Science

The Great Barrier Reef has deteriorated to such an extent it should be listed as a world heritage site “in danger,” a United Nations committee said Tuesday — prompting immediate backlash from the Australian government.

The search is on for more galaxies lacking Hubble findings deepen the mystery surrounding galaxy missing dark matter, with more work needed in order to understand how these galaxies formed without dark matter.

Shenzhou-12, meaning ‘Divine Vessel’, will be the third of 11 missions needed to complete China’s space station by 2022. A Chinese spacecraft will blast off from the Gobi Desert on a Long March rocket in the coming days, ferrying three men to an orbiting space module for a three-month stay, …

Bdelloid rotifers typically live in watery environments and have an incredible ability to survive. Russian scientists found the creatures in a core of frozen soil extracted from the Siberian permafrost using a drilling rig. “Our report is the hardest proof as of today that multicellular animals could withstand tens of …

For $28 million, a civilian will see space. That’s the winning bid for a seat aboard the New Shepard when Jeff Bezos’ space tourism venture Blue Origin flies people to space for the first time next month. The live auction lasted under 10 minutes Saturday, after opening at $4.9 million …

Despite a massive reduction in commuting and in many commercial activities during the early months of the pandemic, the amount of carbon in Earth’s atmosphere in May reached its highest level in modern history, a global indicator released on Monday showed. Scientists from the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration (NOAA) …

NASA is now on the perplexing UFO case. NASA chief Bill Nelson, who assumed his post just last month, has asked agency researchers to look into the spate of UFO sightings that U.S. Navy pilots have reported over the past two decades, media reported. “Now that I’m here at NASA, …

NASA has just approved two missions to Venus that will provide the scientific community with a wealth of new data on Earth’s closest planetary neighbor. “The combined results of these missions will tell us about the planet from the clouds in its sky through the volcanoes on its surface all …

Iceland’s glaciers have lost around 750 square kilometers, or seven percent of their surface, since the turn of the millennium due to global warming, a study published on Monday showed. The glaciers, which cover more than 10 percent of the country’s landmass, shrank in 2019 to 10,400 square kilometers, the …

Heat-related deaths are a serious problem in a warming world Heat is a killer — and climate change is driving up its body count. On average, about 37 percent of heat deaths can be tied back to human-caused climate change, according to a new study in Nature Climate Change. The …

A navigation timing error sent NASA’s little Mars helicopter on a wild, lurching ride, its first major problem since it took to the Martian skies last month. The experimental helicopter, named Ingenuity, managed to land safely, officials at the Jet Propulsion Laboratory reported Thursday. “Despite unexpected motion from an image …

In a first-of-its-kind, peer-reviewed study, researchers have turned back the biological clock in 43 healthy adult males, by up to three years and over just eight weeks, through diet, sleep, exercise, and relaxation interventions. In the randomized, controlled clinical trial, all of the volunteers were aged between 50 and 72 …

Dry weather this year raises the risk of severe fires in Brazil’s Amazon rainforest and Pantanal wetlands, scientists say, warning that drought could fuel the destruction of biomes critical to curbing climate change. Last year, dry weather helped fuel record fires in the Pantanal, while the Amazon experienced the worst …

Scientists hope the scrappy predators’ reintroduction can balance ecosystems ravaged by invasive species. Tasmanian devils have been born in the wild on Australia’s mainland 3,000 years after the marsupials disappeared from the continent, conservation groups said Tuesday, raising hopes that a major rewilding effort could succeed. Aussie Ark and a …

Doctors for the first time have used a form of gene therapy to restore partial vision in a blind person, according to findings announced Monday. The research team genetically altered retinal ganglion cells to become light-sensitive in a man whose vision was destroyed by retinitis pigmentosa, a genetic disorder that …

China’s first Mars rover has driven down from its landing platform and is now roaming the surface of the red planet, China’s space administration said Saturday. The solar-powered rover touched Martian soil at 10:40 a.m. Saturday Beijing time, the China National Space Administration said. #JustIn: Video footage documenting #Zhurong rover …

Using a variety of probes including the new Solar Orbiter, NASA and the ESA have captured multiple solar eruptions, made up of billions of tons of plasma, in unprecedented detail. NASA and the European Space Agency launched the Solar Orbiter probe in February 2020 and it made its first close …

The China National Space Administration (CNSA) has published images taken by the Martian rover Zhurong during the landing process of the country’s first Mars exploration, the Tianwen-1 mission. On Wednesday, the CNSA published two images taken by Zhurong, showing a successful landing on the red planet. The images show the …

Sharks use the Earth’s magnetic field as a sort of natural GPS to navigate long journeys across the world’s oceans, scientists have discovered. Marine laboratory experiments with a small species of shark have confirmed long-held suspicions that sharks use magnetic fields as aids to navigation. This behavior has also been …

An uncrewed Chinese spacecraft successfully landed on the surface of Mars on Saturday, state news agency Xinhua reported, making China the second space-faring nation after the United States to land on the Red Planet. The Tianwen-1 spacecraft landed on a site on a vast plain known as Utopia Planitia, “leaving …