NASA Aims to Launch Troubled Mars Lander in May 2018
Artist's illustration of NASA's InSight lander on the Martian surface. InSight is now scheduled to launch on May 5, 2018, after a two-year delay. Credit: NASA/JPL-Caltech NASA has decided to save, rather than scrap, a robotic Mars mission that missed its launch opportunity this month. The space agency is now targeting a May 2018 liftoff for its InSight lander, which will investigate the interior structure of Mars, officials announced today (March 9). (Mars and Earth align favorably fo..>> view originalAncient Dolphin-like Ichthyosaurs Wiped Out by Climate Change
Climate change sealed the fate of ichthyosaurs, marine reptiles that ruled the oceans for 157 million years, suggests an analysis of fossils. The dolphin-like animals died out some 30 million years before the mass dinosaur extinction at the end of the Cretaceous 66 million years ago. Vertebrate palaeontologist Dr Valentin Fischer, who led the research, published today in Nature Communications, said that the extinction of ichthyosaurs, which were extremely well adapted to oceanic life, was a lon..>> view originalJeff Bezos' Blue Origin reveals a mix of serious tech and space-fan fun
A peek inside the Kent headquarters of Jeff Bezos’ space company Blue Origin shows it is making big strides in rocket development, with its serious engineers immersed in a workplace that pays homage to past dreamers about interplanetary travel. We’ll have to stop calling local space-rocket company Blue Origin “secretive.” On Tuesday, Amazon boss and space visionary Jeff Bezos pulled back the curtains at his sideline company’s engineering and manufacturing headquarters in Kent, and talked almos..>> view originalHow raw meat -- and our ancestors' inability to chew it -- changed the course of human evolution
Paleoanthropologist Daniel Lieberman chewed raw goat meat for the sake of science, so he knows from experience that it's a challenge."It's a little salty, and it's very tough," the Harvard University professor said. "You put it in your mouth and you chew and you chew and you chew and you chew, and nothing happens." As Lieberman discovered first hand, modern human teeth are not suited to breaking chunks of raw meat into pieces that are small enough to swallow.Effective raw-meat eaters like wolve..>> view originalChirps with syntax: Do bird calls work like human language?
Birds may communicate surprisingly like humans. In human language, the combination and order of words helps shape the meaning of a sentence. And bird calls may use similar structure.Compositional syntax, combining different words to communicate a compound meaning, was thought to be unique to human language. But Japanese great tits, particularly vocal songbirds, also use compositional syntax in their bird calls, according to a new study published Tuesday in the journal Nature Communications."Our..>> view originalThe Hydra Gets a New Mouth With Every Meal
Photo When the hydra eats, it breaks a hole in its ectoderm, green, to create a mouth. Credit Carter and Hyland et al./Biophysical Journal 2016 This week’s GIF science lesson might give you a newfound appreciation for how simple it is for most humans to consume a shrimp cocktail.No, this tiny aquatic creature is not that multi-headed sea beast of Greek mythology that regenerates a head every time some daring hero chops it off. It doesn’t even have a head. But like the..>> view originalSticky, stony and sizzling science launching to space station
A view of the contents of two of Strata-1's tubes. The regolith simulant on the left is a simplified model consisting of angular fragments of colored glass, sorted into three sizes. The tube on the right contains pulverized meteorite material to ...>> view originalFirst-of-its-kind cataract surgery using stem cells shows promise
A new form of cataract surgery using a patient's stem cells has restored vision in babies for the first time, and someday the technique may hold promise for millions of older Americans who undergo traditional cataract eye surgery every year, say scientists who developed the new procedure.Eye experts across the country who spoke with CBS News are alternately excited and cautious about the findings, published Wednesday in the journal Nature.The procedure, developed by researchers at the Universit..>> view originalAmazing Total Solar Eclipse Photos Show 'Black Hole in the Sky'
Photographers turned out in force to capture views of the spectacular total solar eclipse visible from Indonesia and across Southeast Asia Wednesday (March 9) — and their varied, beautiful images show the many faces of that celestial event. Here's a sampling of the amazing solar eclipse snapshots we found in our mail today. NASA tracked the solar eclipse from Micronesia, capturing stunning video of the moon blocking the sun, and many other eclipse-chasers also had their cameras ready fo..>> view original
Wednesday, March 9, 2016
NASA Aims to Launch Troubled Mars Lander in May 2018 and other top stories.
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