UPenn engineers created a flexible, durable insulator out of mylar to protect future lunar habitats
Thin stacks of Mylar combined strong vacuum insulation with resistance to repeated compression in laboratory tests.Alumina coatings and…
MEGATRON simulations connect the first stars with the universe’s smallest galaxies
MEGATRON simulations offer a possible explanation for the similar iron content of many of the smallest galaxies.Radiation delayed…
Humans may not have the heart for space travel to Mars
Male rats exposed to simulated cosmic radiation had roughly twice as much collagen around heart blood vessels at…
Scientists calculate how much information exists in the observable universe
A theoretical calculation estimates roughly 6 × 10⁸⁰ bits of information in selected ordinary-matter particles across the observable…
NASA plans radar and seismic tests for a hidden lunar cave that could shelter future astronauts
NASA selected GIMLI to investigate whether the Marius Hills Pit opens into an underground lunar lava tube.Radar, seismic…
Five-dimensional black holes offer a possible explanation for dark matter and neutrinos
A theoretical study predicts five-dimensional primordial black holes within a model containing a hidden extra spatial dimension.Some modeled…
Earth’s magnetic field took 70,000 years to complete an ancient reversal
North Atlantic sediments record two magnetic reversals lasting approximately 18,000 and 70,000 years, longer than commonly assumed.The findings…
Cosmic gamma rays test the limits of Einstein’s speed of light rule
A reanalysis of cosmic gamma-ray measurements found no evidence of the tested departures from Lorentz invariance.The researchers tightened…
Rainstorms billions of years ago may have created habitable hotspots on Mars
A new global model suggests ancient Mars did not receive prebiotic formaldehyde evenly. Rainfall and atmospheric water vapor…
Asteroid Bennu may have formed much closer to the Sun than scientists thought
Isotope measurements from asteroid Bennu closely match those of asteroid Ryugu and rare CI carbonaceous chondrites, suggesting all…
CERN recreates cosmic ray collisions to reveal what happens when space particles hit Earth
Physicists at CERN have directly measured proton-oxygen collisions at 9.62 TeV per nucleon pair, closely recreating an important…
The Moon may have formed almost intact within hours of Theia smashing into Earth
New simulations of the Moon-forming giant impact show that treating the early Earth and Theia as realistic geological…