Science

Human activity has resulted in a large number of plastic items in the ocean, where it slowly breaks down into small bits of plastic. These smaller pieces of plastic are then transformed into harmful microplastics, a process that includes an unlikely element: lobsters. According to a new study, lobsters that eat small pieces of plastic end up introducing microplastics into the water, which then puts smaller creatures at risk.

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The Earth may be on lockdown but that hasn't stopped NASA and the Russian Space Agency Roscosmos sending a new crew to the International Space Station today. The launch went as scheduled this morning, from the Baikonur Cosmodrome in Kazakhstan, with the three crew members aboard a Russian Soyuz spacecraft.

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A new study has been published that contradicts something that many people believe of black holes. One of the things that most people have heard about the black hole is that nothing can escape its gravitational pull, not even light. While that is true for light and other material in the immediate vicinity of the black hole, a bit further out in the disc of material that surrounds the black hole, some light does escape.

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Rocket Lab is a company that is dedicated to launching small satellites. Like most private space companies have realized, capturing and reusing rocket stages is much cheaper than building rockets each time a launch occurs. SpaceX uses systems to have its first stage rockets land themselves at sea or on the ground. Rocket Lab is taking a different path and has successfully tested the system for mid-air recovery of its first stage rocket.

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Anyone who has a pet knows that animals are very agile. Some of the things they're able to do are very impressive. A group of researchers at the Berkeley Artificial Intelligence Research (BAIR) laboratory at Berkeley are trying to teach robots to move like animals. The scientists say that they have presented a framework for learning robotic locomotion skills by imitating animals.

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Imperial College London researchers have announced they are teaming up the Vodafone Foundation on the "Corona-AI" project that will use the DreamLab app to take advantage of smartphone computing power while device owners sleep. The app is already being used to help find possible cancer drugs, and the Corona-AI project hopes to use the idle processing power of smartphones to find new treatments for coronavirus/COVID-19.

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SpaceX's Dragon cargo spacecraft has successfully returned to Earth from the International Space Station carrying a variety of scientific investigations that were conducted in space. The capsule splashed down near the California coast on Tuesday, according to SpaceX, which says its ship transported dozens of US National Laboratory scientific research projects.

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A monumental collision strong enough to jolt Uranus off its rotational plane and forever change the planet's behavior could explain one of the long-standing mysteries about the oddly-tilted ice giant. New research dug deep into theories that suggested, as happened to Earth billions of years ago, a huge celestial crash might have led to the strange behaviors observed from the seventh planet from the Sun.

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What's likely the most massive string jellyfish ever caught on video was shared today by the Schmidt Ocean Institute. This is just one of a WILD collection of living oddities the latest deep sea crews have captured on film, sharing the lot from the region called the Ningaloo Canyons. What you're about to see will make you forget ALL about the living nightmare happening on dry land with our current global pandemic - because down here, there's a WHOLE different nightmare going on.

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An executive order paving the way to mining the Moon, Mars, and more has been signed by US President Trump, dismissing once again concerns by some that space resources should be considered a "global commons" worthy of special considerations. The order, signed on April 6, highlights the potential value of water ice and minerals in space, which could be used to support crewed missions like Artemis to Mars and beyond.

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Researchers at Imperial College London have created something that they describe as an artificial fog. The so-called artificial fog is able to scatter laser light producing high brightness with a low-power. The team believes that the discovery could eventually replace light bulbs thanks to the light scattering property of the artificial fog.

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Boeing has made the decision to conduct a second Orbital Test Flight following the troubles it experienced late last year with the initial test. The company announced its decision on Monday, stating that it will conduct a second flight at zero cost to taxpayers, doing so to prove the safety of its system. The second flight will follow its first Orbital Test Flight in December 2019, which experienced a glitch that caused the capsule to enter the wrong orbit.

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