Astronomy
A Sodom and Gomorrah Story Shows Scientific Facts Aren’t Settled by Public Opinion
Claims that an asteroid or comet airburst destroyed the biblical Sodom captured the public’s imagination. Its retraction shows that scientific conclusions aren’t decided by majority rule in the public square
When Do Babies Become Conscious?
Answering the question of when consciousness emerges is deeply tied to the mystery of what it actually is and how it can be measured
Generation Alpha's coded language makes online bullying hard to detect
Generation Alpha's coded language makes online bullying hard to detect
The beginning of Ignis Mission
These are the highlights of the launch on Axiom Mission 4 (Ax-4) of ESA project astronaut Sławosz Uznański-Wiśniewski from Poland to the International Space Station. The mission is called Ignis.
A SpaceX Falcon 9 rocket lifted off from launch pad 39A at NASA’s Kennedy Space Center in Florida, USA, on 25 June 2025.
Sławosz is mission specialist on the Dragon spacecraft. The other crew members are Shubhanshu Shukla from India and Tibor Kapu from Hungary. They fly under the command of Peggy Whitson from USA.
Sponsored by the Polish government and supported by ESA, the Polish Ministry of Economic Development and Technology (MRiT), and the Polish Space Agency (POLSA), the mission will include an ambitious technological and scientific programme with several experiments led by ESA and proposed by the Polish space industry.
With 'Grace': Astronauts name SpaceX's final Dragon crew capsule
See Vaccine Recommendations Backed by Science in These Handy Charts
These graphics will guide you through science-based vaccine guidelines for children and adults
Heart attacks are no longer the leading cause of death in the US
Heart attacks are no longer the leading cause of death in the US
How Bird Flu Went from Devastating Poultry Farms to Infecting Dairy Herds
The bird flu was long known to poultry farmers. Here’s why the dairy industry was caught off guard by its jump to cattle.
New moon of June 2025 sees Mercury climb to its highest point in the sky
Why Is There a Giant Hole in Space?
First sea-level records for coastal community protection
While satellites have revolutionised our ability to measure sea level with remarkable precision, their data becomes less reliable near coasts – where accurate information is most urgently needed. To address this critical gap, ESA’s Climate Change Initiative Sea Level Project research team has reprocessed almost two decades of satellite data to establish a pioneering network of ‘virtual’ coastal stations. These stations now provide, for the first time, reliable and consistent sea-level measurements along coastlines.
Liftoff of Axiom Mission 4
The Axiom Mission 4 (Ax-4) crew lifts off to the International Space Station atop a SpaceX Falcon 9 rocket from launchpad 39A at NASA’s Kennedy Space Center in Florida, USA, on 25 June at 02:31 EDT, local time (07:31 BST/08:31 CEST).
ESA project astronaut Sławosz Uznański-Wiśniewski travels to his new home in space in the Dragon spacecraft. Sławosz is part of Axiom Mission 4 alongside Peggy Whitson (USA), Shubhanshu Shukla (India) and Tibor Kapu (Hungary).
During their journey on the Dragon spacecraft to the orbital outpost Sławosz and Tibor will serve as mission specialists, Shubhanshu will be the crew’s pilot and Peggy will be commander.
The Polish project astronaut is the second of a new generation of European astronauts to fly on a commercial human spaceflight opportunity with Axiom Space. Sponsored by the Polish government and supported by ESA, the Polish Ministry of Economic Development and Technology (MRiT), and the Polish Space Agency (POLSA), the mission will include an ambitious technological and scientific programme with several experiments led by ESA and proposed by the Polish space industry. The mission, known as Ignis will officially begin once Sławosz enters the Station.
Sławosz Uznański-Wiśniewski was selected in November 2022 as a member of the ESA astronaut reserve and joined ESA as a project astronaut on 1 September 2023 for training familiarisation at ESA’s European Astronaut Centre in Cologne, Germany.
SpaceX launches historic private Axiom-4 astronaut mission to the ISS (video)
Honda - Yes, Honda - Tests a Reusable Rocket
Just when you thought the race to reusable rockets was all wrapped up, a new competitor emerges from the shadows. Honda R&D Co (a subsidiary of Honda Motor Co) successfully tested their new experimental reusable rocket. The 6.3-meter rocket blasted off, reached an altitude of 271.4 m, and then landed within 37 cm of their touchdown point. The flight lasted for 56.6 seconds.
Superdense Star Factories Tell a Tale of Starbirth in the Early Universe
The early Universe was a busy place some 13 billion years ago. That's when countless young galaxies began to evolve and birthed stars at a prodigious rate. The hearts of those very distant galaxies show turbulent, lumpy disks studded with even thicker clumps of dust and gas that spawned huge batches of stars. Astronomers want to understand what's driving the clumping, so they've turned to recent surveys of closer galaxies in the "local Universe" that contain similar lumpy regions.
Vast Filament of Hidden Matter Seen for the First Time
More than one third of the regular matter in the Universe is missing (we're not talking about dark matter, just regular matter). It's needed to make the current cosmological models work, so astronomers continue to search for it, and have found many indirect examples of it. Now a team of astronomers has directly observed it as a huge filament of hot gas bridging four galaxy clusters and containing 10 times the mass of the Milky Way.
ESA's New Mission Can See a Solar Eclipse Every Day
Solar eclipses are beautiful, but they're a valuable chance to study the Sun's atmosphere as its surface is blocked by the Moon. Now, ESA can generate artificial solar eclipses from space with the Proba-3 mission. The two satellites fly in formation 150 meters apart. One spacecraft occults the Sun, while the other observes the faint solar corona. They can produce a new 6-hour eclipse every 19.6-hour orbit around the Earth. Solar eclipses on demand.