NASA has revealed it repurposed the processor the Perseverance rover used to communicate with the Ingenuity Mars Helicopter, to help the rolling robot navigate the Red Planet autonomously "for potentially unlimited distances." The aerospace agency revealed the hack last week in a post that says it used the rover's Helicopter Base Station (HBS) because its processor is 100 times faster than the rover's other kit.
Biology is undergoing a transformation. After centuries of studying life as it evolves naturally, researchers are now using a combination of computation and genome engineering to intervene, generating new proteins and even whole bacteria from scratch. The use of artificial-intelligence tools to design biological components, an approach known as generative biology, is set to turbocharge this area of research. Just last year, scientists used AI-assisted design to produce artificial genes that can be expressed in mammalian cells.
In a sudden turn of events last Wednesday the U.S. Food and Drug Administration agreed to review Moderna's new mRNA flu vaccine, according to the company. The announcement came roughly a week after Moderna revealed that the FDA had rejected its application. The company said the agency originally called the plan for the vaccine's phase 3 trials acceptable, But its position changed after top FDA official Vinay Prasad overruled the agency's reviewers, according to STAT.
Elon Musk has confirmed that Starship will fly again next month, reiterating SpaceX's aggressive timeline for the first launch of its Starship V3 rocket. Musk shared the update in a brief post on X, writing, "Starship flies again next month." The CEO's post was accompanied by a video of Starship's Super Heavy booster being successfully caught by a launch tower in Starbase, Texas. The timeline is notable.
He has been filmed multiple times being dragged and chased by older Japanese macaques inside the enclosure. Early clips showed him wandering alone with the toy after being pushed away by other monkeys, and clutching it tightly while being harassed. Viewers were briefly relieved when later videos emerged of another monkey grooming and comforting him. However, just days later, new footage showed Punch once again being targeted this time dragged aggressively in a circle by a much larger monkey.
The flock of 50 or so pigeons lifts from the barn roof as one. The loud clapping of wings makes the horses jump, even though this happens several times a day. I scan the sky for a peregrine but can't see signs of danger. They swirl once, then settle back on to the corrugated metal roof. These farmyard pigeons are a mix of feral and wood pigeons that hang out happily together.
But what, exactly, is a blizzard? A blizzard doesn't always mean "a lot of snow," though it can certainly bring heavy snowfalls, as this storm is expected to along parts of the East Coast. Rather, the National Weather Service defines it as a snowstorm with winds regularly above 35 miles per hour and "considerable falling" or blowing snow for at least three hours.
The first major astronomical event visible in 2026 is a total lunar eclipse, or "blood moon." This phenomenon is highly prized by stargazers because the entire lunar disk takes on a reddish color for a few moments. The total lunar eclipse will occur on March 3. It will be clearly visible in North and Central America, while in Central and South Asia it will only be partially visible.
Martschenko's argument is largely that genetic research and data have almost always been used thus far as a justification to further entrench extant social inequalities. But we know the solutions to many of the injustices in our world-trying to lift people out of poverty, for example-and we certainly don't need more genetic research to implement them. Trejo's point is largely that more information is generally better than less.
Those of us who watch the Olympics as bystanders tend to smugly judge athletes for succumbing to pressure without understanding what we even mean by the term. The first thing to know about pressure is that it has actual physical properties. Feeling it is not a sign of a too-thin veneer of character. Pressure might as well be a snakebite, given its very real qualities in the bloodstream and how it can paralyze even the strongest legs. The way to deal with pressure, and become
I've thought about it so much, Larkin said. It's what everyone wanted, this matchup in a gold-medal game. Yeah, I've thought about it a lot. Those thoughts become reality Sunday when the North American countries that have become the preeminent global hockey powerhouses face off in a titanic final of a best-vs.-best tournament with many of the NHL's biggest stars. The U.S. against Canada on the biggest stage in sports should be hard-hitting, quick-skating, must-see entertainment.
