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 […]

NASA’s Europa Clipper spacecraft will soon be on its way to help solve a quarter-century-old mystery: Could anything live in the ocean hiding beneath the icy shell of Jupiter’s moon Europa? “This is a mission we’ve dreamed about for 25 years now, since I was in graduate school,” says planetary geologist Cynthia Phillips of NASA’s […]

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 […]

Scythian shepherds and horse-riding warriors who inhabited central Asia and eastern Europe about 2,500 years ago may have had cultural roots several thousand kilometers east in Siberia, a new study suggests.SN: 27/7/23). The remains of at least one person and 18 horses found atop a roughly 2,800-year-old tomb in southern Siberia may come from a […]