In 2007, scientists at West Virginia University first identified an unusual intense burst of radio waves from space. Since then, these fast radio bursts, or FRBs, have been a mystery to astronomers. They only knew that FRBs are pulses of radio waves and that FRBs come from places within our galaxy, the Milky Way, and … Read more
Updated 3:30 p.m. Eastern after Globalstar statement. WASHINGTON — SpaceX completed a surge of three successful launches in a little more than 36 hours early June 19, days after an open letter within the company critical of founder Elon Musk led to the firing of several employees. The stretch of launches started June 17 with … Read more
A few years ago, deep beneath the Apennine Mountains in Italy, a team of physicists hunted for flashes of light that just might suggest human consciousness is the product of gravitational forces. The fact they came up empty-handed doesn’t mean we’re all meat computers with no free will; it does make the quest for a … Read more
If you wanted to do a forensic study of the Solar System, you might head for the main asteroid belt between Mars and Jupiter. That’s where you can find ancient rocks from the Solar System’s early days. Out there in the cold vacuum of space, far from the Sun, asteroids are largely untouched by space … Read more
A Falcon 9 rocket lifts off from pad 40 at Cape Canaveral Space Force Station with the Globalstar FM15 satellite. Credit: SpaceX SpaceX hauled a Globalstar communications satellite into orbit early Sunday from Cape Canaveral, pulling off the third Falcon 9 rocket flight in 36 hours, the fastest sequence of three missions by any commercial … Read more
Countdown clocks began ticking Saturday for NASA’s fourth attempt to complete a dress rehearsal countdown and fueling test of its Space Launch System moon rocket, a requirement before the huge booster can be cleared for launch on its long-awaited maiden flight. “There’s nobody that wants to get through this more than the EGS (Exploration Ground … Read more
Live coverage of the countdown and launch of a SpaceX Falcon 9 rocket from Space Launch Complex 40 at Cape Canaveral Space Force Station in Florida with the Globalstar FM15 voice and data relay satellite. Follow us on Twitter. SFN Live SpaceX is counting down to launch of a Falcon 9 rocket from Cape Canaveral Space … Read more
The G292.0+1.8 supernova remnant contains a pulsar moving at over a million miles per hour, as seen in the Chandra image along with an optical image from the Digitized Sky Survey. Pulsars are rapidly spinning neutron stars that can form when massive stars run out of fuel, collapse, and explode. Sometimes these explosions produce a … Read more
Wei Bao, Nebraska assistant professor of electrical and computer engineering. Credit: University of Nebraska-Lincoln Researchers from the University of Nebraska-Lincoln and the University of California, Berkeley, have developed a new photonic device that could get scientists closer to the “holy grail” of finding the global minimum of mathematical formulations at room temperature. Finding that illusive … Read more
When we see pictures of galaxies outside the Milky Way, what we’re usually looking at is primarily the light of their stars. But stars are far from the only ingredient that makes up a galaxy. Think of stars as the chunks of vegetables in the galactic soup. The broth, then, in which they float, … Read more