Original artwork by Ludmila Odintsova Lasers were created 60 years ago this year, when three different laser devices were unveiled by independent laboratories in the United States. A few years later, one of these inventors called the unusual light sources “a solution seeking a problem”. Today, the laser has been […]

This illustration highlights the Moon’s Clavius Crater with an illustration depicting water trapped in the lunar soil there, along with an image of NASA’s Stratospheric Observatory for Infrared Astronomy (SOFIA) that found sunlit lunar water. Credits: NASA/Daniel Rutter NASA’s Stratospheric Observatory for Infrared Astronomy (SOFIA) has confirmed, for the first […]

Stand in the soda pop aisle at the supermarket, surrounded by rows of brightly colored plastic bottles and metal cans, and it’s easy to conclude that the main environmental problem here is an overabundance of single-use containers: If we simply recycled more of them, we’d go a long way toward […]

For the experiment, atoms of rubidium-87 are first pre-cooled and then transported to the main test area, which is a custom-made vacuum chamber. There they are cooled to temperatures of just a few microkelvins. Credit: © Windpassinger group Patrick Windpassinger and his team demonstrate how light stored in a cloud […]

The researchers used brain imaging to explore other brain regions affected by sgACC over-activity during threat. Over-activation of sgACC increased activity within the amygdala and hypothalamus, two key parts of the brain’s stress network. By contrast, it reduced activity in parts of the lateral prefrontal cortex — a region important […]

A traffic jam in Lagos: Around a quarter of used cars imported into Nigeria were over 20 years old GETTY IMAGES Millions of highly polluting used cars from rich countries are being “dumped” on developing nations, according to a UN report. Between 2015 and 2018, some 14 million older, poor […]

The first large-scale study of the risks that countries face from dependence on water, energy, and land resources has found that globalization may be decreasing, rather than increasing, the security of global supply chains. Countries meet their needs for goods and services through domestic production and international trade. As a […]

TOI 700, a planetary system 100 light-years away in the constellation Dorado, is home to TOI 700 d, the first Earth-size habitable-zone planet discovered by NASA’s Transiting Exoplanet Survey Satellite. Credit: NASA’s Goddard Space Flight Center TESS, the Transiting Exoplanet Survey Satellite, was launched in 2018 with the goal of […]

This artist’s impression shows LTT 9779b near the star it orbits and highlights the planet’s ultra-hot (2000 Kelvin) day-side and its quite toasty night-side (around 1000 K). Credit: Ethen Schmidt A team led by an astronomer from the University of Kansas has crunched data from NASA’s TESS and Spitzer space telescopes to portray […]

Dotted around the International Space Station, these orange pouches collect information on radiation levels using a device called a dosimeter. The experiment has been monitoring radiation levels since 2009 and the current pouches are changed after each six-month crew rotation. This pouch has been placed on the left side of […]