Tag Archives: science

“Punting 24 hours,” sounds like a very relaxed way to push back the launch of a $50 million rocket, but that's exactly what Space X CEO Elon Musk did on Sunday, via Twitter. His announcement means that the improved Falcon 9 rocket carrying 11 ORBCOMM satellites will instead head into …

Although the U.S. and Russia were at each other's throats when it came to the 20th century space race, they did agree in 1967 that no state could claim ownership of celestial bodies. That hasn't stopped some commercial ventures from doing so of course, even without legal binding, but now …

The space race was arguably the best thing to come out of the Cold War. It would be insensitive to suggest that all of the problems it wrought on the world were worth getting people to the moon, but the competition of major powers trying to outdo each other in …

China has revealed new plans designed to push back against pollution, by setting limits on the greenhouse gas emissions of companies and then charging them for going over that limit. The hope is that by discouraging companies from excessively polluting the environment, overall carbon emission levels will halve by 2030. …

United Launch Alliance, a joint venture of Lockheed Martin Space Systems and Boeing Defense, Space and Security, has successfully launched the fourth U.S. Navy's Mobile User Objective System (MUOS) satellite into orbit around the Earth. This should greatly improve the tracking and navigation abilities of U.S. and allied military personnel …

With all the excitement of Space X's recoverable launch attempts and the Philae lander telling us all about comets, we're almost spoilt when it comes to exciting advances in space. However it doesn't stop there, as in March next year, NASA is launching its InSight lander to Mars, where it …

The intrepid pair of exploratory spacecraft, Rosetta and Philae, made history last year when they enabled the first landing on a comet. Although it was a somewhat bumpy touchdown and we haven't heard much from Philae lately, it turns out we did learn a lot about the comet in the …

The robot uprising is approaching and these tiny robots may have a part to play as they can lift 100 times their own weight. The super strong, pocket-sized robots were built by mechanical engineers at Stanford University in California, who will present them next month at the International Conference on …

While our silicon chips are generally fast enough at the moment, as we have to pack more transistors into them the manufacturing process has to get smaller and smaller. With most chips made today being fabricated at nanometre lengths between 45nm and 14nm, this process of getting transistors to work correctly at smaller scales is …

The last generation consoles may still be useful after all as scientists have configured 200 PlayStation 3 consoles together to create a low cost super computer, which is being used to help research black holes. The console array was first created all the way back in 2007, featuring just 16 …

In a paper released in the Science academic journal a few days ago, a group of NASA scientists has confirmed the existence of methane gas on Mars. This is a good indicator of life, as 95% of methane here on Earth is generated by Microbes. While this is in itself impressive, some of the other …

Around a hundred human brains, bottled and preserved in formaldehyde, have gone missing from the University of Texas and nobody seems to know exactly why or how. However, it is possible that  group of undergraduates or other parties took them for “living rooms or Halloween pranks” over the years, according …

Google X has announced that it is working on a pill that would use nano-technology and magnetic particles to search your body to identify signs of diseases such as cancer. These nano-particles would be one thousandth of the width of a red blood cell, they will also be able to …

The Curiosity rover is a marvel of modern engineering. After spending eight months in the cold black of space, it descended through Mars' carbon dioxide rich atmosphere and landed in the Gale Crater in August 2012. From there it conducted a few simple scientific experiments, but spent the majority of …

A team of Scientists working in California have announced that they are one step closer to developing a pollution free, controlled fusion energy reaction. However they are still far off reaching their final goal. Researchers at Lawrence Livermore National Laboratory released a peer reviewed case study on Wednesday which revealed that …

You gotta love IBM. While the world plus dog runs around trying to sell a better tablet or phone or hamburger, the blue-suits at International Business Machines are happy focused on one thing: Creating tomorrow. Now Dr Parkin, one of IBM's Fellows, has spoken with Science Magazine and revealed an …

We think it normal to make instant contact with a huge number of people across the globe, but just how does the jolly fat fellow in the red suit pull it off? KitGuru searches the web on Xmas Day so you don't have to. The numbers are as big as …