Just how dark is the universe, anyway? It’s a pretty hard thing to measure when we’re sitting this close to the sun. But NASA’s New Horizons probe is so far away that the images it takes of the distant universe are able to deliver the most accurate measurement ever of […]
CIMON will assist astronauts on the International Space Station. Credit: NASA/Kim Shiflett, CC BY Artificial intelligence has been making waves in recent years, enabling us to solve problems faster than traditional computing could ever allow. Recently, for example, Google’s artificial intelligence subsidiary DeepMind developed AlphaFold2, a program which solved the protein-folding problem. […]
NuSTAR images of XTE J1858+034 as observed in November 2019. Credit: Malacaria et al., 2021. Using NASA’s Nuclear Spectroscopic Telescope Array (NuSTAR), an international team of astronomers has conducted X-ray observations of an accreting X-ray pulsar known as XTE J1858+034. Results of the study, presented in a paper published January […]
The map shows the mean production for the year 2008 across the Laurentian Great Lakes region. Lake production values are scaled from low (blue) to high (red). Image Description: A satellite image of the Great Lakes with different colors across the lakes to show lake production values. Credit: Karl Bosse/MTRI […]
Deep Space Station 56, or DSS-56, is a powerful 34-meter-wide (112-foot-wide) antenna that was added to the Deep Space Network’s Madrid Deep Space Communications Complex in Spain in early 2021. Credit: NASA/JPL-Caltech The addition brings new capabilities to the network, which acts as an interplanetary switchboard, connecting us to missions […]
3D view of one especially complex multi-fault rupture from the synthetic earthquake catalog developed by the Southern California Earthquake Center using a new earthquake modeling framework. Credit: Kevin Milner, University of Southern California Massive earthquakes are, fortunately, rare events. But that scarcity of information blinds us in some ways to […]
Axions are a hypothetical particle that might explain the existence of dark matter. But it might occasionally interact with normal matter, especially in the cores of stars. A team of physicists have searched for evidence of axions in Betelgeuse and come up with nothing. It doesn’t mean that the axion […]
High-resolution illustration of the Roman spacecraft against a starry background. Credit: NASA’s Goddard Space Flight Center When it launches in the mid-2020s, NASA’s Nancy Grace Roman Space Telescope will explore an expansive range of infrared astrophysics topics. One eagerly anticipated survey will use a gravitational effect called microlensing to reveal […]
The TRAPPIST-1 system has long be studied by exoplanet hunters due to its unique quantity of planets that happen to also be Earth sized. In a recent paper, a team of scientists led by Erik Agol at the University of Washington, dove into more detail on the density of the seven known planets in […]
The brains of musicians have stronger structural and functional connections compared to those of non-musicians, regardless of innate pitch ability, according to new research from JNeurosci. Years of musical training shape the brain in dramatic ways. A minority of musicians — with Mozart and Michael Jackson in their ranks — also […]