Science

SpaceX is filing a legal challenge to the U.S. Air Force’s latest Evolved Expendable Launch Vehicle (EELV) contract with United Launch Alliance (ULA), a joint venture of Boeing and Lockheed Martin. The long-term contract, which guarantees the purchase of 36 rocket cores from ULA to be used in national security launches, was granted to ULA on a sole-source basis without …

Will anyone see next week’s solar eclipse? On April 29th, an annular solar eclipse occurs over a small D-shaped 500 kilometre wide region of Antarctica. This will be the second eclipse for 2014—the first was the April 15th total lunar eclipse—and the first solar eclipse of the year, marking the end of the first eclipse season. 2014 has the minimum …

A time-lapse video of a developing quail embryo has fetched a Portuguese scientist the first prize in Nikon’s 2013 Small World in Motion Competition.

Despite overwhelming scientific evidence for the impending dangers of human-made climate change, policy decisions leading to substantial emissions reduction have been slow. New work from Carnegie’s Katharine Ricke and Ken Caldeira focuses on the intersection between personal and global impacts. They find that even as extreme weather events influence those who experience them to support policy to address climate change, …

Honda Beat aside, Asimo has to be the cutest Honda ever built. The company’s bipedal humanoid robot never fails to bring cheer wherever it goes, and even US President Barack Obama falls for its charms here.

Giant Flying Reptiles of pterosaur species discovered in China China is one of the oldest civilizations in the world. And they are rightly proud of their history and achievements. It is source of many essentials that we commonly use across the world. This includes things like paper, gun powders and many other things.

The Y chromosome, which determines whether a mammal will be a male has been found being stable for the past 25 million years, according to a new research published in the journal Nature. Compared to the larger X chromosome, the Y pales both in size and the amount of genes it contains.In the last 1950s, many geneticists predicted that the …

For decades, researchers and submarine crews in icy waters off the coast of Antarctica have been picking up a mysterious quacking sound. The “bio-duck,” as its called, has been heard on and off since Cold War patrols picked it up on sonar during the 1960s.

Maximum water levels in New York harbor during major storms have risen by nearly two and a half feet since the mid-1800s, making the chances of water overtopping the Manhattan seawall now at least 20 times greater than they were 170 years ago, according to a new study. Whereas sea-level rise, which is occurring globally, has raised water levels along …

A recent poll asked 1,012 Americans about their confidence in different scientific concepts, and one answer in particular was pretty interesting. When shown the phrase “The universe began 13.8 billion years ago with a big bang,” only 21 percent of the respondents said they were “extremely confident” or “very confident” the phrase was true. Out of five answers, “not at …

An analysis of NASA satellite data revealed Africa’s Congo rainforest has significantly declined in greenness over the past decade. The rainforest is the second largest in the world, a NASA news release reported. “It’s important to understand these changes because most climate models predict tropical forests may be under stress due to increasing severe water shortages in a warmer and …