Science

Science

The PSLV - aka the Polar Satellite Launch Vehicle - is an expendable medium launch rocket that India devised and has flown since 1993. ISRO has launched 64 of the rockets and chalked up 58 successes. This mission, PSLV-C62 / EOS-N1, employed the PSLV-DL variant of the rocket, which uses a pair of external boosters. Other PSLV variants use four or six external boosters. The mission was a commercial affair, with 15 payloads aboard.

Supermassive black holes are mysterious bodies. Scientists aren't entirely sure how these beating hearts at the centers of most large galaxies formed. That includes Sagittarius A* (Sgr A*), the supermassive black hole at the center of our own Milky Way galaxy. Now a new preprint study is shedding light on Sagittarius A* by studying what happens as material falls toward the black hole.

Eukaryotes drastically differ from archaea and bacteria (collectively, prokaryotes) by the complex organization of eukaryotic cells. The signature features of this organizational complexity include the eponymous nucleus, the endomembrane system, the elaborate cytoskeleton and the energy-converting mitochondrion, which evolved from an alphaproteobacterial endosymbiont9. Thus, the last eukaryotic common ancestor (LECA) probably already possessed mitochondria along with the other signatures of the eukaryotic cellular organization.

the automation of heavy machinery enabled plants to operate continuously, increasing productivity and revenue. The downside was that any small hiccup was acutely felt, cascading through the production line. At first, it was assumed that inadequate lubrication of factory equipment was causing parts to seize up or break apart. And so, the Lubrication and Wear Group of the Institution of Mechanical Engineers, along with the Iron

Join Chabot astronomers for a live watch party of the magnificent Total Lunar Eclipse from Chabot's Observation Deck. Bring your friends & family and a lawn chair to enjoy Eclipse-themed crafts and demonstrations, then get bundled up with a cup of hot cocoa to watch this stunning celestial show. During the peak of the Eclipse, The Moon will become totally engulfed in Earth's dark

In 2018, Sharples and his research lab, now at the Norwegian School of Sport Sciences in Oslo, were the first to show that exercise could change how our muscle-building genes work over the long term. The genes themselves don't change, but repeated periods of exertion turns certain genes on, spurring cells to build muscle mass more quickly than before. These epigenetic changes have a lasting effect: Your muscles remember these periods of strength and respond favorably in the future.

Since Ureña also made a brief stint with the Los Angeles Dodgers last season, appearing in just two games after being granted his release from the Blue Jays, he's in line to receive a World Series ring later this year. He was guaranteed to take home a championship ring with two of his former teams - Toronto and Los Angeles - squaring off in the Fall Classic.

Ammonia might be the world's most under appreciated chemical. Without it, crops would go unfertilized and billions of people would starve. Humans started making ammonia in large amounts just over a century ago, and since then the process used to make it, known as Haber-Bosch, hasn't changed much. A new startup, Ammobia, says that it has tweaked the Haber-Bosch process to lower the cost by up to 40%.

For nearly 100 years, the United States has been the world's leader in a wide variety of scientific fields. No other country has: invested as much in fundamental scientific research, has made more scientific breakthroughs and scientific advances, has attracted more scientific researchers to move there to conduct their research, or has conducted more projects and been home to more scientists that have won Nobel Prizes.

Planet Labs ( ) has been on a tear, soaring 388% in 2025 and up another 96% since reporting earnings one month ago. The stock is up an incredible 811% from its 52-week low of $2.79 per share. While it has been winning significant government contracts, such as yesterday's announcement that it won a nine-figure contract from the Swedish government, which drove the stock 12% higher, PL is unprofitable and likely won't be for some time.

Can quantum physics enable better, cheaper, faster satellite photos? In a month or two, a startup will test a "quantum camera" for space-based imaging. If it works, it could slash the cost of missile defenses and give smaller NATO allies and partners spy-satellite capabilities that were once exclusive to major powers.

