5+ day, 13+ hour ago   (428+ words) The stone defeated a rock saw, a drill and a sledgehammer, and that resistance was the first real clue to what it was. In May 2015, a prospector named David Hole was sweeping a metal detector through open box-ironbark forest about…...

6+ day, 8+ hour ago   (333+ words) MIT chemistry professor Mei Hong co-led the study with Professor of Planetary Sciences, Sara Seager, publishing their findings in the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences. Using nuclear magnetic resonance spectroscopy to track molecular structure in high resolution, Hong’s…...

1+ week, 14+ hour ago   (216+ words) Strangely enough, Mars’ moons Phobos and Deimos were discovered much later than the moons of far more distant gas giants like Jupiter, Saturn, and Uranus. Yet, scientists have long debated the true origins of these pint-sized satellites. Unraveling their history…...

1+ week, 3+ day ago   (379+ words) Visible light shows a galaxy’s familiar framework of stars, dust, and gas clouds. X-rays, however, reveal gas heated to millions of degrees by supermassive black holes, exploding stars, and scorching stellar winds. When researchers combine Chandra’s high-energy X-ray data with…...

1+ week, 4+ day ago   (437+ words) Roman’s flagship planet-hunting technique, gravitational microlensing, harnesses Einstein’s general theory of relativity. When a foreground star passes precisely in front of a background star, the foreground star’s gravity acts as a natural magnifying glass, bending and amplifying the background light....

1+ week, 5+ day ago   (453+ words) The debut of the J-36 marks nothing short of a revolution for Chinese naval aviation. This sixth-generation stealth jet isn’t simply flexing its tech muscles with speed and power. Its real headline act? The unprecedented ability to safely land on a…...

2+ week, 12+ hour ago   (321+ words) Led by Purdue University assistant professor Cauê Borlina during his time at MIT, alongside senior author Benjamin Weiss, the research team published their findings in the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences. Most space rocks have been altered repeatedly…...

2+ week, 3+ day ago   (506+ words) Recently, NASA’s Perseverance rover caught not one, but two rare astronomical events in the Martian sky: the transit of Phobos in front of the Sun and, more surprisingly, the occultation of Earth by this tiny Martian moon. Both events provide…...

2+ week, 4+ day ago   (326+ words) Of course, the story of the Chang’e 4 lunar lander comes to mind. For a few days, life did manage to spring up on the Moon—a cotton seed germinated onboard Chang’e 4, bringing a brief spark of life to that dusty…...

2+ week, 4+ day ago   (387+ words) The Futura Team represents the pulse of Futura’s editorial department, bringing together a collective expertise dedicated to the dissemination of scientific knowledge. Rather than the work of a single author, every article published under this signature is the result of…...