Boston Dynamics’ new humanoid moves like no robot you’ve ever seen
All-electric, 360-degree joints give the new Atlas plenty of inhuman movements. Enlarge / The new, all-electric Atlas. (credit: Boston Dynamics) The humanoid robotics market is starting to heat up, and the company that.....»»
The Atlas Robot Is Dead. Long Live the Atlas Robot
Before the dear old model could even power down, Boston Dynamics unleashed a stronger new Atlas robot that can move in ways us puny humans never can......»»
Astronauts to patch up NASA"s NICER telescope
NASA is planning to repair NICER (Neutron star Interior Composition Explorer), an X-ray telescope on the International Space Station, during a spacewalk later this year. It will be the fourth science observatory in orbit serviced by astronauts......»»
NASA to hoist its sail: Solar sail mission gets ready for launch
A NASA mission testing a new way of navigating our solar system is ready to hoist its sail into space—not to catch the wind, but the propulsive power of sunlight. The Advanced Composite Solar Sail System is targeting launch on Tuesday, April 23 (We.....»»
Plugging the leak on laundry pollution
Joaquim Goes, an ocean biochemist at Columbia Climate School's Lamont-Doherty Earth Observatory, had to look twice when he first saw the tiny strands of fiber floating in a water sample from the Hudson River. An expert in microplastics detection, he.....»»
Maize cultivation 300 years ago resulted in karst rock desertification, suggest researchers
Understanding regional vegetation dynamics and historical changes in rocky desertification is crucial for assessing the sustainability and potential of afforestation in karst regions......»»
Saturn"s ocean moon Enceladus could support life—researchers are working out how to detect extraterrestrial cells there
Saturn has 146 confirmed moons—more than any other planet in the solar system—but one called Enceladus stands out. It appears to have the ingredients for life......»»
Understanding climate warming impacts on carbon release from the tundra
The warming climate shifts the dynamics of tundra environments and makes them release trapped carbon, according to a new study published in Nature. These changes could transform tundras from carbon sinks into carbon sources, exacerbating the effects.....»»
Study investigates coronavirus dynamics in bats: Lower biodiversity means more pathogens
The loss of biodiversity poses a challenge for nature and humans alike. A study led by Ulm University shows that a decline in biodiversity promotes the spread of potentially zoonotic pathogens......»»
NASA observations find what helps heat roots of "moss" on sun
Did you know the sun has moss? Due to its resemblance to the earthly plants, scientists have named a small-scale, bright, patchy structure made of plasma in the solar atmosphere "moss." This moss, which was first identified in 1999 by NASA's TRACE mi.....»»
Apple hits 18 gigawatts of clean energy in its environmental push
Apple is continuing to step up its environmental efforts, revealing new projects to increase the use of clean energy, as well as to replenish fresh water it uses by 2030 ahead of Earth Day.An Apple solar farmApple made a pledge in 2020 to become comp.....»»
Boston Dynamics retires its remarkable Atlas robot
It's over for Atlas, Boston Dynamics' remarkable bidpedal robot that wowed us with its extraordinary abilities over the years......»»
The history of the young cold traps of the asteroid Ceres
Ceres, the largest asteroid in our solar system, harbors a dark secret: extremely young ice deposits in permanently shadowed craters near its poles. If that sounds vaguely familiar, it's because our moon and planet Mercury also have such polar ice de.....»»
New time-resolved ultraviolet photodissociation mass spectrometry strategy for target protein stability analysis
How mutations impact protein stability and structure dynamics is crucial for understanding the molecular mechanism of the disease and the targeted drug design. However, probing the molecular details of mutation-induced subtle structure dynamics is st.....»»
Astronomers inspect open cluster Berkeley 50
Using the Lowell Discovery Telescope (LDT), astronomers from the Lowell Observatory in Flagstaff, Arizona, have observed a young Galactic open cluster known as Berkeley 50. Results of the observational campaign, presented April 5 on the preprint serv.....»»
The brightest gamma ray burst ever seen came from a collapsing star
After a journey lasting about two billion years, photons from an extremely energetic gamma-ray burst (GRB) struck the sensors on the Neil Gehrels Swift Observatory and the Fermi Gamma-Ray Space Telescope on October 9th, 2022. The GRB lasted seven min.....»»
Formation-flying spacecraft could probe the solar system for new physics
It's an exciting time for the fields of astronomy, astrophysics, and cosmology. Thanks to cutting-edge observatories, instruments, and new techniques, scientists are getting closer to experimentally verifying theories that remain largely untested. Th.....»»
This is how the world ends: swallowed or shredded by a dying sun
Researchers recently studied the status of dead stars called white dwarfs, giving a glimpse at what our own solar system will look like in 5 billion years......»»
See what the solar eclipse looked like from space
The astronauts on board the International Space Station caught a stunning glimpse of this week's solar eclipse, and NASA has shared some images......»»
A compact metasurface array-based system for single-shot spectroscopic ellipsometry measurement
Spectroscopic ellipsometry is widely adopted in semiconductor processing, such as in the manufacturing of integrated circuits, flat display panels, and solar cells. However, a conventional spectroscopic ellipsometer, as shown in Fig.1a, typically mod.....»»