SCIENCE
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NASA’s Nancy Grace Roman Telescope launches to space
NASA’s newest telescope is officially on its way to deep space after more than a decade of development and high anticipation. The Nancy Grace Roman Space Telescope lifted off from Launch Complex 39A at the Kennedy Space Center in Florida at 7:26 A.M. EDT on Sunday, August 30 aboard a SpaceX Falcon Heavy rocket. The telescope is set to transform…
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Climate change is supercharging El Niños, coral records show
We’re in the midst of a blockbuster El Niño that could be become the strongest in living memory. It and other very strong, recent El Niños are much stronger than those in the past as the result of human-caused climate change, a new study in Science shows. The new evidence is “a critical piece of the puzzle” in understanding how…
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China delays ambitious Chang’e 7 moon mission until 2027
China’s lunar ambitions took a hit after the country called off the launch of a spacecraft that it has aimed to make the first to ever land on the moon’s south pole. Chang’e 7 was supposed to launch onboard a Long March 5 rocket on August 24, but the launch was scrubbed on Sunday evening, China’s Manned Space Agency (CMSA)…
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Why tornadoes touched down near New York City
New York City is no stranger to storms. Summers in the Big Apple can bring torrential, sudden rains, with water flooding into intersections and cascading down subway stairs, while Nor’easters are de rigueur in the winter. Tornadoes, however, are fairly rare. So why did a twister touch down on Thursday in Nassau County on Long Island and a possible second…
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Why parabolas are crucial to cryptography
This article is from Proof Positive, our friendly math newsletter that’s delivered to your inbox every Tuesday afternoon. Sign up today and read it first. Quadratic functions plague many students during school, popping up everywhere from binomial expansions to the geometry of parabolas and accelerated motion in physics. But the graphs of quadratic functions actually have a use that is…
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388 years ago, Galileo worked out why human giants can’t exist—and explained a law of nature
Acording to legend, giants once roamed the Earth. In Homer’s Odyssey, Odysseus encounters the Cyclops, the one-eyed son of Poseidon, living in a huge cavern, hungry and angry. He grasps men and sheep in one hand, devouring them whole. In the days of King Arthur, a clever young boy earned the title of “Jack the Giant Killer,” using his sharp…
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See hundreds of stingrays swarming off the coast of New York
Incredible new video footage reveals a convoy of hundreds of stingrays—a grouping that marine biologists call a “fever”—off the coast of Southampton, N.Y. In the videos, shot by drone by Joanna Steidle, the creatures can be seen gliding just beneath the water’s surface like hundreds of raviolis floating in aquamarine broth. These are cownose rays (Rhinoptera bonasus). The fish are…
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Europe’s wildfires are igniting forgotten WWII and Cold War bombs
When a wildfire broke out in the Müritz National Park of north-eastern Germany in July, it was no routine firefighting job. Bomb disposal teams had to work alongside firefighters because the forest floor is contaminated with Cold War-era munitions. Crews could not approach parts of the blaze directly for fear of detonations. Soon after, a wildfire tore through 42,000 hectares…
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Can quantum computers solve math’s hardest problem?
The Riemann hypothesis claims that the locations of prime numbers along the infinite number line all adhere to a beautiful and orderly, but obscure formula. Yet 167 years after German mathematician Bernhard Riemann made this guess, and in spite of a million-dollar bounty, mathematicians still have no idea how to prove it. Now a team in China has managed to…
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It’s 90 degrees in the Arctic right now
The Arctic is cooking. Across northern Russia—a region that is famously bitterly cold—temperatures this week have routinely surpassed 90 degrees Fahrenheit (32.2 degrees Celsius), adding to the mountain of broken heat records this summer has racked up so far. In recent days, the Selagoncy meteorological station, near the border of the Arctic circle, recorded 93.0 degrees F (33.9 degrees C);…
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