Science
Do we know how many Starship launches SpaceX will need to get NASA astronauts to the moon? No. Will its refuelling plan be simple? Also no.
NASA's Artemis IV moon mission will be a complicated affair — especially if SpaceX's Starship ends up being the lunar lander. The massive spacecraft will need an unknown number of…
Leviathan's sprawling stars challenge idea that dusty giants become compact galaxies
Astronomers using the James Webb Space Telescope (JWST) have confirmed a massive, dust-rich galaxy called Leviathan in the early universe. Seen when the universe was roughly 1.5 b…
Crow experiments suggest switching to vocal communication requires extra mental effort
For animals that can produce vocalizations, choosing to emit a sound involves various neural processes. For instance, it entails controlling when to emit a sound and how loud and …
Why does Betelgeuse keep fading? The mystery of Orion's giant star
From stellar pulsations to giant dust clouds and a mysterious companion, astronomers are piecing together why Betelguese keeps changing brightness.
US Buildings Lost to Wildfires Could Triple By 2060
The number of buildings across the contiguous United States threatened by wildfires could almost triple by 2060, according to a new study, if the country continues to ignore the p…
EPA Pulls the Plug on Regulating Air Pollution From Giant Livestock and Poultry Operations
The Environmental Protection Agency late last week announced it would end a 20-plus-year effort to develop methods to monitor air pollution from factory farms, effectively shutter…
Monarch butterflies get tiny trackers to help scientists follow their mysterious migration
As a child, Rebeca Quiñonez-Piñón wondered where monarch butterflies stop for a meal and a night's rest on their long migrations across North America. Now she and other scientists…
APOD: 2026 November 3 – Comet PanSTARRs and Rainbow Meteor
APOD Science APOD APOD: 2026 November 3 –… Today’s APOD Archive Submissions Index Search Calendar RSS Education About Discuss APOD Astronomy Picture of the Day Discover the cosm…
The Pacific’s Busy Storm Season
Super Typhoon In-fa developed an unusually large eye, and the remnants of Typhoon Champi transitioned into an extratropical storm that targeted Alaska.
How a scientist went from hero to traitor in a US water crisis – podcast
When the water in Flint, Michigan, became contaminated with dangerous levels of lead, Dr Siddhartha Roy, then a third year PhD student, was part of the team of scientists who publ…
Ceres' water ice can mask massive surface salt deposits
The dwarf planet Ceres is arguably one of the most overlooked and underappreciated planetary objects in the solar system. This could be because while Ceres has the same dwarf plan…
Queen's University Belfast students find Neptune's elusive Trojan asteroids
An international team led by researchers at Queen's University Belfast has made a discovery that has eluded astronomers for decades. Beginning in 1906, telescope observations reve…
Gas inside us could fight wound infections, moth study shows
A gas naturally produced by our own bodies could one day help treat skin and wound infections, potentially offering a new approach alongside conventional antibiotics.
Telltale furrows: What the Baltic Sea seafloor reveals about bottom trawling
To what extent does bottom trawling impact the seafloor of the Baltic Sea—and how quickly does it recover? Two new studies from the Leibniz Institute for Baltic Sea Research Warne…
Stem cells in deep sleep may point to a secret reserve for lifelong blood renewal
Researchers at the German Cancer Research Center (DKFZ) and the HI-STEM Stem Cell Institute have discovered a group of particularly long-lived blood stem cells in mice. These cell…
How competing reproductive needs shaped the evolution of liverworts
Liverworts reproduce through a life cycle involving two distinct stages. First, sperm fertilize eggs in the presence of water, producing embryos that develop into spore-producing …
Plants may experience 'optical illusions' that affect their direction of growth
A new study from Tel Aviv University reveals how plants, despite having neither a brain nor a nervous system, integrate light coming from multiple directions to determine where to…
Canada can develop infrastructure and protect biodiversity
Nearly 200 countries recently came together in Armenia for the 2026 United Nations Biodiversity Conference to review progress toward halting and reversing biodiversity loss. Many …
Deep-sea mussels trade tidal rhythms for a 24-hour cycle in the lab
Hydrothermal vents lie in perpetual darkness in the depths of the ocean, yet the cells of the vent mussel Bathymodiolus azoricus, which lives 1,700 meters (5,600 feet) below the s…
Impact of deep-sea mining on seafloor ecosystem still evident 44 years later
Little is known about the long-term effects of deep-sea mining on the organic matter that supports life on the seafloor. However, as interest in mining the deep sea for rare metal…
Exactly solvable model reveals how trapped light can create magnetic order in one-dimensional spin chains
A research team wanted to better understand how the forces between particles inside a material change. They discovered that by confining one-dimensional classical spin chains insi…
European flounder can complete whole life cycle in freshwater
Most flounders sampled in Lake Pulmanki in northern Finland had spent their entire lives in freshwater. The study provides the first evidence of the species living entirely in fre…
Industrialization reshapes gut microbes, from bacterial communities to their DNA, studies find
The totality of bacteria, viruses and fungi that exist in and on a multicellular organism forms its natural microbiome. The interactions between the body and these microorganisms …
Happy 65 Years: NASA’s Johnson Space Center Then and Now
Sixty-five years ago, a bold vision took root in Houston: a NASA center dedicated to human spaceflight. Since its founding, NASA’s Johnson Space Center has helped lead the nation’…