Astronomy

Behavioral ecologist David Hughes, who consulted on the video game that inspired the hit TV show The Last of Us, speaks about how our experience with the COVID pandemic changed the way we relate to zombie fiction

The One Big Beautiful Bill Act, passed by the House of Representatives last week, would slow efforts to green the energy system as climate change accelerated

The 2025 Humans to the Moon & Mars Summit (H2M2) will be held May 28 and 29 in Washington, D.C., and will include panels discussing the future of human space exploration.

Ministrokes, also known as transient ischemic attacks, can eventually lead to cognitive declines as steep as those that follow a full-on stroke, new research finds

The galaxy cluster Abell S1063 dominates the center of this JWST image. It's a massive cluster of galaxies about 4.5 billion light-years away. While it dominates the picture, it's not the primary target. It serves as a gravitational lens that magnifies even more distant galaxies that appear as glowing streaks of light around its circular edges.

Nuclear Thermal Propulsion (NTP) has stood as a promising potential alternative propulsion technology for decades. Chemical rockets have begun to reach their theoretical maximum efficiency, and their developers have switched their focus to making them cheaper rather than more efficient. NTP should answer that by offering high thrust and specific impulse. NASA's DRACO Program, the standard-bearer for NTP systems, provides a specific impulse of around 900 seconds, about double a traditional chemical rocket, but half that of most ion thrusters. To increase that number even further, researchers at the University of Alabama at Huntsville and The Ohio State University have been working on a novel configuration of NTP called the Centrifugal Nuclear Thermal Rocket (CNTR) that promises almost to double the specific impulse of traditional NTP systems while maintaining similar thrust levels. However, the system has some engineering challenges to overcome, and a new paper coming out in Acta Astronautica describes some incremental progress on making this improved engine a reality.

A massive galaxy cluster, Abell S1063, forms a gravitation lens, revealing the warped light from more distant galaxies dating back to the early universe in this James Webb Space Telescope image.

The worlds inside our heads can be dramatically different. What does that reveal about how our minds shape our lives, asks cognitive neurologist Adam Zeman

The worlds inside our heads can be dramatically different. What does that reveal about how our minds shape our lives, asks cognitive neurologist Adam Zeman

The 2025 Manhattanhenge season starts today with the half sun visible on the New York grid.

A skeleton found in London records a brutal killing about 1200 years ago, thought to be a rare example of a judicial execution of a woman in medieval England

A skeleton found in London records a brutal killing about 1200 years ago, thought to be a rare example of a judicial execution of a woman in medieval England

A SpaceX Falcon 9 rocket lifted off from Vandenberg Space Force Base today (May 27), carrying 24 Starlink satellites for the company's growing constellation.

More than 60 ancient tools found in France and Spain have been identified as whale bone, and the evidence shows that people made tools from this material a thousand years earlier than previously thought

More than 60 ancient tools found in France and Spain have been identified as whale bone, and the evidence shows that people made tools from this material a thousand years earlier than previously thought

Your imagination isn't just one thing. The latest neuroscience is untangling just how diverse this faculty really is, says cognitive neurologist Adam Zeman

Your imagination isn't just one thing. The latest neuroscience is untangling just how diverse this faculty really is, says cognitive neurologist Adam Zeman

The European Space Agency (ESA) has inaugurated the European Space Deep-Tech Innovation Centre (ESDI), the first ESA presence in Switzerland, created in close collaboration with the Paul Scherrer Institute (PSI). The new centre is located at the Switzerland Innovation Park Innovaare in Villigen. The opening highlights the growing role of deep tech in space exploration and its potential to boost Europe's growth and competitiveness.

Modern ground-based telescopes rely on adaptive optics (AO) to deliver clear images. By correcting for atmospheric distortion, they give us exceptional pictures of planets, stars, and other celestial objects. Now, a team at the National Solar Observatory is using AO to examine the Sun's corona in unprecedented detail.

The chance of a planet forming in the outer reaches of the solar system – a hypothetical Planet Nine – could be as high as 40 per cent, but it would have been a rough start