Science

The biggest X-ray laser in the world, the European XFEL, has generated its first X-ray laser light and is now considered ready for its official opening in September. The laser’s light is a billion times brighter than the typical light sources normally used in particle accelerators. As X-rays have a wavelength of 0.8 nanometres, almost 500 times shorter than visible …

Stanford University scientists have worked with colleagues at the US National Aeronautics and Space Administration (NASA) to develop a form of concrete that humans could produce on Mars or the moon. NASA would like to send humans to Mars by 2030. Elon Musk, the CEO of SpaceX, says his private launch company could do it as early as 2024. But …

Climate Change Is Causing The Dissolved Oxygen In World’s Oceans To Plummet. A new study of decades of data on oceans across the globe has revealed that the amount of dissolved oxygen contained in the water – an important measure of ocean health – has been declining for more than 20 years. Researchers at Georgia Institute of Technology looked at …

In an upcoming TV documentary, British physicist Stephen Hawking revives his prediction that humanity will have to spread out a new home in space within 100 years in order to ensure the species’ survival. A hundred years is a lot sooner than Hawking’s previous predictions. In November, he gave a similar warning — but said we had a comparatively lengthy …

NASA has discovered a planetary system that looks a lot like our own, just 10.5 light-years away. The star is a promising one that may have alien life on some of the planets that surround it. Termed epsilon Eridani, the star looks to be similar in size and shape to our sun. However, it is a very young star. This …

The Cassini probe unexpectedly found no trace of dust between the rings and the atmosphere of Saturn, through which it flew for the first time a week ago, at the end of April this year, NASA reports. The craft made its second of 22 such dives at 3:38 p.m. EDT (1938 GMT) through the previously-unexplored 1,200-mile-wide (2,000 kilometers) region. As …

MIT researchers have developed a novel device that can measure the walking speed of multiple people with up to 99 per cent accuracy using wireless signals. It involves a wall-mounted sensor called WiGait that can be placed in a person’s home. By analyzing the wireless signals reflected off a person’s body, the team is able to make its accurate predictions. …

Scientists have discovered the fossil of a new bird-like dinosaur species that roamed the earth around 125 million years ago. The dinosaur, which the team have named the ‘Jianianhualong tengi’, is a troodontid dinosaur. The description of Jianianhualong is published in the journal Nature Communications, co-lead by an international team of paleontologists, Xing Xu, Phil Currie, and Michael Pittman, all …

From butterflies to bats – a study from Macquarie University shows that hundreds of thousands of species could soon go extinct due to the effects of deforestation. Biologist John Alroy has used local-scale ecological data obtained across the world’s tropical zones to predict global-scale extinction rates across 11 key ecological groups. The results predict the extinction of more than 28% …

Without comment, the nine Justices declined on Monday to take the case of Alaska v. Zinke, where the state of Alaska asked the Court to examine an Interior Department decision to designate 187,000 acres as a critical habitat for polar bears. Oil and gas trade associations, several Alaska Native corporations and villages, and the state of Alaska claimed the habitat …

It may sit firmly in the realm of science-fiction, but time travel is a mathematical possibility, even if it won’t ever be a reality. Ben Tippett, a physics instructor at the University of British Columbia Okanagan, is in the middle of a study that tests the feasibility of time travel. Given that his field of expertise is Einstein’s “Theory of …