Researchers May Have Found the Missing Piece of Evidence that Explains the Origins of Life

Researchers May Have Found the Missing Piece of Evidence that Explains the Origins of Life

The question of how life first emerged here on Earth is a mystery that continues to elude scientists. Despite everything that scientists have learned from the fossil record and geological history, it is still not known how organic life emerged from inorganic elements (a process known as abiogenesis) billions of years ago.

Awesome picture: HiRISE Spots Curiosity Rover at Mars' 'Woodland Bay'

Awesome picture: HiRISE Spots Curiosity Rover at Mars' 'Woodland Bay'

A dramatic Martian landscape can be seen in a new image taken from space, showing NASA's Curiosity rover examining a location called "Woodland Bay." It's just one of many stops the rover has made in an area referred to as the "clay-bearing unit" on the side of Mount Sharp, a 3-mile-tall (5-kilometer-tall) mountain inside of Gale Crater.

Commercial supersonic aircraft could return to the skies

Flying faster than the speed of sound still sounds futuristic for regular people, more than 15 years after the last commercial supersonic flights ended. The planes that made those journeys, the 14 aircraft collectively known as the Concorde, flew from 1976 to 2003. It traveled three times faster than regular passenger aircraft, but the airlines that flew it couldn’t make a profit on its trips.

Five reasons future space travel should explore asteroids

Five reasons future space travel should explore asteroids

On the same day that the Earth survived an expected near-miss with asteroid 367943 Duende, Russian dashcams unexpectedly captured footage of a different asteroid as it slammed into the atmosphere, exploded, and injured more than 1,000 people. That day in Chelyabinsk in February 2013 reminded the world that the Earth does not exist in a bubble.

Reforesting an area the size of the US needed to help avert climate breakdown, say researchers – are they right?

Reforesting an area the size of the US needed to help avert climate breakdown, say researchers – are they right?

Restoring the world’s forests on an unprecedented scale is “the best climate change solution available”, according to a new study. The researchers claim that covering 900m hectares of land – roughly the size of the continental US – with trees could store up to 205 billion tonnes of carbon, about two thirds of the carbon that humans have already put into the atmosphere.

Scientists may soon be able to predict your memories – here’s how

Do you remember your first kiss? What about your grandma dying? Chances are you do, and that’s because emotional memories are at the core of our personal life story. Some rare moments are just incredibly intense and stand out from an otherwise repetitive existence of sleeping, eating and working. That said, daily life, too, is replete with experiences that have a personal emotional significance – such as disagreeing with someone or receiving a compliment.

New Study Shows How Breaching “Carbon Threshold” Could Trigger Mass Extinction in Earth’s Oceans

New Study Shows How Breaching “Carbon Threshold” Could Trigger Mass Extinction in Earth’s Oceans

Between the scientific community, governments, humanitarian organizations, and even military planners, climate change is considered to be the single greatest threat facing humanity today. Between the increases in famine, disease, flooding, displacement, extreme weather, and chaos that result, it is clear that the way we are causing our planet to get warmer is having dire consequences.

A New Plan for Keeping NASA's Oldest Explorers Going

A New Plan for Keeping NASA's Oldest Explorers Going

With careful planning and dashes of creativity, engineers have been able to keep NASA's Voyager 1 and 2 spacecraft flying for nearly 42 years — longer than any other spacecraft in history. To ensure that these vintage robots continue to return the best science data possible from the frontiers of space, mission engineers are implementing a new plan to manage them. And that involves making difficult choices, particularly about instruments and thrusters