Structural biology is essential for understanding diseases and for developing drugs and vaccines. Africa has few specialists in this field, owing to limited infrastructure, training and mentorship opportunities - despite the efforts of non-profit organizations such as BioStruct-Africa, which I co-founded. doi: https://doi.org/10.1038/d41586-026-00072-3Competing Interests E.N. received a 2024 Google Award for a socially impactful project enabled by AlphaFold and Google DeepMind sponsorship in 2025 to support the BioStruct-Africa structural-biology training event (series 6). E.N. is also supported by a Wellcome Trust award (grant number 222999/Z/21/Z).

Batteries in electric vehicles that regularly use 100-plus-kilowatts fast chargers degrade faster than those that rely primarily on slow charging, a new study suggests. Using fast chargers more frequently can cause some packs to lose nearly a quarter of their capacity in eight years, it claims. We've seen other studies suggest that fast charging has little impact on long-term battery health, so it's not a settled debate.

A debate over a potential newly discovered species, and a tip for buying good sherry in this week's pick from the Nature archive.

Scientists at Tufts have found a way to turn common glucose into a rare sugar that tastes almost exactly like table sugar-but with far fewer downsides. Using engineered bacteria as microscopic factories, the team can now produce tagatose efficiently and cheaply, achieving yields far higher than current methods. Tagatose delivers nearly the same sweetness as sugar with significantly fewer calories, minimal impact on blood sugar, and even potential benefits for oral and gut health.

Sometime in the late 1990s, an adult ribbon worm was scooped up from the murk in the waters off the San Juan Islands, in the Pacific Northwest. He was moved to a tank along with a smattering of other invertebrates, including two vermilion bat stars and approximately 30 beige peanut worms. In the years since, the worm has been transported across the country to Virginia, where he lives now.

The study's authors researched 96 peer-reviewed studies documenting SSB to compile one of the most comprehensive datasets for primates to date. The study found that SSB are a "persistent and integral component of primate social [practices]." In fact, the prevalence of SSB across a variety of closely related primate species - and over several lines of descendants - "indicates a deep evolutionary root or multiple independent evolutionary origins," the study's authors wrote.

A gene that is important for human hearing could determine whether a dog's ears are pendulous like a basset hound's or stubby like a rottweiler's, according to a genetic analysis of more than 3,000 dogs, wolves and coyotes. The study, presented on 11 January at the Plant and Animal Genome Conference in San Diego, California, found that DNA variants near a gene called MSRB3 are linked to ear length in dogs. The results were also published in December in Scientific Reports.

In the U.S., more than 8 percent of all visits to a health care provider in the week that ended December 27 were for respiratory illness, according to the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention. That's the highest rate the agency has recorded since it began keeping track in 1997. According to the CDC, so far this season the flu has contributed to an estimated 120,000 hospitalizations and 5,000 deaths, including nine children.

The Dynamic Test Stand (Building 4550) rises more than twice as high as the Propulsion and Structural Test Facility and for good reason-it was built to fit a fully assembled Saturn V (363 feet or 111 meters tall) for mechanical and vibrational trials. Described once as the tallest building in the state, the stand later was used to form the first complete space shuttle stack with a winged orbiter (the prototype "Enterprise"), external fuel tank, and solid rocket boosters.

A dead star 730 light years away appears to be forming a powerful structure around itself - and despite their best efforts, astronomers aren't sure how. The cosmic corpse, designated RXJ0528+2838, is an incredibly dense stellar remnant known as a white dwarf, with a Sun-like star orbiting around it. This binary arrangement isn't uncommon throughout the universe, but what is strange is the structure surrounding the former body: a highly energetic and luminescent cloud known as a nebula,

We don't merely have the Hubble tension to reckon with, or the fact that different methods yield different values for the expansion rate of the Universe today, but a puzzle over whether dark energy is truly a constant in our Universe, as most physicists have assumed since its discovery back in 1998. While "early relic" methods using CMB or baryon acoustic oscillation data favor a lower value of around 67 km/s/Mpc, "distance ladder" methods instead prefer a higher, incompatible value of around 73 km/s/Mpc.