SpaceX has successfully launched a mission to return two astronauts stranded on the International Space Station for several months due to technical issues with Boeing’s Starliner capsule. The astronauts were NASA’s Sunita Williams and Butch Wilmore, who have been on the ISS since June 2024.
Woolly mammoth once roamed across large parts of North America, Asia and Europe. These massive herbivores thrived in the cold conditions of the Ice Age but began to face numerous challenges as the Earth’s climate warmed approximately 4,000 years ago.
A study published in 2023 showed that more than 1 in 3 children worldwide are now nearsighted. This represents a huge increase, rising from 24% in 1990 to 36% in 2023. Projections for the future indicate that this number will continue to rise reaching nearly 40% by 2050.
A team of international researchers discovered a new species of invasive flatworm in the United States named Amaga pseudobama. First observed in North Carolina in 2020, this flatworm species closely resembles the previously identified Obama nungara, an invasive species from South America.
In September 2023, the Earth experienced a seismic event caused by a massive landslide in Greenland. This event was linked to climate change and it created a mega-tsunami that not only causing local devastation but also triggered global vibrations, making the entire Earth vibrate for nine days.
Researchers have detected water and hydroxyl across the entire surface of the Moon using data from NASA’s Moon Mineralogy Mapper instrument aboard India’s Chandrayaan-1 mission. These molecules were discovered in polar regions and also in areas exposed to direct sunlight.
A powerful and mysterious radio signal from deep space has reached Earth after traveling for 8 billion years. This signal is named FRB 20220610A and it is one of the most distant and energetic fast radio bursts ever detected.
Researchers from the University of Southampton have developed 5D memory crystals, a data storage medium with the potential to preserve the entire human genome for billions of years.
Scientists have been intrigued by peculiar spider-like formations found on Mars. These formations referred to as spiders or araneiform terrain, which have puzzled researchers since they were first identified in images captured by Mars orbiters in 2003. The term spiders on Mars doesn’t refer to actual arachnids but rather to large spider-like geological formations found on the planet’s southern hemisphere.
Earth may have narrowly avoided a collision with a large asteroid 466 million years ago. The asteroid was possibly over 12 kilometers in diameter, passed close enough to Earth for its gravitational pull to tear the asteroid apart, forming a ring of debris around the planet. This event was known as the Ordovician impact spike.
