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Tech NewsNew Trick Helps Winemakers Figure Out Which Microbes Make Good Wine
Winemaking is always an exercise in uncertainty. You don’t really know just what the wine will taste like until the very end of the process, which is sometimes decades long. A new technique, however, could help predict what wine will taste like before it’s even made. A paper out today in mBio from researchers at … Continued
By Ria Misra -
Tech News
This Interactive Shows How Far Your Food Traveled to Get to You
We know our food is incredibly well traveled, but just where does your food come from? A new set of interactive charts help you trace the often serpentine route from farm to table. Researchers at the International Center for Tropical Agriculture have completed an effort to trace just how far food travels across the planet. … Continued
By Ria Misra -
ScienceSpace & Spaceflight
These Photos of World’s Largest Rocket Launch Are Incredible
The world’s most powerful rocket launched this weekend carrying… well, we’re still not quite sure what it was carrying (although speculation suggests a super secret spy satellite). What we do know is this: it launched, and it looked incredible. ULA Launch’s Delta IV Heavy is currently the most powerful and largest rocket in operation. Even … Continued
By Ria Misra -
ScienceSpace & Spaceflight
The Majority of Americans Can’t See the Milky Way Anymore
Our world is getting brighter, as we turn more and more lights on across the planet. But all that light shining from the ground makes it harder to see the lights shining from the sky. It’s now gotten so bad that the Milky Way is almost impossible to see in most of the United States. … Continued
By Ria Misra -
Tech News
Audit Finds America’s Food Recall System Moves Way Too Slow
An ongoing audit of the FDA’s food recall system has come out with a preliminary report that throws some serious fire at the existing recall system, describing it as neither “efficient” nor “effective.” The auditors from the Office of the Inspector General reviewed 30 cases of food recalls by the FDA between 2012-2015 to back-check … Continued
By Ria Misra -
EartherClimate Change
These Rocks Could Help Reverse Climate Change
This may look like just another rock, but its so much more than that. It’s also a storage unit for carbon emissions—and it could finally give us a way to backtrack a bit on what we’ve done to our climate. A new study out today in Science details the protocol followed by a team of … Continued
By Ria Misra -
ScienceSpace & Spaceflight
Watch the World’s Largest Rocket Launch a Top Secret Spy Satellite
We don’t know the type or purpose of the new spy satellite being launched by the US National Reconnaissance Office. What we do know is that its launch, aboard the world’s largest rocket, is happening today at 1:59 p.m. EDT—and it’s definitely going to look spectacular. [Update: The launch is now on Saturday, on account … Continued
By Ria Misra -
ScienceSpace & Spaceflight
This Image Captures a Black Hole in Rare Feeding Frenzy
One of the most incredible things about black holes is how much bigger they are than almost anything else out there. Now, a new image taken at the Atacama Large Millimeter/submillimeter Array (ALMA) Observatory shows that we’ve been totally wrong about how they manage to grow so large. An international research team looking at black … Continued
By Ria Misra -
EartherClimate Change
Researchers’ Attempt to Find Even One Pristine Spot on Earth Ends in Total Failure
An exhaustive attempt by researchers to find a single untouched space on planet Earth has yielded no results. Sorry, folks, everything is ruined now. Researchers at the University of Oxford undertook the task in the hopes of finding a still pristine location, perhaps deep in the arctic circle or on some remote island. Instead, as … Continued
By Ria Misra -
Tech News
Harvard’s Robotic Bee Is Scary Lifelike (With a Few Important Exceptions)
Researchers at Harvard and MIT have spent the last seven years perfecting this robotic bee. The result is Robobee, a mechanical bee so lifelike it kind of makes you want to duck indoors. The researchers released new video showing Roboee demonstrating its latest trick: It can land and perch sideways on a wall, just like … Continued
By Ria Misra -
ScienceSpace & Spaceflight
