Science

How NASA’s Stranded Starliner Astronauts Could Fly Home with SpaceX NASA astronauts Butch Wilmore and Suni Williams have been stuck on the ISS since they launched to the station in early June. Now the space agency is close to deciding how to bring them back By Meghan Bartels Boeing’s Starliner spacecraft that launched NASA’s Crew […]

What Does the ‘Hobbit’ Fossil Discovery Teach Us about Our Tiny Human Relatives? A tiny human relative called the Hobbit, or Homo floresiensis, may have evolved from a larger ancestor that shrunk upon arriving on the Indonesian island of Flores, a new fossil suggests By Jeanna Bryner The humerus fragment discovered at Mata Menge on

COVID-Positive Olympic Athletes Are Still Competing Several athletes at the Paris 2024 Olympic Games have come down with COVID, but they are still allowed to compete By Saima S. Iqbal Adam Peaty of Team Great Britain competes in the Men’s 100m Breaststroke Final on July 28 at the Olympic Games Paris 2024 in Nanterre, France.

Mathematicians are “reinventing the wheel” by giving it a new shape. Their newly imagined wheel looks like a many-dimensional guitar pick, and it could theoretically roll in ways beyond our three-dimensional understanding. This breakthrough solves a decades-old geometry problem by showing how to build objects in dimensions that we cannot envision . “It’s a stunning

Former Hurricane Debby Stalls, Causing Heavy Rains and Flooding along East Coast Some parts of the southeastern U.S. have seen more than a foot of rain from Tropical Storm Debby, and rain will keep moving up the coast in the coming days By Mathew Barlow & The Conversation US A man stands in front of

The U.K.’s Cass Review Badly Fails Trans Children A politicized review into transgender medicine in the National Health Service has upended lives in the U.K.—and threatens to spread harm across the globe By Cal Horton & Ruth Pearce Protestors gathered outside Leeds Art Gallery to protest against the Cass Review on May 5th, 2024 in

Moon ‘Spiders’ Suggest Extensive Underground Lunar Caves Newfound spiderlike features suggest lunar explorers should watch their step By Theo Nicitopoulos Moon “spiders” (outlined) seen with the Lunar Reconnaissance Orbiter Camera. Lava plains and volcanic residue on the moon’s surface point to the orb’s fiery past. What’s below, though, remains mostly a mystery. But in a

AI Reaches Silver-Medal Level at This Year’s Math Olympiad During the 2024 International Mathematical Olympiad, Google DeepMind debuted an AI program that can generate complex mathematical proofs By Manon Bischoff While Paris was preparing to host the 33rd Olympic Games, more than 600 students from nearly 110 countries came together in the idyllic English town

The following essay is reprinted with permission from The Conversation, an online publication covering the latest research. There are more than 500 species of sharks in the world’s oceans, from the 7-inch dwarf lantern shark to whale sharks that can grow to over 35 feet long. They’re found from polar waters to the equator, at

The scale and tragedy of the U.S. opioid epidemic have few comparisons. More than 100,000 people have died of overdoses every year since 2021. Most drug overdose deaths have a single culprit: the extremely potent synthetic opioid fentanyl. But the most recent data from the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention suggest that this brutal