After the space community braced for a brutal shake-up at NASA this week, a last-minute decision on Tuesday (Feb. 18) spared over 1,000 agency employees on probationary status from being dismissed. The news comes amid an aggressive push by the Trump administration and so-called Department of Government Efficiency, or DOGE — spearheaded by SpaceX CEO … Read more
WASHINGTON — President Donald Trump and SpaceX Chief Executive Elon Musk reiterated claims in a televised interview that NASA astronauts were “abandoned” on the International Space Station for political reasons, an allegation that appears unsupported by evidence. In a joint interview with Fox News host Sean Hannity broadcast Feb. 18, Hannity noted plans by Musk’s … Read more
Astronomers have uncovered a treasure trove of feeding black holes at the heart of dwarf galaxies — small, faint galaxies containing thousands to several billions of stars but very little gas. The discovery, made with the Dark Energy Spectroscopic Instrument (DESI), contains several “missing link” intermediate-mass black holes. This is both the largest sample of … Read more
A centuries-old technique for making cement may be the key to large-scale carbon capture, according to US chemists. The first step in making cement involves converting limestone to calcium oxide, inside a kiln heated to 1400 degrees Celsius. Calcium oxide is then mixed with sand to produce a vital ingredient for cement. Inspired by this … Read more
Despite what Star Trek and Star Wars may have taught you, the amount of time required to travel between stars is vast. Consider Voyager 1. The spacecraft is traveling at 38,000 mph (61,155 km/h). If Voyager 1 were pointed towards our nearest star, Proxima Centauri (which it isn’t), it would take 73,000 years to reach … Read more
Extreme cold is hitting the U.S. Here’s a person bundled up against the cold. Image via Demeter Attila/ Pexels. Dangerous cold in mid-US on Wednesday As of late Tuesday night and early Wednesday morning, Extreme Cold Warnings stretched over 1,300 miles (2,100 km) of the continental United States, from North Dakota, down through south Central … Read more
If you’re in the Northern Hemisphere, Shaula and Lesath will come over your southeastern horizon before dawn sometime this month. They’re a hopeful sign that spring is coming. How do you recognize the coming of spring? Maybe you spot a first returning robin. Or tune into news about a groundhog looking for its shadow. For … Read more
For the last month and change, you might’ve seen the headlines about the planetary alignment, or a planetary parade, going on in our solar system. And that’s true. In January 2025, Venus, Mars, Jupiter, Saturn, Uranus and Neptune were all visible in the night sky. And in February, 2025, Mercury will join the fun, with … Read more
Study author, Maëlan Tomasek, with a “volunteer” in the experiment conducted in the Mediterranean Sea. Credit: Maëlan Tomasek European researchers have made the startling claim that fish can recognise individual divers. In a peer reviewed paper published today in Biology Letters, the research team from the Max Planck Institute of Animal Behavior (MPI-AB) in Germany … Read more
For those who missed the memo, UFOs (Unidentified Flying Objects) are now called UAPs (Unidentified Aerospace-Undersea Phenomena). The term UFO became so closely tied to alien spacecraft and fantastical abduction stories that people dismissed the idea, making any serious discussion difficult. The term UAP is a broader term that encompasses more unexplained objects or events … Read more