Astronomers Recorded This Eerie Music From a 13-Billion-Year-Old Star
Space is not the soundless vacuum movies would have us believe. In fact, judging by these eerie recordings of the music being thrown off by the oldest stars in the Milky Way, space actually sounds like a bit of a party. The recordings were created by a team of scientists led by Andrea Miglio of … Continued
By Ria Misra -
ScienceSpace & SpaceflightSomeone Just Went Inside NASA’s Inflatable Space House for the First Time Ever
An astronaut just completed the very first walk (float?) into the ISS’s inflatable space house—and it neither popped nor floated away while he was inside. Success! [UPDATE: And here’s the footage from inside.] Astronaut Jeff Williams became the first person to enter Bigelow Aerospace’s expandable space structure, BEAM, early this morning at 4:47 a.m. EDT. … Continued
By Ria Misra -
ScienceSpace & Spaceflight
Oh Man, Someone Is Finally Going Inside NASA’s Inflatable Space House
No need to panic, just because a frail human body—made up of eminently breakable bone, skin, and sinew—is about to step into the vacuum of space, protected only by a reinforced bouncy castle. EVERYTHING IS FINE. After finally getting its inflatable space house up and running on the second try, NASA is about to hit … Continued
By Ria Misra -
Tech News
Watching a SpaceX Rocket Land on a Drone Barge Never Gets Old
We usually see rocket launches and landings from above. But there’s something about seeing the whole thing happen from the ground-up that’s just so much better. SpaceX just put up a little video clip showing its latest rocket landing from the perspective of the Of Course I Still Love You drone barge. It’s a solid … Continued
By Ria Misra -
ScienceSpace & Spaceflight
What Is This Weird Glowing Spot Hovering Over Pluto?
Is it aliens? Sure sounds like aliens—but these strange, glowing patches over Pluto are actually something else (almost) as mysterious. NASA’s New Horizons snapped this photo of sunlight streaming through Pluto’s haze haze during the spacecraft’s close approach on July 14, 2015. But, as researchers looked closer at the photo, a question emerged: Uh, what’s … Continued
By Ria Misra -
Tech News
We Finally Know the Source of That Massive E. Coli Outbreak
This week, General Mills announced a voluntary recall of 10 million pounds of its flour over possible E. coli contamination. Now, the FDA has traced the outbreak back to its source: a single factory in Kansas City. The CDC had been looking into the mysterious 38-case E. coli outbreak, which had spread across 20 states, … Continued
By Ria Misra -
ScienceSpace & SpaceflightAntares Rocket Passes First Test Since Exploding Two Years Ago
Six seconds into its last departure for the ISS, Orbital ATK’s Antares rocket exploded. Last night, the newly-redesigned Antares passed its first hurdle to getting back in the air again, ahead of its planned blast off for the space station in July. At the time of its explosion nearly two years ago, the Antares rocket … Continued
By Ria Misra -
Tech News
General Mills Just Recalled 10 Million Pounds of Flour for a Possible E. coli Outbreak
Check your cabinets, people. General Mills just issued a recall for 10 million pounds of its flour, in connection with a potential E. coli outbreak. There are as of yet no confirmed cases of E. coli connected to the flour at all. But, starting December of last year and continuing till this month, the CDC … Continued
By Ria Misra -
ScienceSpace & Spaceflight
These New Space Stamps Are Almost Cool Enough to Make Me Want to Send a Letter
It’s been a while since I’ve wanted to send a letter bad enough to actually buy a stamp. But these new space stamps might finally make it worth it. The United States Postal service released a new set of Forever space stamps today at the once-a-decade World Stamp Show (yes, a real thing). The stamps, … Continued
By Ria Misra -
EartherClimate Change
Climate Change Is Real and This Chart Proves It
Climate change is real, it’s happening right now, and it’s pushing us into an increasingly grim-looking future. Still don’t believe it? Take a look at this graph. Earlier this month, climate scientist Ed Hawkins put out one of the best visualizations we’ve seen of the changes in global climate over the last 160 years. Instead … Continued
By Ria Misra
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