Ria Misra

Tech News

The Massive E. Coli Outbreak In Flour Is Over, So Why Are People Still Getting Sick? 

An outbreak of E. coli that caused 10 million pounds of flour to be pulled from shelves is finally over. Yet, cases continue to pop up, and the CDC says it expects to see even more. Here’s why, even when the outbreak is over, the illness still isn’t. The flour from General Mills was originally … Continued

ScienceSpace & Spaceflight

You Really Don’t Need to Watch the Black Moon Tonight

Have you heard? The Black Moon rises tonight! But if you’re worried about catching this “rare” phenomenon don’t be—it’s actually not that special. A Black Moon is not an actual astronomy term and there’s a couple different definitions floating around out there. The Black Moon that people are talking about now is defined as when … Continued

ScienceSpace & Spaceflight

Ask a Rosetta Scientist About Crashing a Spacecraft Into a Comet

After a twelve year journey in space, the Rosetta spacecraft has less than 24 hours of life left before it crashes straight into the comet it has been orbiting. Today at 3 p.m., Rosetta team scientist Paul Weissman will be here taking your questions live. Rosetta was originally launched by the ESA back in 2004. … Continued

ScienceSpace & Spaceflight

The United Nations Will Send Its First Mission to Space in 2021

The United Nations just announced a date for its first ever mission to space—and it’s pretty soon. The U.N. intends to send Sierra Nevada’s Dream Chaser spacecraft, which is currently still in its testing-phase, into a 2-week, low-Earth orbit flight in 2021. Sierra Nevada signed on to partner with the UN in June, but the … Continued

Tech News

Nobody Knows What Healthy Food Means (Still)

Do you think you know what “healthy” food means? Then the FDA would like to hear from you. The FDA just requested public input on the meaning of the word “healthy,” the first step towards a new definition. The agency first announced it would be revamping the term’s definition this summer. The decision came after … Continued

ScienceSpace & Spaceflight

SpaceX Wants to Venture Much Further Out Into the Solar System

Elon Musk finally revealed his plans for a mission to Mars today. But a new set of images from SpaceX show the Interplanetary Transport System going even further in the solar system than the Red Planet. As we speculated yesterday, the plans for the ITS do, indeed, go well beyond Mars. Musk confirmed an interest … Continued

ScienceSpace & Spaceflight

How Elon Musk Plans to Go to Mars 

SpaceX plans to build a “self-sustaining city” on Mars, according to its founder Elon Musk. But, while we now know a lot more about how SpaceX plans to get to Mars, details about how people will actually survive up there remain sketchy. Musk dropped the news on Tuesday during an address at the International Astronautical … Continued

ScienceSpace & Spaceflight

Watch Elon Musk Reveal His Plan to Colonize Mars

We’re finally going to hear Elon Musk’s plans for a mission to Mars. You can watch along to find out what it is at 2:30pm EDT. In the meantime, here’s some of what we expect to hear—and what it means to finally put a person on Mars. [Update: And here’s some video concept art of … Continued

Tech News

Why Beef Is About to Get Cheaper

Fire up the grill and invite me over, friend. Today, we feast in celebration. The latest USDA meat production projections are out, and they predict that, after years of domination by chicken, beef will become the fastest growing meat category over the course of the next decade. Beef isn’t just going to be more available, … Continued

ScienceSpace & Spaceflight

SpaceX Just Passed a Major Milestone on Its Mission to Mars

SpaceX has been talking up its Martian travel plans for a while now, but we still don’t know how it intends to get (or survive) there. As of today, however, it’s cleared a major hurdle: the rocket engine it will use to get to the Red Planet just fired-up for the first time. Company founder … Continued

ScienceSpace & Spaceflight

SpaceX Figured Out Why Its Expensive Rocket Exploded

Earlier this month, we watched a SpaceX rocket—fully loaded with its satellite—explode suddenly and inexplicably. At the time, the cause remained a mystery, but now SpaceX’s engineers have traced the flaw to its source. SpaceX has released the initial results of its investigation, which reveal that it believes a breach in the helium system in … Continued

ScienceSpace & Spaceflight

We Now Know What Caused the Weird Eruptions on Rosetta’s Comet

Last summer, something strange happened on Rosetta’s comet. After a period of calm, the comet began erupting, throwing huge jets of comet dust into space before abruptly stopping. Now, we finally know what happened. Rosetta is currently heading into a death spiral that will wrap up next week when it slams into the comet it … Continued

ScienceSpace & Spaceflight

These Deep Space Images Reveal a New Type of Galaxy

Hubble’s deep field images have provided the farthest glimpses we’ve ever had of galaxies in spaces. Combining those images with a new telescope view has revealed that there are even more galaxies there than we knew—including a mysterious, new type of galaxy. “We are seeing galaxies of a type never before dreamed of,” Chris Carilli, … Continued

Tech News

The Recent String of Listeria Contaminations Is Unnerving

If you have any Blue Bell cookie dough ice cream in your freezer, put down the spoon. The ice cream company just issued a recall for possible Listeria contamination—the ice cream company’s second Listeria scare in as many years. Last year, Blue Bell had a huge recall of its ice cream (across flavors) for a … Continued

Tech News

This New Gadget Could Detect Food Contamination in Minutes

When an outbreak of food poisoning hits, we trace our culinary steps backwards in an attempt to untangle the cause, hopefully before it can hit again. But a new sensor could radically change all that. A new paper in ACS Infectious Diseases details a new technique that combines two existing food contamination detection methods into … Continued

EartherClimate Change

Where We Will Grow Food After We Scorch the Earth 

A relatively small number of crops make up a lot of the world’s diet. But, as the world gets hotter, the places that we’re able to grow these crops is moving. A new study published in Nature Communications by researchers at the University of Birmingham looks into whether the places where we currently grow our … Continued

Tech News

This Wildfire in California Is Getting Awfully Close to a Rocket Launchpad

A 10,000-acre wildfire that began just off a Californian Air Force base continues to spread. And it’s heading closer and closer to the base’s rocket launchpads. Firefighters have been battling a blaze near Vandenberg Air Force Base—which includes launch facilities that send up rockets for NASA, SpaceX, and United Launch Alliance—since Saturday. The fire has … Continued

ScienceSpace & Spaceflight

We Finally Know What Made the Huge Heart on Pluto

Almost as soon as Pluto came into view, we saw it: A big heart splashed across half the dwarf planet’s surface, like something left it there on purpose for us to see. A year after we spotted it, we have an answer as to what put it there. We already knew what was in Pluto’s … Continued

Tech News

No, NASA Did Not Just Change Your Zodiac Sign

NASA did not just rewrite the zodiac chart. But here’s why so many people are convinced that the agency did—and the real story behind the rumor. The story that NASA had issued a new zodiac appeared in Cosmopolitan’s UK edition yesterday, but it quickly spread, with Yahoo, AOL, and more all soon carrying stories claiming … Continued

ScienceSpace & Spaceflight

Watch the World’s Fastest Rocket Launch Into Space 

Look up—but make sure you do it quickly. The world’s fastest rocket, United Launch Alliance’s Atlas V, is launching into space this afternoon, and you can watch it happen at 2:30pm EDT. The last time we watched an Atlas V launch a satellite, it was delivering a secret payload for the US National Reconnaissance Office. … Continued