All About Everything

SpaceX launches 60 new Starlink satellites to orbit, nails rocket landing at sea

About 8.5 minutes later, the rocket's reusable first stage returned to Earth for its sixth landing, touching down on one of SpaceX's drone ships. The floating platform, called "Just Read the Instructions," was stationed out in the Atlantic Ocean, about 400 miles (630 ...

NPR

March 11, 2020: The Day Everything Changed

NPR

A year into the coronavirus pandemic, the enormous changes in our lives have become unremarkable: The collection of fabric masks. Visits with friends or family only in small outdoor gatherings. Working or learning from home. Downtowns deserted at noon ...

This strange lava-rich alien planet is making itself a new atmosphere

That's according to a new analysis of Hubble Space Telescope observations gathered in 2017 of a planet dubbed GJ 1132 b. The world tightly orbits a red dwarf star located about 41 light-years from Earth, completing one circle every 1.5 Earth days and soaking ...

The solar wind, explained

First proposed in the 1950s by University of Chicago physicist Eugene Parker, the solar wind is visible in the halo around the sun during an eclipse and sometimes when the particles hit the Earth's atmosphere—as the aurora borealis, or northern lights.

A big asteroid will zoom safely past Earth on March 21, NASA says

"There is no threat of a collision with our planet now or for centuries to come.".

Allan McDonald, engineer and whistleblower in the Challenger disaster, dies at 83

Washington Post

Washington Post

Allan J. McDonald, a rocket scientist and whistleblower who refused to sign off on the launch of the Challenger space shuttle over safety concerns and, after its explosion, argued that the tragedy could have been averted had officials heeded warnings from ...

NASA Will Map Every Living Thing on the International Space Station

Scientific American

Scientific American

Astronauts never travel to space alone. Each person voyaging off-world is accompanied by up to 100 trillion bacteria, viruses and other microorganisms, any number of which could jeopardize human health. Yet we are still mostly in the dark about how these ...

Perseverance rover sends back sounds of zapping rocks on Mars

CNN

CNN

New audio returned from the rover's SuperCam includes the popping sound of the instrument as it zaps rocks with its laser. It's the first time we've heard what it sounds like when a laser interacts with a rock on another planet.

Modulation of photocarrier relaxation dynamics in two-dimensional semiconductors

Two-dimensional (2D) semiconductors can host a rich set of excitonic species because of the greatly enhanced Coulomb interactions. The excitonic states can exhibit large oscillator strengths and strong light-matter interactions, and dominate the optical ...

Not so fast, supernova: Highest-energy cosmic rays detected in star clusters

And yet cosmic rays have been observed striking Earth's atmosphere at exactly those velocities, their passage marked, for example, by the detection tanks at the High-Altitude Water Cherenkov (HAWC) observatory near Puebla, Mexico.