New Scientist Space - Space Headlines
High-achieving adults rarely began as child prodigies
It's easy to assume that the most talented adults among us were once gifted children, but it turns out that talent during childhood is no guide to later success
Categories: Astronomy
Roman soldiers defending Hadrian’s Wall had intestinal parasites
Excavations of sewer drains at a Roman fort in northern England have revealed the presence of several parasites that can cause debilitating illness in humans
Categories: Astronomy
Two asteroids crashed around a nearby star, solving a cosmic mystery
A pair of nascent planets have been caught smashing together around the nearby star Fomalhaut, and in doing so have solved the puzzle of its famous ‘planet’
Categories: Astronomy
Closure of US institute will do immense harm to climate research
The National Center for Atmospheric Research has played a leading role in providing data, modelling and supercomputing to researchers around the world – but the Trump administration is set to shut it down
Categories: Astronomy
Sitting by a window may improve blood sugar levels for type 2 diabetes
Our cells follow 24-hour circadian rhythms that regulate our blood sugar levels and are heavily influenced by light exposure. Scientists have harnessed this to show that just sitting by a window improves blood sugar control in people with type 2 diabetes
Categories: Astronomy
Strange lemon-shaped exoplanet defies the rules of planet formation
A distant world with carbon in its atmosphere and extraordinarily high temperatures is unlike any other planet we’ve seen, and it’s unclear how it could have formed
Categories: Astronomy
Chronic fatigue syndrome seems to have a very strong genetic element
The largest study so far into the genetics of chronic fatigue syndrome, or myalgic encephalomyelitis, has implicated 259 genes – six times more than those identified just four months ago
Categories: Astronomy
Cosmology’s Great Debate began a century ago – and is still going
Our understanding of the true nature of the cosmos relies on measurements of its expansion, but cosmologists have been arguing back and forth about it for more than 100 years
Categories: Astronomy
Crash clock says satellites in orbit are three days from disaster
Satellites in orbit would begin to collide in a matter of days if they lost manoeuvrability during a solar storm or other outage
Categories: Astronomy
Saturn's rings form a giant dusty doughnut encircling the planet
The rings of Saturn are normally thought to be flat, but measurements by the Cassini spacecraft show that some of their particles fly hundreds of thousands of kilometres above and below the thin main discs
Categories: Astronomy
Your period may make sport injuries more severe
Professional football players who became injured while on their period took longer to recover than when injuries occurred at other times of their menstrual cycle
Categories: Astronomy
The world will soon be losing 3000 glaciers every year
Under current climate policies, 79 per cent of the world’s glaciers will disappear by 2100, endangering the water supply for 2 billion people and raising sea levels dramatically
Categories: Astronomy
How green hydrogen could power industries from steel-making to farming
Many industries are eyeing up hydrogen as a source of clean energy, but with supplies of green hydrogen limited, we should prioritise the areas where it could have the most positive impact on carbon emissions, say researchers
Categories: Astronomy
Some Arctic warming ‘irreversible’ even if we cut atmospheric CO2
Efforts to lower the levels of CO2 in the atmosphere may come too late to prevent long-term changes to the Arctic
Categories: Astronomy
Mars may once have had a much larger moon
There are two small moons in orbit around Mars today, but both may be remnants of a much larger moon that had enough of a gravitational pull to drive tides in the Red Planet's lost lakes and seas
Categories: Astronomy
Qubits break quantum limit to encode information for longer
Controlling qubits with quantum superpositions allows them to dramatically violate a fundamental limit and encode information for about five times longer during quantum computations
Categories: Astronomy
New antibiotic could stave off drug-resistant gonorrhoea
Neisseria gonorrhoeae, the microbe responsible for gonorrhoea, is developing resistance to most antibiotics, which means we need new drugs to treat the condition. An antibiotic called zoliflodacin might be part of a solution
Categories: Astronomy
Disney and OpenAI have made a surprise deal – what happens next?
In a stunning reversal, Disney has changed tack with regard to safeguarding its copyrighted characters from incorporation into AI tools – perhaps a sign that no one can stem the tide of AI
Categories: Astronomy
Killer whales and dolphins are ‘being friends’ to hunt salmon together
White-sided dolphins seem to help killer whales "scout" and catch Chinook salmon near Vancouver Island, then eat the leftovers
Categories: Astronomy
Supposedly distinct psychiatric conditions may have same root causes
People are often diagnosed with multiple neurodivergencies and mental health conditions, but the biggest genetic analysis so far suggests many have shared biological causes
Categories: Astronomy

