Nasa’s quest to resume manned space flight from the US moves a step closer
The SpaceX commercial astronaut capsule has splashed down successfully in the Atlantic Ocean, marking a significant step in Nasa’s quest to resume manned space flight from the US.
The Crew Dragon capsule, whose lone occupant was a test dummy named Ripley, spent a week docked at the International Space Station (ISS) before returning to Earth on Friday morning.
Continue reading...The SpaceX founder and Tesla chief executive smoked marijuana on a comedian’s podcast last September, a US official said
SpaceX chief executive and Tesla boss Elon Musk’s security clearance is being reviewed by the Pentagon after the billionaire smoked marijuana on a California comedian’s podcast last September, a US official said on Thursday.
An incident report was started by the Pentagon some time after the marijuana event, according to the official, who spoke on condition of anonymity. The review was first reported by Bloomberg.
Continue reading...Monarch posted image of 1843 Charles Babbage letter to Prince Albert during Science Museum visit on Thursday
The Queen has proved she is in touch with the touch screen by sharing her first Instagram post in the latest personal technological milestone of her lengthy reign.
The 92-year-old monarch shared an archive image to the 4.6 million followers of @theRoyalFamily’s Instagram account during a visit to the Science Museum to formally open the new Smith Centre and summer exhibition, Top Secret.
Continue reading...Christina Koch and Anne McClain to make history at International Space Station on 29 March
The first all-female spacewalk is to take place later this month, 35 years after a woman first took part in one.
The US space agency Nasa said astronauts Christina Koch and Anne McClain will walk outside the International Space Station on 29 March on a mission to replace batteries installed last summer.
Continue reading...Capsule is the first US-made, designed-for-crew spacecraft to dock in eight years
SpaceX‘s new crew capsule has arrived at the International Space Station, completing its second milestone in just over a day.
No one was onboard the Dragon capsule that launched on Saturday on its first test flight, only an dummy.
Continue reading...Launch brings US plans to resume sending people into space in own spacecraft closer
Astronauts could be flying again from US soil as early as this summer after the flawless launch of SpaceX’s privately built Crew Dragon capsule opened “a new era in American excellence”, according to the head of the space agency Nasa.
Related: Spacewatch: Nasa to launch new crewed craft in 2019
Continue reading...Boy and girl, now four, are only the second case of ‘sesquizygotic’ twins recorded
A pair of twins have stunned researchers after it emerged that they are neither identical nor fraternal – but something in between.
The team say the boy and girl, now four years old, are the second case of semi-identical twins ever recorded, and the first to be spotted while the mother was pregnant.
Continue reading...Mystery shrouds ‘very faint’ planetary body that appears to be 140 times further from the sun than Earth
A new object has been discovered in the distant reaches of our solar system and given the name FarFarOut, according to a prominent astronomer.
At 140 times further away from the sun than our own planet is, the newly identified body – if its discovery is confirmed – will become the furthest known object in our solar system.
Continue reading...New techniques will help customs officers identify and seize wood that came from endangered species
The wooden blinds that lie crumpled in Peter Gasson’s laboratory in Kew Gardens are chipped and forlorn-looking. Their manufacturers had claimed they were made of pine but customs officers were wary. And their suspicions were well-founded. Gasson, Kew’s research leader on wood and timber, found the blinds were not made of pine but ramin.
“All ramin trees, which grow in south-east Asia, are endangered and trade in their wood is illegal,” said Gasson. “On this occasion, we got lucky and stopped people profiting from this trade.”
Continue reading...The probe was due to fire a pellet into the surface of the asteroid to try to capture dust
A Japanese spacecraft has successfully touched down on a speeding asteroid 300 million kilometres from the Earth as it attempts an audacious manoeuvre to collect samples and bring them back for scientists to study.
The Hayabusa 2 probe touched down on the asteroid Ryugu at around 11:30pm GMT on Thursday. Data from the probe showed changes in speed and direction, indicating it had reached the asteroid’s surface, according to officials from the Japan Aerospace Exploration Agency (JAXA).
Continue reading...Biologists discover single female Wallace’s giant bee inside a termites’ nest in a tree
As long as an adult thumb, with jaws like a stag beetle and four times larger than a honeybee, Wallace’s giant bee is not exactly inconspicuous.
But after going missing, feared extinct, for 38 years, the world’s largest bee has been rediscovered on the Indonesian islands of the North Moluccas.
Continue reading...Pattern seems to confuse flies, researchers who dressed horses up as zebras find
The mystery of how the zebra got its stripes might have been solved: researchers say the pattern appears to confuse flies, discouraging them from touching down for a quick bite.
