Deep in the waters of the Pacific Ocean, off the coast of California, marine scientists have been lucky enough to capture a rare and wonderful sight: a sweet Dumbo octopus going about its business. They’re absolutely adorable, but unfortunately we don’t tend to spot Dumbo octopuses (Grimpoteuthis) often; they live deep below the surface of
For decades the existence of weird space clouds in Earth’s orbit has been speculative and controversial, but new research looks to validate their strange reality after all. The Kordylewski clouds – two mysterious swarms of dust trapped between the competing gravitational fields of Earth and the Moon – were first hypothesised back in the 1950s,
NASA scientist Jeremy Harbeck was on a surveying flight over the Antarctic Peninsula earlier this month when he spotted an iceberg that looked like no other. It was almost perfectly rectangular, with square sides and a flat top that made it look more human-made than natural. “I thought this rectangular iceberg was visually interesting and
Share to facebook Share to twitter Share to linkedin The Hubble Space Telescope resumed normal operations over the weekend, after a terrifying few weeks when it looked like the stalwart spacecraft was on its last legs. Hubble reported itself offline on its Twitter account early in October and NASA explained that the craft had entered
Mitchell is now considered the father of the U.S. Air Force, but the Air Force has forgotten the lessons of his experience when it comes to the new combat domain of space This op-ed originally appeared in the Oct. 8, 2018 issue of SpaceNews magazine. Since President Trump announced he would form the U.S. Space
There are plenty of animals that have the ability to count, even without the use of language. But of all the non-human species in the world, the Asian elephant (Elephas maximus) appears to be the true mathematician. New research has found that Asian elephants have an exceptional way with numbers that appears to be unique
Deep in the enormous citadel of an ancient Peruvian culture, archaeologists have uncovered a corridor containing 19 mysterious black wooden statues. Some are wearing masks of clay, tucked into special alcoves that line the walls. The eerie line-up was discovered in the ruins of the great Chimú culture capital city of Chan Chan, which is
Looking up at space reminds us that everyone and everything on Earth is stuck together on a big space rock that’s drifting through an infinite black void. Unfortunately, terrestrial concerns like work, dinner, and getting enough sleep tend to keep us facing down. Thankfully, some people not only take the time to appreciate the night
This Halloween, the creepiest event to attend might be a mass online social experiment hosted by researchers at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology. MIT is famous for churning out some of the world’s top engineers, programmers, and scientists. But the university’s Media Laboratory is increasingly known for launching experimental projects in October that are designed
Artist’s impression. The Dawn spacecraft.Credit: NASA / JPL-Caltech / UCLA / MPS / DLR / IDA Dawn is riding off into the sunset. The NASA spacecraft—nearing the end of an eleven-year mission—is almost out of fuel. “We’re running on fumes,” says Marc Rayman of the Jet Propulsion Laboratory in Pasadena, California. Indeed, what’s left of
WASHINGTON — The commercial spaceflight industry expects to learn more this week on the status of regulatory reform efforts as well as progress on improving the integration of launches into the national airspace system. One part of Space Policy Directive 2, signed by President Trump in May, directs the Department of Transportation, through the Federal
The beast of an earthquake that rattled Mexico in September of last year has turned out to be even more unusual than we knew. Not only did it hit magnitude 8.2 and produce strange lights in the sky, seismologists have now revealed it also cracked a tectonic plate all the way through. “If you think
Ever since Elon Musk shared his blueprints for the hyperloop – a revolutionary transport system that has the potential to shuttle humans at speeds of more than 1,200 km/h (746 mph) – the engineering community has been in overdrive, with hyperloop prototypes popping up all over the place. And now Musk has put up footage
For years, a mystery puzzled environmental scientists. The world had banned the use of many ozone-depleting compounds in 2010. So why were global emission levels still so high? The picture started to clear up in June. That’s when The New York Times published an investigation into the issue. China, the paper claimed, was to blame for these mystery emissions. Now it turns
On September 12, 2018, Apple’s COO Jeff William announced that the Apple Watch Series 4 would contain an FDA-cleared ECG sensor. This immediately triggered a mixed-bag reaction in the digital health community, from healthy skepticism to an outcry about its effect on the already overwhelmed cardiac care ecosystem. Apple announced three separate but related features,
If Democrats make big gains, does Trump’s proposal to create a new military service stand a chance? “On National Security” appears in every issue of SpaceNews magazine. This column ran in the Oct. 22, 2018 issue. The Space Force that U.S. President Donald Trump ordered the Pentagon to set up — a fully loaded new
Sphen wanted to show Magic how much he meant to him. The male gentoo penguin grasped a wet, heart-shaped stone in his beak, waddled to Magic’s nest and plopped it down to buttress their nest. It is a sign of courtship, experts have said, but also practicality. Magic needed to stay huddled over their egg, using rocks to
More than eight decades after they were predicted to exist, physicists have found evidence of discrete units of matter that could help us better understand the electrical equivalent of ferromagnetism. Called hysterons, these nano-scaled stacks of molecules act like independent particles in a crowd, solving a long standing mystery while laying the groundwork for advanced
Ending a romantic relationship is never easy, and there’s something about a bad relationship that makes it especially hard to break off. Researchers are still not entirely sure what that “something” is, but a new study suggests it may be a curious sign of altruism. You might assume people who stay in an unhappy relationship are
An awful lot can happen in any given week, and it’s no easy task keeping up with all the excitement – both in the world of science and beyond. To keep you up to date with our coverage at ScienceAlert, each week we put together this shareable image with some of the past week’s highlights.