Like all pandemics, it started out small. A novel coronavirus emerged in Brazil, jumping from bats to pigs to farmers before making its way to a big city with an international airport. From there, infected travellers carried it to the United States, Portugal and China. Within 18 months, the coronavirus had spread around the world,
The Sun is a wild place. Up in our skies, it appears pretty much the same day to day, but when you look closer, our star is often riotous with turbulent plasma. One of the wildest things the Sun can do is flare – belch out colossal loops of plasma that utterly dwarf our entire
Bob Chapek, chairman of Walt Disney Parks and Experiences, stands for a photograph at an unveiling event of Star Wars: Galaxy’s Edge at Walt Disney Co.’s Disneyland theme park in Anaheim, California, U.S., on Wednesday, May 29, 2019. Patrick T. Fallon | Bloomberg | Getty Images Disney is set to report earnings for its third
A satellite image of Tropical Storm Isaias moving over the northeastern United States on August 4, … [+] 2020. NOAA Tropical Storm Isaias’ strong winds knocked out power to vast swaths of the Mid-Atlantic and Northeast on Tuesday, plunging millions of people into the dark as the storm raced north. Wind gusts as high as
SAN FRANCISCO – Satellite propulsion startup Benchmark Space Systems announced an agreement Aug. 4 to provide non-toxic chemical propulsion for rideshare provider Spaceflight Inc.’s next-generation orbital transfer vehicle, Sherpa-NG. At the same time, Burlington, Vermont-based Benchmark revealed a permanent licensing partnership with Tesseract Space, a California propulsion startup. Under the terms of the deal, Vermont-based
Hiroshima survivor Setsuko Thurlow (pictured, centre, receiving the 2017 Nobel Peace Prize on behalf of the International Campaign to Abolish Nuclear Weapons) has written to world leaders this week urging them to step up disarmament efforts.Credit: Lise Aserud/EPA-EFE/Shutterstock The start of August marks an inauspicious anniversary for science, that of the first — and, so
It’s easy to think of black holes as voracious destruction machines, slurping up everything in their immediate vicinity. But that’s not always the case. The environments around active supermassive black holes are complex, and last year, a team of astronomers showed that there’s a safe zone around each supermassive black hole in which thousands of
MRI scan of the human brain getty It’s no secret that healthcare costs have risen faster than inflation for decades. Some experts estimate that healthcare will account for over 20% of the US GDP by 2025. Meanwhile, doctors are working harder than ever before to treat patients as the U.S. physician shortage continues to grow. Many medical professionals
Forbes has been Blackjack’s deputy program manager since 2018. WASHINGTON — Stephen Forbes has been tapped to lead the Defense Advanced Research Projects Agency’s Blackjack program, the agency said Aug. 4. DARPA’s Tactical Technology Office launched the Blackjack program in 2018 to demonstrate the value of small satellites in low Earth orbit as an alternative
As more electric buses and trucks enter the market, future fleets will require a lot of electricity for charging. While some utilities in California and elsewhere are planning for an increase in power demand, many have yet to do so and need to get started. This issue is critical, because freight trucks emit more than
A BP company logo at a gas station in London, U.K. Chris Ratcliffe | Bloomberg | Getty Images Energy giant BP reported a significant loss for the second quarter on Tuesday, after downgrading the value of some of its assets on expectations of lower commodity prices. Second-quarter underlying replacement cost profit, used as a proxy for
Phil Schiller, Apple Getty Images Apple announced on Tuesday that longtime marketing boss Phil Schiller will step down from his role and be replaced by one of his deputies, Greg Joswiak, who now has the title of vice president of worldwide marketing. Schiller will continue to work at Apple as an “Apple Fellow,” the company
It is 75 years since the United States dropped atomic bombs on the Japanese cities of Hiroshima and Nagasaki on 6 and 9 August 1945, killing around 200,000 people. Since then, humanity has had to coexist with the massive destructive power of nuclear weapons. Although such weapons have not been used in wars since, they
In February 1987, the sky lit up. In the Large Magellanic Cloud, 167,644 light-years away, astronomers watched as a massive star died in a spectacular supernova, the closest to Earth in hundreds of years. But when the fireworks died down, something was missing. There was no sign of the neutron star that should have been
Who you are together is more important than who you are alone. getty What makes us happy in a romantic relationship? The question might seem too complex to answer, too varied couple to couple. But a new study in the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences attempts to answer just that – using machine
Sources said the White House was unhappy with O’Rielly for not supporting President Trump’s request that the FCC re-examine Section 230 of the Communications Decency Act of 1934. WASHINGTON — President Trump on Aug. 3 withdrew the nomination of Michael O’Rielly for a new five-year term as member of the Federal Communications Commission. The White
An aerial view shows pumpjacks in the South Belridge Oil Field on April 24, 2020 near McKittrick, California. David McNew | Getty Images Oil prices slid on Tuesday amid concerns that a nascent recovery in fuel demand could stall as a fresh wave of COVID-19 infections around the world sparks tighter lockdowns just as major
Joan Cros | NurPhoto | Getty Images Japan’s Sony Corp on Tuesday reported a 1.1% decline in first-quarter operating profit, much milder than market estimates as its gaming business thrived while consumers locked down at home looked for entertainment and downloaded more games. The electronics and entertainment firm posted April-June profit of 228.4 billion yen ($2.15 billion), versus 230.9 billion yen
Spain’s lockdown to prevent the spread of COVID-19 lasted more than 6 weeks, and put Fernando T. Maestre in the medical centre with anxiety.Credit: Gabriel Bouys/AFP/Getty One week after giving a webinar (in Spanish) about the need to address poor mental health in academia, I was in the medical centre following several sleepless nights and
The question of whether ancient life could have existed on Mars centres on the water that once flowed there, but new research published Monday suggests that many of the Red Planet’s valleys were gouged by icy glaciers not rivers. The study in Nature Geoscience, which comes amid a flurry of new Mars missions trying to