NASA has picked three companies to develop new lunar landers that will carry astronauts to the surface of the moon in 2024 and beyond. The agency announced today (April 30) that it has awarded contracts to SpaceX, a Blue Origin-led team and Dynetics to design and build a human landing system for the Artemis program, which […]
Sometimes they’re funny. Sometimes they’re annoying or even frustrating. They can disrupt you at the most inconvenient times. No, I’m not talking about your family members—good guess, though! I’m talking about hiccups. What are hiccups? And are there scientific reasons behind why we get them? The world’s longest bout of hiccups According to the Guinness […]
The COVID-19 pandemic has taken scientists to the forefront of press conferences, temporarily thrusting them into the spotlight. We hope that this race to find a cure will be a wake-up call, as dramatic as the race to the moon half a century ago—inspiring our society and political system to better recognize the value of […]
The coronavirus pandemic has the potential to permanently boost the popularity of telecommuting, say workplace experts—a societal shift that would have a profound impact on U.S. climate emissions. Due to the outbreak, millions more Americans are doing their jobs from home. And thanks to advances in technology—and a little nudge from widespread stay-at-home orders—the temporary […]
Many machines can recognize humans by their fingerprints or facial features. These biometric traits are not the only ones that set individuals apart, however. Each person’s walking gait is unique—and they can serve not only as identifiers but also as indicators of mood and health. A team of researchers has now developed remote sensors that […]
The novel coronavirus has upended our world over the past few months, forcing people to learn how to work in entirely new ways. For scientists in particular, Isaac Newton has repeatedly been held up as a model of epidemic-induced productivity, since he spent his 1666 “year of miracles” avoiding the plague in the English countryside […]
Since the start of the COVID-19 pandemic several months ago, scientists have been puzzling over the different ways the disease manifests itself. They range from cases with no symptoms at all to severe ones that involve acute respiratory distress syndrome, which can be fatal. What accounts for this variability? Might the answer lie in our […]
Originally published in April 1856 Credit: Scientific American Advertisement “Recently, on one of the Prussian railroads, a barrel which should have contained silver coin was found, on arrival at its destination, to have been emptied of its precious contents and refilled with sand. Professor Ehrenberg, of Berlin, sent for samples of sand from all the […]
On April 28, Vice President Pence visited the Mayo Clinic, but could not bring himself to comply with their safety protocols and don a mask. His behavior mimics President Trump’s prior refusal to wear a mask even as he urged Americans to do so. Pence said he wanted to be able to look health care […]
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NASA’s Mars Exploration Program is in calamitous straits. Cuts to the program in President Donald Trump’s budget proposal for the 2021 fiscal year (FY) could pull the plug on the space agency’s ensemble of orbiters, as well as its only active Mars rover, Curiosity, which has been prowling the Red Planet since 2012. If unchanged, […]