The river, about as tall as a 30-story building and as wide as a city block, is a blend of freshwater and seawater, slowly making its way toward the ocean.
“We struck water at the end of the borehole and with the help of our camera, we even discovered a school of lobster-like creatures — 400 kilometers from the open ocean,” expedition leader Huw Horgan said.
SpaceX is making significant advancements in its Starship program, with plans for increased production, upcoming Mars missions, and ongoing developments in technology and infrastructure, despite facing some challenges ## ## Questions to inspire discussion.
Q: What is SpaceX’s target for Starship launches to Mars in 2026? A: SpaceX aims to launch 5 Starships to Mars in 2026, with Elon Musk estimating a 50/50 chance of meeting the 2026 Mars window.
Q: Which region on Mars is the primary landing target? A: The Arcadia region is the top candidate for landing locations due to its large ice deposits. Mission Objectives.
Q: What is the main goal of the first Starship flight to Mars? A: The first flight aims to prove the ability to reach Mars by sending minimum viable vehicles to maximize learning and demonstrate key technologies.
Q: What are the objectives for the second Starship flight to Mars? A: The second flight will focus on landing initial infrastructure, confirming resource availability, preparing landing areas, and delivering equipment for future human missions. Resource Utilization.
Q: What are the key goals for the third Starship flight to Mars? A: The third flight will prioritize resource mining, propellant generation, road and pad construction, habitat building, and increasing power generation and storage.
The U.S. Treasury Department has sanctioned Funnull Technology, a Philippines-based company that supports hundreds of thousands of malicious websites behind cyber scams linked to over $200 million in losses for Americans.
Funnull facilitated virtual currency investment scams (also known as romance baiting and pig butchering) by buying IP addresses in bulk from various cloud service providers. The company sold these IP addresses and hosting services to cybercriminals, enabling them to host malicious websites.
Criminals behind pig butchering scams contact victims through dating sites, social media, and messaging apps, building trust and luring victims into fake investment schemes. However, instead of investing, the fraudsters divert it to accounts they control, stealing their money.
With wildfires increasing in frequency, severity, and size in the Western U.S., researchers are determined to better understand how smoke impacts air quality, public health, and even the weather.
As fires burn, they release enormous amounts of aerosols—the vaporized remains of burning trees and homes that enter the atmosphere and the air we breathe. Now, a new study dissects these aerosols and gases to pinpoint their potential effects on our health as well as the planet’s short and long-term weather.
The research, published in Environmental Science: Atmospheres, measured air quality in Reno, Nevada over a 19-month period between 2017 and 2020 to capture both smoky and clear days. During this timeframe, smoke from more than 106 wildfires impacted the city’s air. DRI scientists Siying Lu and Andrey Khlystov led the research, which found increases in both fine aerosols (known as PM 2.5 for the size of the particulate matter) and carbon monoxide during smoky days.
As ocean levels rise, coastal communities face an ever-increasing risk of severe flooding. The existing infrastructure protecting many of these communities was not built to withstand the combined threat of rising seas and severe storms seen in this century.
While reinforcing existing flood barriers poses a costly challenge for at-risk communities, it also provides the opportunity to introduce innovative solutions that can provide both flood prevention and environmental benefits.
A group of researchers at UC Santa Cruz and the U.S. Geological Survey has evaluated one such flood mitigation solution, which can reinforce levees while creating environmentally beneficial coastal habitats. In a study published on May 9 in Scientific Reports, the team evaluated the effectiveness of “horizontal levees”—traditional levees retrofitted with a sloping, wetland border—as a means of strengthening shorelines against the threat of rising sea levels.
Alicella gigantea, a rarely sighted giant crustacean that inhabits the depths of the ocean and can reach up to 34 cm in length, is not rare after all. This species, though elusive, is one of the most widely distributed species of its kind, inhabiting and thriving in more than half of the world’s oceans across the globe, as per a recent Royal Society Open Sciencepaper by researchers from the University of Western Australia.
Amphipods like A. gigantea are shrimp-like crustaceans known for their narrow frames and a signature hump-backed curl in their posture. Found in nearly every aquatic habitat on Earth, amphipods are one of the most diverse crustacean orders, with over 10,000 known species. They roam the deep sea, from the abyssal depths (3,000–6,000 m) to beyond hadal zones (6,000 m), but their number significantly decreases as we dive deeper towards the ocean bed.
The first sighting of a 28 cm-long A. gigantea was captured on camera at a depth of 5,304 meters in the abyssal North Pacific, though its identity remained unknown at the time. Subsequent captures eventually confirmed the species as A. gigantea.
The indoor environment contains multiple sources of chemical compounds. These include continuous emissions from housing materials such as furniture, floors and furnishings, but also periodic intense emissions from human activities such as cooking, smoking, and cleaning.
Outdoor air chemicals can also enter indoor environments through infiltration and ventilation. Ozone (O3) from outdoors can react with compounds indoors to create a complex chemical cocktail within the indoor living space. Since people spend up to 90% of their time indoors, exposure to this diverse array of chemical compounds over extended periods is cause for concern, particularly as the human-health impacts of many such chemicals remain poorly understood.
On the basis of their findings in 2022, Jonathan Williams’s research group from the Max Planck Institute for Chemistry took a closer look at how the human oxidation field might be influenced by personal care products. The study is published in the journal Science Advances.
The ZEUS laser facility at the University of Michigan has roughly doubled the peak power of any other laser in the U.S. with its first official experiment at 2 petawatts (2 quadrillion watts).
At more than 100 times the global electricity power output, this huge power lasts only for the brief duration of its laser pulse—just 25 quintillionths of a second long.
“This milestone marks the beginning of experiments that move into unexplored territory for American high field science,” said Karl Krushelnick, director of the Gérard Mourou Center for Ultrafast Optical Science, which houses ZEUS.