China space probe returns with rare Moon rocks

China’s Chang’e-6 lunar probe returned to Earth on Tuesday, bringing back the first samples ever collected from the Moon’s far side. The robotic lander landed in Inner Mongolia after a 53-day mission to a crater near the Moon’s south pole. It collected soil and rock samples using a drill and robotic arm. Retrieving samples from […]

A big boost for a climate solution: electricity made from the heat of the Earth

A power company in California called Southern California Edison has signed a deal to purchase electricity from a geothermal energy project in Utah being developed by the company Fervo Energy. This will be one of the largest new geothermal power developments in the US, producing 400 megawatts of electricity, enough to power around 400,000 homes. […]

Physicists Accidentally Found a New Way to Represent Pi

Mathematicians Aninda Sinha and Arnab Priya Saha from the Indian Institute of Science accidentally discovered a new way to represent the mathematical constant pi (π) while studying particle collisions in quantum field theory. Though pi’s value has not changed, their work provides an alternative series representation that expresses pi as a combination of components in […]

Ed Stone, who led NASA’s iconic Voyager project for 50 years, dies at 88

Ed Stone, a pioneering NASA scientist who served as the project scientist for the iconic Voyager missions from 1972 to 2022, passed away on June 9th at age 88. Stone led the Voyager 1 and 2 spacecraft on their “Grand Tour” of the outer planets from 1977 to 1989, making many discoveries. The probes continued […]

How neutron stars ‘playing it cool’ could unlock exotic physics

Scientists have discovered 3 neutron stars that have cooled down surprisingly fast, providing new insights into the exotic physics inside these dense stars. Neutron stars are the collapsed cores of massive stars, containing over 1.4 times the mass of our Sun compressed into a tiny sphere about 12 miles wide. Their interiors possess some of […]

NASA Is Launching an ‘Artificial Star’ Into Orbit Around Earth. Here’s Why.

NASA is launching a mini satellite called CubeSat into orbit around Earth in 2029. From its orbital distance of about 22,000 miles, it will appear fixed in the night sky like an “artificial star”. The satellite, called Landolt, is about the size of a breadbox. It will fire lasers that astronomers can use to calibrate […]