were Messy, New Study Finds

Sky & Telescope Magazine - Tue, 11/04/2025 - 8:00am

Astronomers have found that star-forming galaxies in the early universe were far messier than modern-day disk galaxies.

The post Early Galaxies Were Messy, New Study Finds appeared first on Sky & Telescope.

Categories: Astronomy

Taking The Moon's Temperature With Beeswax

Universe Today - Tue, 11/04/2025 - 5:55am

Sometimes space exploration doesn’t go as planned. But even in failure, engineers can learn, adapt, and try again. One of the best ways to do that is to share the learning, and allow others to reproduce the work that might not have succeeded, allowing them to try again. A group from MIT’s Space Enabled Research Group, part of its Media Lab, recently released a paper in Space Science Reviews that describes the design and testing results of a pair of passive sensors sent to the Moon on the ill-fated Rashid-1 rover.

Categories: Astronomy

Advanced quantum network could be a prototype for the quantum internet

New Scientist Space - Cosmology - Tue, 11/04/2025 - 5:37am
Building a working quantum internet would require overcoming a host of technical challenges, but researchers who have built one of the most advanced quantum networks to date say they think it is possible
Categories: Astronomy

Advanced quantum network could be a prototype for the quantum internet

New Scientist Space - Space Headlines - Tue, 11/04/2025 - 5:37am
Building a working quantum internet would require overcoming a host of technical challenges, but researchers who have built one of the most advanced quantum networks to date say they think it is possible
Categories: Astronomy

Brightest black hole flare ever caused by huge star being ripped apart

New Scientist Space - Cosmology - Tue, 11/04/2025 - 5:00am
A distant black hole has been caught releasing the brightest flare ever, which is the result of it ripping apart and devouring an enormous star
Categories: Astronomy

Brightest black hole flare ever caused by huge star being ripped apart

New Scientist Space - Space Headlines - Tue, 11/04/2025 - 5:00am
A distant black hole has been caught releasing the brightest flare ever, which is the result of it ripping apart and devouring an enormous star
Categories: Astronomy

Cavities could be prevented by a gel that restores tooth enamel

New Scientist Space - Cosmology - Tue, 11/04/2025 - 5:00am
Enamel does not naturally regenerate, which can lead to painful cavities, but a gel that harnesses some of the properties of saliva could restore the hard, shiny layer to teeth
Categories: Astronomy

Cavities could be prevented by a gel that restores tooth enamel

New Scientist Space - Space Headlines - Tue, 11/04/2025 - 5:00am
Enamel does not naturally regenerate, which can lead to painful cavities, but a gel that harnesses some of the properties of saliva could restore the hard, shiny layer to teeth
Categories: Astronomy

Trying To Find Baby Planets Swaddled In Dust

Universe Today - Mon, 11/03/2025 - 6:12pm

With unprecedented detail, a team of astronomers led by MPE have imaged the youngest disks around new-born stars. Astronomers used to think that planet formation followed star formation. But these glowing, chaotic disks are hotter and heavier than expected, hinting that planets may start forming much earlier than previously thought.

Categories: Astronomy

A Red Dwarf Star with a Brown Dwarf Companion is Changing our Perception of How Stars and Planets Form

Universe Today - Mon, 11/03/2025 - 5:15pm

An international team of astronomers using the combined powers of space-based and ground-based observatories, including the W.M. Keck Observatory and Subaru Telescope on Maunakea, Hawaiʻi Island, have discovered a brown dwarf companion orbiting a nearby red dwarf star, providing key insight into how stars and planets form.

Categories: Astronomy

Want To Find More Supernovae? Follow The Light

Universe Today - Mon, 11/03/2025 - 3:57pm

Before a supernova finally explodes, its progenitor ejects massive amounts of gas into its surroundings. When the doomed star finally explodes, its blast wave slams into this material. This is one of a supernova's signatures, and researchers have figured out how to detect it.

Categories: Astronomy

What's it like to live inside a void?

Universe Today - Mon, 11/03/2025 - 1:02pm

The cosmic voids of the universe are empty of matter. But we all know there’s more to the universe than just matter.

Categories: Astronomy

Magnetic Forces Funnel Gas And Dust Into Young Stars

Universe Today - Mon, 11/03/2025 - 12:16pm

Star formation has a lot of complex physics that feed into it. Classical models used something equivalent to a “collapse” of a cloud of gas by gravity, with a star being birthed in the middle. More modern understandings show a feature called a “streamer”, which funnels gas and dust to proto-stars from the surrounding disc of material. But our understanding of those streamers is still in its early stages, like the stars they are forming. So a new paper published in Astrophysical Journal Letters by Pablo Cortes of the National Radio Astronomy Observatory (NRAO) and his co-authors is a welcome addition to the literature - and it shows a unique feature of the process for the first time.

Categories: Astronomy