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Powerful Electric Thrusters for NASA's Lunar Gateway A Melbourne-based company, L3Harris Technologies, has completed testing and delivery of three 12-kilowatt Advanced Electric Propulsion System (AEPS) thrusters. These thrusters will be used for ...
Wind-Sculpted Landscapes: Investigating the Martian Megaripple 'Hazyview' While much of Perseverance's work focuses on ancient rocks that record Mars' long-lost rivers and lakes, megaripples offer a rare opportunity to examine processes that are ...
Why do people in Italy, specifically, live longer than most? According to DNA samples, it's their genetic ancestry. A recent study reached into the prehistoric past to uncover why people currently 100 or older are still living. Previous studies iden...
Astronomers have discovered huge dust clouds from violent collisions around a nearby star called Fomalhaut. These events - the first detected in 2004 and a second imaged in 2023 - are the first collisions between large objects directly observed in an...
Feathered Dinosaurs That Didn't Fly Challenge Long-Held Ideas About Wing Evolution A Rare Glimpse Into Ancient Flight Evolution A recent study led by a scientist from the [School of Zoology and the Steinhardt Museum of Natural History at Tel...
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Challenging Long-Held Theories: Evolution Isn't One-and-Done, New Study Suggests Repeated environmental changes can lead evolution in unexpected directions Repeated environmental changes can lead evolution in unexpected directions, and resea...
A team at UNIGE has uncovered a geometric structure once thought to be purely theoretical at the core of quantum materials, opening the door to major advances in future electronics. How can information be processed almost instantly, or electrica...
A new study shows that promising single-crystal battery materials degrade for reasons scientists hadn't fully recognized before. Scientists at Argonne National Laboratory and the UChicago Pritzker School of Molecular Engineering (UChicago PME) h...
A major advance in spintronics came with the discovery of unusual magnetoresistance (UMR). This effect occurs when the electrical resistance of a heavy metal changes as the magnetization rotates within a plane perpendicular to the electric current. ...
How Mars' Atmosphere Shapes Its Landscapes New research digs into how Mars' atmosphere shapes its sedimentary landscapes. The surface and atmosphere of Mars have seen many changes over its 4.5-billion-year history. While the planet's current atm...
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Colliding Objects Spotted in Neighboring Star System Scientists have captured the first direct images of colliding objects in a neighboring star system. Astronomers have observed the aftermath of two powerful collisions within a 20-year period ar...
Google plans to take a tangible first step in a new AI and computing moonshot by launching two prototype satellites to orbit in early 2027. The tech giant's Project Suncatcher aims to build a data center in space, using a constellation of solar-power...
Explore NASA's Most Detailed Map of the Night Sky Yet NASA's SPHEREx orbital space telescope has completed its inaugural infrared scan of the entire sky, creating the most detailed 3D map of the cosmos to date. In just six months of operations, t...
What happens when a star dies? In 2019, the red supergiant star Betelgeuse dimmed in brightness, sparking speculation that it may soon explode as a supernova. While it likely won't explode quite yet, we can preview its fate by observing the nearby Cr...
Robots today can perform many impressive feats, from recognizing objects to navigating complex spaces. However, when it comes to touch, the limits of robotic capabilities become immediately apparent. As a researcher in soft robotics, the author has f...
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Targeting the Protein Viruses Use to Break In Washington State University scientists have uncovered a method to interfere with a key viral protein, stopping viruses from getting inside cells where they can cause disease. The discovery points tow...
3D-Printed Christmas Tree Made of Ice Particles To get into the holiday spirit, a group of physicists in the Netherlands recently crafted a tiny, 3D-printed Christmas tree from ice particles. This novel method isn't just for decorative projects -...
The Top "Science of Happiness" Podcast Episodes of 2025 Every year, we come back to the same question: What actually helps people feel more connected, grounded, and human? On The Science of Happiness podcast, we continue to explore what research ...
Rare, Complete Dinosaur Skull Fossil Acquired by Smithsonian's National Museum of Natural History The Smithsonian's National Museum of Natural History has added a rare fossil to its collection: a dome-shaped skull of a Pachycephalosaurus, a type ...
NASA Science encourages all people to actively participate in science through activities and resources developed by a collaborative network of project teams drawing on NASA SMD assets (science content, experts, data, etc.). Your team can apply to be ...
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The universe has delivered a rare breakthrough for researchers chasing one of the hardest effects to catch in the night sky. In findings reported in Science Advances, scientists describe the first observations of a spiraling swirl in spacetime lin...
