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In February, President Sally Kornbluth announced the appointment of Professor Angela Koehler as faculty director of the MIT Health and Life Sciences Collaborative (MIT HEALS), with professors Iain Cheeseman and Katharina Ribbeck as associate director...
Blue Origin's latest space tourism flight, the NS-37 mission, is set to launch on December 18th. This mission will send six people to the edge of space and back, including the first-ever wheelchair user to fly to space - aerospace engineer Michaela (...
Ghost Particles Spark Hidden Atomic Reaction Neutrinos are among the most puzzling particles known to science and are often called 'ghost particles' because they so rarely interact with matter. Trillions pass through each person every second with...
Ancient Foot Fossil Reassigned to a Different Early Human Species Newly uncovered fossils have helped researchers determine that an unusual 3.4-million-year-old hominin foot discovered in 2009 does not belong to Lucy's species. Instead, the evide...
Researchers at the Ludwig Maximilian University of Munich have uncovered how ribosomes, the cell's protein builders, also act as early warning sensors when something goes wrong inside a cell. Ribosomes as Protein Builders and Stress Sensors Rib...
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At the Thai Space Expo in Bangkok, the growing excitement within the Southeast Asian space sector is on full display. Amid the flashy space suits and model rockets, one unexpected sight catches the eye - a package of Thai basil chicken, the same kind...
Your Brain Has a Learning Shortcut AI Can't Copy The Prefrontal Cortex Houses Reusable Cognitive Blocks Princeton neuroscientists have found that the brain repeatedly draws on the same cognitive "blocks" when performing different types of ta...
Rocket Lab's Reusable Neutron Launch Vehicle California-based Rocket Lab has successfully completed final qualification testing of the "Hungry Hippo" fairing for its partially reusable Neutron launch vehicle. The Neutron is a medium-lift, two-sta...
Space Startups Aim to Test Receiver for Satellite-Enabled Lunar 'Power Grid' Firefly Aerospace's lunar lander Blue Ghost will feature a LightPort wireless power receiver for future missions. The lander is bound for the far side of the moon, meani...
This NASA/ESA Hubble Space Telescope image features the blue dwarf galaxy Markarian 178 (Mrk 178) against a backdrop of distant galaxies in all shapes and sizes. Some of these distant galaxies even shine through the diffuse edges of Mrk 178. Mrk 178...
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Nearly 70 million years ago, mosasaurs were the stuff of nightmares. Multiple species of the apex marine reptiles lived during the Late Cretaceous, often growing anywhere from 30 to 40 feet-long. But as dangerous as the ancient, great white shark-siz...
Scientists Uncover How Tiny "Nanopores" Learn Like the Brain Identifying the Forces Behind Rectification and Gating A research team led by Matteo Dal Peraro and Aleksandra Radenovic at EPFL has now clarified the physical origins of these beh...
Breakthrough in Measuring Zero-Point Motion Using the world's most powerful X-ray laser, scientists have filmed atoms performing an eternal quantum dance that never stops — even at absolute zero. This first-ever direct view of zero-point motion r...
A future lunar lander bound for the dark side of the moon will carry along a piece of equipment that could make these missions a little bit brighter. The lander in question is operated by Firefly Aerospace, the first commercial company to successfull...
NASA's Parker Solar Probe Spies Solar Wind 'U-Turn' Images captured by NASA's Parker Solar Probe as the spacecraft made its record-breaking closest approach to the Sun in December 2024 have now revealed new details about how solar magnetic fields...
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Stressed Rats Keep Returning to Cannabis, and Scientists Know Why It isn't just people - when given the chance, rats may also use cannabis to cope with stress, according to a study by researchers at Washington State University. Published in the ...
For years, philosophers and psychologists have debated whether empathy helps or hinders the ways people decide how to help others. Critics of empathy argue that it makes people care too narrowly—focusing on individual stories rather than the broader ...
Asexual Parasitic Plants Break Biology's Rules Photosynthesis is a staple of biology, with plants using the sun and water to produce their own food. However, not all of the over 300,000 known plant species are food-producing powerhouses that repr...
Using Cosmic Dust to Trace Ancient Ice Patterns Scientists have long known that small particles from space settle onto Earth at a steady rate and accumulate in ocean sediments. A recently published study in Science reports that examining where...
Humans Rank Among Leading Monogamous Mammals, Study Finds Humans are playing in the premier league of monogamous mammals, according to a new ranking of animals by their reproductive habits. The study from the University of Cambridge found that hu...
