All of the samples from the moon that researchers worldwide study today were gathered during the Apollo era. The lunar samples seen in the image below were gathered by Apollo 16 in 1972. The samples are of lunar glass and were tested by scientists at the University of Rochester.
A mathematician from UNSW Sydney has unveiled an incredible discovery of an ancient clay tablet believed to be the oldest and most complete example of applied geometry. The clay tablet that holds the applied geometry notations is 3700 years old and has been hiding in plain sight in a museum in Istanbul for over a century.
Astronomers are currently studying the star known as LP 40−365. It's a breed of fast-moving star that is a remnant of a massive white dwarf that survived a massive supernova explosion. The star is currently about 2000 light-years away from Earth and is hurtling towards the edge of the Milky Way galaxy.
This week was supposed to be the long-awaited second uncrewed test launch of the Boeing Starliner space capsule called Orbital Flight Test-2. The spacecraft was on the launch pad earlier this week when the launch was canceled after an incident with thrusters firing accidentally on the new Russian laboratory module aboard the ISS. The flight was rescheduled for the next day, but it was again delayed on August 3 with hopes that the mission could launch on August 4.
There are currently no supersonic commercial passenger aircraft, and aircraft capable of breaking the sound barrier are banned from doing so over most of the United States. The biggest reason why aircraft aren't allowed to break the sound barrier is noise created. NASA is working on an experimental aircraft called the X-59 Quiet SuperSonic Technology aircraft and has announced that it is entering a stage of its construction where it more closely resembles an actual aircraft.
Some people have better memories than others, able to recall also the facts and figures with ease. Researchers have been conducting investigations using mouse brains to try and learn more about how the visual cortex stores and remembers individual images. The 000 found that the brain's memory center is needed to recognize image sequences, but not single sites.
Early in the development of the moon, it was covered in an ocean of magma that covered its entire surface. Over time, that magma cooled and solidified with more dense material sinking to form the mantle layer, with the less dense material floating to the top forming the crust. The moon has been subjected to intense bombardment by asteroids and comets over its lifetime, some of which were able to pierce the crust and blasts pieces of the mantle from the moon's interior, and scatter them across its surface.
NASA researchers have taken a closer look at a star "near" our solar system that is believed to resemble the Sun when it was young. The investigation aims to help scientists gain a better understanding of what our Sun might have been like when it was a young star and how it could've shaped the atmosphere and development of life on Earth. The sun is currently about 4.65 billion years old and is considered a middle-aged star.
NASA and Boeing have scrubbed today's Starliner Orbital Flight Test-2 launch, though contrary to expectations it's not because of last week's problems at the International Space Station. The US space agency had warned that the Starliner launch might be pushed back, after an unexpected incident on the new Russian ISS module saw it shuffled out of position.
NASA researchers successfully launched a new x-ray solar imager on a very brief suborbital flight. The x-ray solar imager is called MaGIXS, short for Marshall Grazing Incidence X-ray Spectrometer. The instrument was launched on a suborbital flight via a sounding rocket to gather insights on how and why the sun's corona is so much hotter than the surface of the star itself.
Life as we know it requires oxygen. That fact isn't in debate. However, the process behind the increased oxygen levels in the atmosphere of Earth that took place about 2 billion years ago is the subject of debate. A 000 of scientists has proposed an interesting explanation for the increased oxygen levels in the planet's atmosphere.
EPFL Professor Giuseppe Carleo and a graduate student from Columbia University named Matija Medvidović have found a way to execute a complex quantum computing algorithm on a traditional computer. Typically executing quantum software requires the use of a quantum computer. The quantum software the researchers are considering is known as Quantum Approximate Optimization Algorithm (QAOA), and it's used to solve classical optimization problems in mathematics.