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Deepwater Horizon Oil Spill Still Detectable 10 Years Later, Scientists Say

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What are the most depressing things about space exploration?

Gravity is often demonstrated in 2 dimensions like a heavy object on a bed sheet.

How does this actually translate into our 3 dimensional reality?
It actually contracts or squeezes the fabric of spacetime. But remember we live in a 4D world so you can imagine then why observers in a deep gravitational well observe time dilation.

Snakes have learned to "walk": blogger Allen Pan created an exoskeleton for crawling.

Snake can change directions with its head and tail.

During the first test snake behaved quite calmly and even seemed to be satisfied with this situation, not trying to escape.

The shell of Jupiter's famous ice moon may be formed, in part, by pure underwater snow that floats up instead of falling down.

A new study, published in the August issue of the journal Astrobiology, finds that Europa's icy crust might be built partially by "frazil ice," a fluffy accumulation of ice crystals that also builds up beneath ice sheets on Earth. This frazil ice holds a fraction of the salt found in ice that grows from the ice shelf itself, suggesting that Europa's ice sheets may be less salty than previously believed.

A nuclear war between Russia and US would be detrimental. Scientists suggest fleeing to Argentina or Australia would have the highest chance of survival…

Following more than a decade of development, delays and testing, NASA's most powerful rocket ever now seems ready for liftoff. The Space Launch System and Orion spacecraft exited the vehicle assembly building yesterday, headed to the launchpad for a maiden journey around the Moon.

NASA laid out the potential launch windows for its uncrewed Artemis I demo last month, eyeing a series of dates on which the necessary elements would align for mission success. This involves timing the Moon's position in its lunar cycle for successful entry to orbit, mostly keeping the Orion spacecraft out of darkness and timing the capsule's return to Earth for a daytime splashdown.

Newly discovered crater suggests multiple asteroids killed dinosaurs

The Earth still bears the scar of the gigantic asteroid impact that wiped out the dinosaurs, along with three quarters of all life – but a new study suggests that killer rock wasn’t alone. Scientists have discovered a new crater in the seabed of the North Atlantic Ocean that seems to correspond to around the same time, suggesting the extinction event could have been triggered by multiple impacts.

Implantable "drug factory" beads destroy tumors in mice within days

Earlier this year, scientists at Rice University demonstrated a highly promising approach to tackling ovarian and colorectal cancer that centered on "drug factory" beads that could be implanted alongside tumors to destroy them in less than a week. By combining this technology with other immunotherapy drugs, the scientists have now explored the potential for this technique to tackle another form of cancer, and achieved very similar results.

The drug factory beads developed by the Rice University team are around the size of a pinhead and are loaded up with tens of thousands of cells genetically engineered to produce interleukin-2 (IL-2).

Scientists have demonstrated a form of printable wood-based ink that morphs into complex shapes as moisture evaporates

A lot of work goes into creating wooden objects like furniture, with the timber needing to be harvested, treated, cut into shape and finished. Some scientists are rethinking this process with some interesting results, and researchers from the Hebrew University of Jerusalem have put forward a particularly creative example. The team's technology sees a wood-based ink 3D printed into flat shapes, which then morph into more complex 3D forms as they dry out.

The technology hinges on the way water content can influence the shape of wood, such as a tree deforming after it is cut down and begins to dry out. This is due to the configuration of fibers within the material, which vary in their orientation and cause the wood to shrink in a non-uniform manner as moisture evaporates. By leveraging this characteristic, the scientists were able to come up with a way of carefully manipulating this morphing process to produce desired three-dimensional shapes.

Scientists continue to make promising inroads around more durable forms of concrete, and engineers at Melbourne's RMIT University have been operating at the cutting edge of this research for some time. Their latest example simultaneously tackles the mounting waste generated by the ongoing pandemic, demonstrating a form of concrete that incorporates shredded personal protective equipment (PPE) for improved performance.

RMIT's researchers haven't been afraid to get creative when thinking up new approaches to concrete, turning to everything from tires, to lobster shells to steel slag for inspiration. Last year, they also showed how disposable face masks could be worked into stronger recycled concrete aggregate for road layering.

There is a clock that shows the exact position of the planets in the solar system. Planets move at the same speed as real planets, and the hands of the stars mark hours and minutes.

It is called the "Planetary Midnight". It costs a little over $210,000.

The Midnight Planetarium watch depicts the universe and captures the course of the planets. The planetary spectacle is portrayed by the dial, while the shooting star indicates the time.

A lucky star invites the wearer of the watch to register their lucky day on the starry dial.

The dial reproduces the sun in miniature, accompanied by the five planets visible to the naked eye from Earth: Mercury, Venus, Mars, Jupiter and Saturn.

A unique module makes each planet move on its own disk, according to its actual rotation time.

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In a new experiment, scientists have managed to use a powerful X-ray laser to convert PET plastic into tiny diamonds, similar to those that might fall on ice giant planets like Neptune

Scientists have turned plastic into diamonds. Using high-powered lasers, the team zapped samples of PET, the common material used in plastic bottles, to produce intense heat and pressure to form tiny diamonds that may naturally rain down on planets like Uranus and Neptune.

Here on Earth, diamonds are prized for their rarity (even if that may be changing), but on other planets they may be seem as common as rocks. On ice giants like Uranus and Neptune, it’s thought that the extreme pressure would compress elements like hydrogen and carbon to form solid diamonds that then fall through the atmosphere like rain.
This phenomenon hasn’t been directly detected, but in 2017 a team of scientists reported that they had recreated the process in the lab. They did so by firing the world’s most powerful X-ray laser, the Linac Coherent Light Source (LCLS), at samples of hydrocarbon materials. This instantly heated them to temperatures of up to 6,000 °C (10,800 °F) and generated powerful shock waves of a few million atmospheres of pressure, forming tiny “nanodiamonds.”

A team of scientists using the James Webb Space Telescope have just released the largest image taken by the telescope so far. The image is a mosaic of 690 individual frames taken with the telescope’s Near Infrared Camera (NIRCam) and it covers an area of sky about eight times as large as JWST’s First Deep Field Image released on July 12. And it is absolutely FULL of stunning early galaxies, many never seen before. Additionally, the team may have photographed one of the most distant galaxies yet observed.