The study, published in the journal Plos One, involved horses, zebras, and horses dressed as zebras. The team said the research not only supported previous work suggesting stripes might act as an insect deterrent, but helped unpick why, revealing the patterns only produced an effect when the flies got close.
Continue reading...FDA warning is blow to anti-age treatment fad that claims it could improve strength and memory and even combat Alzheimer’s
The US government has warned that older people should not be paying to have their veins filled with the blood of young people, in a blow for what was becoming a fad anti-aging treatment.
In a statement on Tuesday the Food and Drug Administration (FDA) said infusions of plasma from young donors into older clients “should not be assumed to be safe or effective”, and said it was “concerned that some patients are being preyed upon by unscrupulous actors” charging thousands of dollars for transfusions.
Continue reading...Doctors could use Crispr tool to inject benign virus into foetus’s brain to ‘switch on’ key genes
Scientists are developing a radical form of gene therapy that could cure a devastating medical disorder by mending mutations in the brains of foetuses in the womb.
The treatment, which has never been attempted before, would involve doctors injecting the feotus’s brain with a harmless virus that infects the neurons and delivers a suite of molecules that correct the genetic faults.
Continue reading...Analysis of community where 73% of residents contracted Zika in 2015 offers new clues about epidemic
Scientists studying the 2015 Zika outbreak in Brazil have discovered that people previously exposed to dengue may have been protected from the virus.
Three-quarters of the inhabitants of a favela in the country’s north-east caught the mosquito-borne Zika virus during the epidemic. The outbreak left more than 3,000 babies across Brazil with microcephaly, a birth defect caused by mothers catching the virus during pregnancy.
Continue reading...Toronto researchers believe the drug can also help those with depression, schizophrenia and Alzheimer’s
An experimental drug that bolsters ailing brain cells has raised hopes of a treatment for memory loss, poor decision making and other mental impairments that often strike in old age.
The drug could be taken as a daily pill by over-55s if clinical trials, which are expected to start within two years, show that the medicine is safe and effective at preventing memory lapses.
Continue reading...Robot the size of a golf buggy has sent data to Earth for 15 years but fell silent eight months ago and Nasa says mission is complete
Nasa declared the 15-year mission of the veteran Mars rover Opportunity finally over on Wednesday, crediting the robot as having “transformed our understanding of our planet”.
The golf buggy-sized vehicle last made contact with Earth eight months ago, after being caught in a global dust storm.
Continue reading...Installation will transform cathedral floor to mark 50 years since Apollo 11 moon landing
It’s hard to imagine anything less like a lunar landscape than the medieval glories of Lichfield Cathedral. But this summer, an artist will transform its magnificent tiled floor into a representation of the moon’s surface to mark half a century since Neil Armstrong took “one small step for [a] man and one giant leap for mankind”.
The three-spired cathedral in Staffordshire has commissioned the art installation as part of its annual summer show, which this year is called Space, God, the Universe and Everything. Peter Walker, the cathedral’s artist-in-residence, will also use light and sound installations inspired by space and the planets.
Continue reading...Scientists say 2.1bn-year-old fossils may show evidence of self-propelled motion
A collection of short wiggly structures discovered in ancient rocks could be the earliest fossilised traces of organisms able to move themselves, scientists say.
If scientists are correct, the 2.1bn-year-old structures point to an earlier origin than generally thought for eukaryotes – cells with a membrane-bound nucleus and which make up plants, animals and fungi – previouslybelieved to have first emerged about 1.8bn years ago. It also pushes back the earliest evidence of self-propelled movement of eukaryotes by 1.5bn years – scooping the title from far younger multicellular lifeforms – and would be the first clear signs of motility for any type of organism.
Continue reading...Britain’s favourite monument is stuck in the middle of a bad-tempered row over road traffic. By Charlotte Higgins
Stonehenge, with the possible exception of Big Ben, is Britain’s most recognisable monument. As a symbol of the nation’s antiquity, it is our Parthenon, our pyramids – although, admittedly, less impressive. Neil MacGregor, the former director of the British Museum, recalls that when he took a group of Egyptian archaeologists to see it, they were baffled by our national devotion to the stones, which, compared to the refined surfaces of the pyramids, seemed to them like something hastily thrown up over a weekend.
Unlike those other monuments, though, Stonehenge is more or less a complete mystery. Nobody knows for sure why, or by whom, this vast arrangement of boulders was erected on Wiltshire’s downlands, in the south of England, about 5,000 years ago. Into this void have rushed myriad theories, from the academically sober to the blatantly fantastic. Over the centuries, its construction has been confidently credited to giants, wizards, Phoenicians, Mycenaeans, Romans, Saxons, Danes and aliens. (According to one medieval theory, Merlin had it transported from Ireland to serve as the funeral monument for Britons slaughtered by Hengist, the treacherous Saxon.)
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