Researchers have looked at three decades of data and have found that there is another significant cause of coral reef bleaching in addition to warming waters due to global temperature increases. The study data looked at the Looe Key Reef in the lower Florida Keys and was conducted by Florida Atlantic University's Harbor Branch Oceanographic Institute. The research shows that a warming planet isn't the only issue.
In late April, the SpaceX Crew Dragon suffered an 'anomaly' during a Crew Dragon engine test in Cape Canaveral, resulting in smoke and speculation. The company soon confirmed that the explosion had destroyed the Crew Dragon and now it is back with more information about what went wrong. A leaking component, according to the company, likely set off a series of issues that led to the explosion.
Ultra-lightweight materials and intentionally triggering the greenhouse effect could be the key to terraforming Mars, a team of researchers have suggested, using silica aerogels to potentially build huge biospheres served with liquid water. The red planet has a surprising store of ice locked away under its surface, but tapping into that solid reservoir has presented a headache to human colonization plans.
Scientists have imaged a phenomenon officially known as Bell entanglement for the first time. Scientists John Bell formalized this phenomenon, but it was described by Albert Einstein first. Einstein described the quantum mechanics in the phenomenon as "spooky action at a distance" because of the instantaneousness of the remote interaction between a pair of entangled particles.
The next time you go to whack a fly with a fly swatter or book, keep in mind new research published by The University of Sydney. Researchers there say that they have known for over a decade that insects experience something like pain. New research published by University of Sydney researcher Greg Neely and colleagues at the university have found that insects also experience chronic pain that lasts long after an injury has healed.
Black holes are some of the most powerful and mysterious objects in the known universe. Scientists have lots of theories on black holes and are always searching for new examples to test those theories on. Hubble has found a new black hole that has a thin disk of matter that is whirling around the supermassive black hole at the heart of a spiral galaxy called NGC 3147 at 10% of the speed of light.
Astronomers have used the most powerful radio telescopes on Earth to observe a circumplanetary disk of gas and dust believed to be similar to one that circled Jupiter and created its moons. The disk surrounds planet PDS 70 c, which is a still-growing gas giant that is 370 light years from Earth and was revealed for the first time last month in visible light images.
As if landing on large planets weren't difficult enough, the space scientists and engineers in at JAXA (Japan Aerospace Exploration Agency) wanted to land a spacecraft on an asteroid. In fact, it wanted to do it twice, on the same moving asteroid. Mind-boggling but definitely epic and, fortunately for JAXA and its probe, that is exactly what happened. The very proud space agency just announced that its Hayabusa2 successfully hopped on the asteroid Ryugu for the second time and it sent home pictures to prove its short adventure.
Researchers at EPFL have developed a group of small robots that weigh only 10 grams each that are able to work as a group. The small robots are inspired by trap-jaw ants; individually, ants only have so much strength and intelligence. As a colony of ants, they can complete sophisticated tasks and evade larger predators.
A day after detailing its plan, Virgin Orbit has successfully dropped a test rocket from a plane high above the Mojave Desert in California. The test is a key step toward the space company's plan of eventually launching satellites into space from the air, an alternative to the typical ground-based launches used by SpaceX and other companies.
One of the coolest things to happen in Washington in a while will happen next week. To celebrate the 50th anniversary of the Moon landing on July 20 events are being held around Washington D.C. One of the most interesting of these events will take place at the Washington Monument.
One of the big challenges that the ESA and NASA are facing is keeping astronauts healthy on future long-duration space mission to other planets. On a trip to Mars, for instance, there is a real chance of injury requiring the sort of medical services readily available on Earth, but not available on Mars or inside a spaceship. To help provide astronauts with anything they might need the ESA has been working on a project to bioprint skin and bone.