An asteroid heading toward Earth can be deflected without ever touching a spacecraft. The trick is to use X-rays to deflect the space rock, researchers report Sept. 23 Nature Physics. In laboratory experiments, scientists heated the surfaces of free-falling artificial asteroids with X-ray radiation, producing steam plumes that blew the objects away. Later computer simulations…
Smallest number of American teens and tweens in 25 years are currently using tobacco products. According to the 2024 National Youth Tobacco Survey, only 8 percent of middle and high school students — or 2.25 million — reported using tobacco products in the past 30 days. By 2019, 23 percent, or just over 6 million,…
Dozens of runaway stars were caught escaping from a dense star cluster in a satellite galaxy of the Milky Way. The cluster of fast-moving stars may mean that such runaways had a greater influence on cosmic evolution than previously thought, astronomers report Oct. 9 in Nature. Massive stars are born in new clusters, packed so…
Astronomers have finally found an asteroid that keeps pace with Saturn in its orbit around the sun. Such objects, called Trojan asteroids, are already known for the other three giant planets. “Saturn was kind of the odd man out, if I can call it that, because even though it’s the second most massive planet in…
Above the cloud tops, storms blow with a complex and frenetic light show of high-energy radiation. A view from a refurbished spy plane flying 20 kilometers up revealed storms glowing and flickering in gamma rays, high-energy light invisible to the eye. Ten flybys of the aircraft, NASA’s ER-2 aircraft, captured the flickering of gamma-ray bursts…
Extreme Climate Survey Scientific news is collecting questions from readers about how to navigate our planet’s changing climate. What do you want to know about extreme heat and how it can lead to extreme weather events? The rapid intensification of both storms was fueled by unusually warm Gulf water. Developing tropical storms can absorb heat…
Planetary astronomer Bonnie Buratti remembers exactly where she was the first time she heard that Jupiter’s icy moon Europa might host life. It was the 1980s, and Buratti was a graduate student at Cornell University studying images of the planet’s moons taken during the Voyager 1 and 2 flybys in 1979. Even in those first…
Displacement is in the nature of a river. But when a river breaks from its channel and carves a new path across the landscape, devastating floods can descend on communities with little or no warning. For decades, researchers have struggled to explain exactly how river channels prepare for such sudden diversions or avulsions. A study…
The occasional sweet treat probably won’t ruin your health. But too much added sugar at a young age can increase the risk of health complications later in life. Limiting added sugars during the first 1,000 days after conception — that is, during pregnancy and a baby’s first two years — reduces a child’s risk of…
Most of Earth’s meteorites can be traced back to just a few collisions within the asteroid belt between Mars and Jupiter, two new studies report, including a particularly cataclysmic event about 470 million years ago. The positive side of this discovery, published on October 16 in Natureis that it provides researchers with vital context: By…
