Astronomy

A new review study examines the “gut virome”: the microbiome’s mysterious viral population

A common nasal spray shows promise in reducing COVID risk, but vaccine access remains tangled in policy in the U.S.

A device made from superconducting qubits could prove a powerful technology for enabling practical quantum computing or more experimental propositions like quantum machine learning

A device made from superconducting qubits could prove a powerful technology for enabling practical quantum computing or more experimental propositions like quantum machine learning

All (or at least most) astronomical eyes are on 3I/ATLAS, our most recent interstellar visitor that was discovered in early July. Given its relatively short observational window in our solar system, and especially its impending perihelion in October, a lot of observational power has been directed towards it. That includes the most powerful space telescope of them all - and a recent paper pre-printed on arXiv describes what the James Webb Space Telescope (JWST) discovered in the comet’s coma. It wasn’t like any other it had seen before.

Its surface is the most densely cratered in the Solar System -- but what's inside?

We surveyed people in the U.S. about artificial-intelligence-generated art. Their answers told us a lot about how we value human creativity

Ant queens of one species are sexual parasites that clone ants of another species to create hybrid workers that do their bidding

Imagine worlds where water exists in forms so exotic that they defy our everyday understanding of matter, where the familiar liquid we drink every day transforms into something that behaves like neither gas nor liquid. These aren't science fiction fantasies, but real planets that represent some of the most common worlds in our Galaxy, and scientists at UC Santa Cruz have just developed new models to understand them.

Liftoff occurred at 2:06 p.m. EDT on Saturday (Sept. 6).

What created this unusual planetary nebula?

Genetic-sequencing techniques have identified microorganisms that lived in the mouths of ancient mammoths

JetBlue planes will start using Project Kuiper satellite Wi-Fi in 2027.

A SpaceX cargo craft showed its ability to keep the ISS flying high.

About 150 million years ago storm winds snapped bones in the wings of baby pterosaurs, sending them tumbling to their deaths in a muddy lagoon in what is now Germany

The first national study of its kind shows that children from marginalized communities are more exposed to extreme heat events

What processes are responsible for our Sun’s solar wind, heat, and energy? This is what a recent study published in Physical Review X hopes to address as a team of researchers presented evidence for a newly discovered type of barrier that the Sun exhibits that could help explain the transfer of energy to heat within the Sun’s outer atmosphere. This study has the potential to help scientists better understand the underlying mechanisms for what drives our Sun and what this could mean for learning about other suns throughout the cosmos.