As I write this week's edition, NASA's Space Launch System rocket is undergoing a second countdown rehearsal at Kennedy Space Center, Florida. The outcome of the test will determine whether NASA has a shot at launching the Artemis II mission around the Moon next month, or if the launch will be delayed until April or later. The finicky fueling line for the rocket's core stage is the center of attention after a hydrogen leak cut short a practice countdown earlier this month.
Your consciousness can connect you with the entire universe, a groundbreaking study suggests. Experts from Wellesley College in Massachusetts claim that traditional connections in the brain cannot fully explain how we are aware of our existence. Instead, they argue that quantum physics taking place within our skull is what generates awareness. This includes the idea that particles can exist in multiple states and locations at the same time.
Star-formation will eventually end, and then the last shining stars will burn out. Galaxies will dissociate due to gravitational interactions, ejecting all masses and leaving only supermassive black holes behind. And then those black holes will decay via Hawking radiation, leaving only cold, stable, isolated bodies, from which no further energy can be extracted, all accelerating away from us within our dark energy-dominated Universe.
For example, reader David Erickson had this on his mind: If there were aliens 66 million light-years from Earth, how big a telescope would they need to see dinosaurs? Ha! I love this question. I've thought of it myself but never worked out the mathexcept to think, Probably pretty big, which turns out to dramatically underestimate the actual answer.
During Thursday's rehearsal, NASA was able to fuel the Space Launch System (SLS) rocket with more than 700,000 gallons of liquid propellant and complete two runs of terminal count - the final step of the launch countdown - at the Kennedy Space Center in Florida. While there was a hiccup due to a loss of ground communications, NASA was able to move to a backup system before the regular comms channels were back in operation.
Pierre-Louis: If you really think about it, ice skating is just controlled slipping on ice. And whenever I go skating I can't help but think about the Winter Olympics, like the ones that are happening right now in Italy.
A statement by the government's region 5 livestock office for Chiang Mai, said the animals had been infected with canine distemper virus, with veterinarians also identifying mycoplasma bacteria as a secondary infection. Earlier however, Somchuan Ratanamungklanon, director general of the department of livestock development within the Thai agricultural ministry, told the Thai outlet Matichon that the tigers had been infected with feline panleukopenia.
Researchers in China have reportedly tested a new, gravity-defying wind turbine system that they say could generate power from the airspace above cities. The turbine is called the S2000 Stratosphere Airborne Wind Energy System, or SAWES. Held up by what is essentially a helium blimp, the machine reportedly generated 385 kilowatts of electricity from 2,000 meters (more than 6,500 feet) above the city of Yibin in China's province of Sichuan, according to a recent Euronews report.
Qunnect and Cisco have unveiled what they say is the first entanglement-swapping demonstration of its kind over deployed metro-scale fibre using a commercial quantum networking system. The demonstration combined Qunnect's room-temperature quantum hardware with Cisco's quantum networking software stack. The net result of the project is regarded by the partners as being able to bring practical quantum networks closer to scalable deployment, validating a spoke-and-hub model for scaling quantum networks through commercial datacentres.
I'm always looking for books that challenge the status quo, and when I learned about Roland Ennos' new book The Powerful Primate: How Controlling Energy Enabled Us to Build Civilization, I couldn't wait to get my eyes on it, and I'm thrilled I did. In this landmark book, Ennos offers "a compelling argument that flips the traditional view of humanity on its head."
Microsoft has achieved a breakthrough with Project Silica. The technology for long-term data storage now works with borosilicate glass. This is the same material used for cookware and oven doors. The method can store data for up to 10,000 years. Long-term storage of digital information remains a challenge for data centers and archives. Magnetic tapes and hard drives degrade within a few decades, making them less suitable for storing data for future generations.
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In a paper published in the journal Nature this week, Microsoft researchers now say these long-term storage qualities can be achieved using the same kind of borosilicate glass found in oven doors and Pyrex glassware. In their testing, they were able to etch 258 layers of data totaling roughly 2.02 TB onto a 2 mm thick borosilicate glass plate while achieving write speeds of between 18.4 and 65.9 Mbps depending on the number of laser beams used.
