Science

A report here in November of 2019 showed the first and only known example of juvenile crania used as mortuary headgear. The skulls of young humans were placed on the heads of what were likely already-dead infants for their burial. These infants with human skull helmets were interred in their burial mounds at a ritual complex on the central coast of Ecuador for approximately 2100 years before they were dug up by researchers.

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NASA has announced the five private American space companies it has tapped to deliver payloads to the Moon under its Artemis program. The list is rounded out by some familiar names, including SpaceX and Blue Origin. The disclosure follows NASA's July announcement during which it opened to proposals from companies willing to provide this service.

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NASA has announced a new major discovery in the mission to find life beyond our planet: sugars. Specifically, the space agency says that the sugars essential to life have been found in meteorites; these compounds join others that are considered 'biologically important' to the formation of life. The discovery involves two different meteorites.

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Researchers from Penn State University has announced a new toilet coating that could make flushing toilets cleaner and reduce the amount of water used for toilet flushing. The team says that every day more than 141 billion liters of water is used for flushing toilets alone. The team has developed a robust, bio-inspired, liquid, sludge, and bacteria-repellant coating that can make a toilet self-cleaning.

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MIT has created a new system for autonomous cars that might one day help the autonomous auto to operate safely alongside human drivers. A team from MIT has been exploring if self-driving cars can be programmed to classify the social personalities of other drivers to allow the autonomous auto to better predict what different vehicles will do.

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Researchers from MIT, Harvard University, and the U.S. Army have built a compact device the size of a shoebox that works at room temperature to produce a terahertz laser with a frequency that can be tuned over a wide range. The big deal with the T-ray machine that the team has built is that it is the size of a shoebox.

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A team of engineers at WMG and the University of Warwick with assistance from a collaboration of other companies has created a 3D printed bionic hand that can be produced in 10 hours. The 3D printed bionic arm has muscle sensors to control an articulated thumb and can function similarly to a human hand. The bionic hand is part of the IMPACT project and was made possible thanks to a £900,000 grant from Innovate UK.

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As the home to the gas giants Jupiter and Saturn and the ice giants Neptune and Uranus, the outer reaches of our solar system can be a pretty weird place. NASA's Jet Propulsion Laboratory reinforced that notion today by sharing the strange orbits of two of Neptune's moons, Naiad and Thalassa. NASA JPL says that these moons are locked in a "dance of avoidance" that's "unprecedented."

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Scientists have discovered a star that was tossed out of our Milky Way galaxy by the supermassive black hole at the center of the galaxy. The star whipped around the black hole long enough to get up to an incredible rate of speed. According to the scientists, the star, dubbed S5-HVS1, was spotted in the constellation Grus using the 3.9-meter Anglo-Australian Telescope near Coonabarabran, Australia.

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Researchers from the University of Buffalo have designed a spacecraft that is shaped like a stingray that may one day explore Venus. The spacecraft was designed as part of the Bio-inspired Ray for Extreme Environments and Zonal Explorations or BREEZE project. NASA selected the spacecraft as one of the 12 finalists for the NAIC program that is designed to support new technologies.

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Raytheon has announced that it is working with DARPA on a project for detecting buried explosives using a unique method: bacteria. The work is taking place under a contract from the agency; Worcester Polytechnic Institute joins Raytheon in 'programming' two different bacteria strains to detect bombs located underground.

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Outside of St. Louis, Missouri on the night of November 11, 2019, a sonic boom was heard. At the same time, sightings from 7 different states tipped the appearance of a fireball falling from space. The next day, local Maine Mineral and Gem Museum sent out a bounty of sorts. The first person to bring them a one kilogram (or larger) chunk of this meteorite would get a $25,000 USD reward.

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