Dropping a well-timed swear word might be the simplest way to unlock extra strength and focus when you need it most. Blurting out a swear word when things get tough often brings a sense of relief. Research now suggests it may do more than ease f...
Improving Nuclear Fuel Efficiency and Reducing Waste Researchers at the University of Mississippi have developed a novel approach to enhance the performance and safety of nuclear fission reactors. By embedding metallic fission fuel with uranium n...
Over the past ten years, T cell immunotherapy has emerged as one of the most promising developments in cancer treatment. These therapies work by training a patient's own immune system to detect and destroy dangerous cells. Despite their success, scie...
Scientists Prove "Impossible" Earth-to-Space Quantum Link is Feasible Quantum satellites are best known for sending entangled particles of light from orbit down to ground stations, a method used to create extremely secure communication links. New...
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Two Neutron Stars May Have Formed the First Known 'Superkilonova' A double blast of dying stars may be the first observed case of a long-hypothesized, never proven "superkilonova." Although astronomers are still searching for concrete answers, a ...
It began with some intriguing scientific discoveries. A team of researchers from the Broad Institute and Harvard began to suspect nearly two decades ago that so-called "emerging diseases" such as Ebola and Lassa virus were not quite what they seemed....
Physicists Open a "Message in a Bottle" From Interstellar Space Researchers Identify Distinctive Ultraviolet Signature of Water in Interstellar Comet 3I/ATLAS For millions of years, a fragment of ice and dust drifted between the stars—like a s...
Scientists Unveil Eco-Friendly Breakthrough To Eliminate "Forever Chemicals" A breakthrough material with real-world promise Researchers at Rice University, working with international collaborators, have created a new environmentally friendl...
Simulating Earthquakes on a Computer Earthquakes may be unpredictable, but their impacts are not entirely mysterious. New modeling techniques are offering a clearer view beneath the surface. On Saturday, December 6, 2025, a magnitude 7.0 earthq...
Brightcast is dedicated to restoring faith in humanity by highlighting the progress, solutions, and kindness that often go unnoticed. We believe in a balanced worldview.
Read our full mission →
A new study from Yale researchers investigates how the stress hormone cortisol helps the brain build stronger emotional memories. Stress can influence what we learn and remember. Cortisol, a hormone released during stressful situations, can make emo...
Saturn's Moon Titan Challenges Ocean Theory with a Thick and Slushy Interior Careful reanalysis of data collected more than a decade ago suggests that Saturn's largest moon, Titan, does not host a vast, global ocean beneath its icy shell as scien...
Beachy Head Woman's Local Origins Revealed The mystery surrounding the identity of the "Beachy Head Woman" has been resolved through advances in DNA sequencing. Once hailed as the earliest known Black Briton and later speculated to be of Cypriot ...
A Quantum Mystery Solved A global research team led by Rice University physicist Pengcheng Dai has verified the presence of emergent photons and fractionalized spin excitations in an unusual quantum spin liquid. Reported in Nature Physics, the ...
Longer-Lasting, Safer Batteries: US Research Breakthrough Researchers from Argonne National Laboratory and the University of Chicago Pritzker School of Molecular Engineering have solved a major battery mystery that has led to capacity degradation...
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Turning Air into Water: The Nobel Prize-Winning Chemist's Dream Omar Yaghi, a quiet and diligent child, grew up in Amman, Jordan, where fetching water was a vital family chore. This early experience shaped his life's work - finding ways to extrac...
Koopman's Idea and the Big Catch Researchers at Duke University have created a new artificial intelligence framework designed to uncover straightforward, easy-to-understand rules that sit underneath some of the most complicated dynamics seen in ...
NASA's Webb Spots Bizarre Carbon-Rich Exoplanet Orbiting a Rapidly Spinning Pulsar A planet that shouldn't exist is rewriting what scientists thought they knew about worlds beyond our solar system. Using NASA's James Webb Space Telescope, researc...
Data Reveals a Highly Unusual Gamma-Ray Burst Data collected using multiple NSF NOIRLab facilities reveal a gamma-ray burst that lasted more than seven hours and originated in a massive, extremely dust-rich galaxy. Gamma-ray bursts (GRBs) rank a...
A new microscopy technique allows scientists to see single-atom-thick boron nitride by making it glow under infrared light. Researchers from the Physical Chemistry and Theory departments at the Fritz Haber Institute have developed a new way to v...