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Cosmic Proof: Black Hole Wobble Backs Century-Old Einstein Theory Scientists observing a dramatic cosmic outburst have confirmed a prediction first explored in Albert Einstein's work on relativity more than a century ago. A global team detected t...
NASA and its partners have supported humans continuously living and working in space since November 2000. After 25 years of habitation, the International Space Station continues to be a proving ground for technology that powers NASA's Artemis campaig...
A Microsecond Freeze Reveals a New Ice Phase The Korea Research Institute of Standards and Science (KRISS) has recorded water repeatedly freezing and melting at pressures above 2 gigapascals (2 GPa) while still at room temperature. These rapid cy...
Scientists discovered that reducing a gene called FDX2 can help cells survive the damage caused by Friedreich's ataxia. This finding opens the door to a fresh and potentially powerful treatment strategy. Friedreich's ataxia (FA) is an uncommon but d...
Humans Made Fire 350,000 Years Earlier Than Previously Thought Groundbreaking discoveries in a field in Suffolk, England suggest that humans mastered the art of creating fire 400,000 years ago - almost 350,000 years earlier than previously known....
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"Something that we've been trying to get a better handle on is how much of the carbon in the ocean is getting fixed," said Angelicque Santoro, a marine microbiologist at the University of California, Santa Barbara. "The numbers work out now, which is...
Scientists have long warned that rising global temperatures would force forest soils to leak more nitrogen gas into the air, further increasing both pollution and warming while robbing trees of an essential growth factor. However, a new study challen...
Based on a comprehensive study, researchers are now convinced the shafts were human-made, likely dug during the Late Neolithic period roughly 4,000 years ago :focal(689x384:690x385)/https://tf-cmsv2-smithsonianmag-media.s3.amazonaws.com/filer_pu...
Stardust Solutions' Ambitious Geoengineering Plan Stardust Solutions, an Israel-based geoengineering startup, believes it can solve climate change - for a price. The company has said it expects nations will soon pay it more than a billion dollar...
Restoring Energy by Supplying Fresh Mitochondria Biomedical researchers at Texas A&M University report that they may have identified a way to slow or even reverse the loss of cellular energy production — a possibility that could influence many a...
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.
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The National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration's Space Weather Prediction Center reports that a geomagnetic storm on December 9 could make the aurora borealis, or northern lights, visible in parts of the United States. Folks living in Alaska and...
Picture a scientist with a provocative hypothesis — something that defies conventional wisdom or verges on the outlandish. Supporting the pursuit of that big, bold claim is the goal of the Institute for Quantitative Social Science's new Extraordinary...
Galaxy clusters are the most massive objects in the universe held together by gravity, containing up to several thousand individual galaxies and huge reservoirs of superheated, X-ray-emitting gas. The mass of this hot gas is typically about five time...
In March, NASA researchers employed a new camera system to capture data imagery of the interaction between Firefly Aerospace Blue Ghost Mission-1 lander's engine plumes and the lunar surface. Through NASA's Artemis campaign, this data will help resea...
NASA is helping shape the future of urban air travel with a new simulation that will manage how electric air taxis and drones can successfully operate within busy areas. The demonstration, held at NASA's Ames Research Center in California's Silicon V...
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AI-powered 'Conversation Isolating' Headphones People often struggle to focus on a single conversation in noisy, crowded rooms filled with overlapping chatter. This challenge can be especially overwhelming for those with hearing difficulties. Re...
Researchers at Johns Hopkins Medicine say that hydrogen sulfide, the chemical behind that telltale rotten-egg smell of flatulence, might help protect the aging brain from cognitive decline, including Alzheimer's disease. While the idea of your body ...
An Ancient Sense With Deep Psychological Impact Researchers are uncovering how temperature influences the way we perceive our own bodies, offering new insight into the "skin-to-brain" signals that shape bodily awareness. This growing understandi...
"Quantum Antenna" Breaks Barrier in Measuring Elusive Terahertz Signals Breakthrough in Terahertz Frequency Comb Measurement A research team from the Faculty of Physics and the Centre for Quantum Optical Technologies at the Centre of New Techn...
AI Chatbots Mimic Human Social Networking Behavior As AI becomes more integrated into our daily lives, understanding how these systems navigate social interactions is crucial. A new study suggests that AI models like GPT-4, Claude, and Llama exhi...