Month: January 2023

A new image produced by the James Webb Space Telescope (JWST, or Webb) sheds light on how early stars formed during “cosmic noon” more than 10 billion years ago. About 200,000 light-years away from Earth, the Small Magellanic Cloud, a satellite galaxy and one of the Milky Way’s closest neighbors, is notable for lacking metals heavier than hydrogen and helium.  The levels of these metals in the galaxy reflect a uniquely nearby environment to study what galaxies were like during the universe’s early history, when it was only two to…

A tube of “fossilized lightning” from Nebraska’s Sandhills holds a rare type of quasicrystal that had previously only been found in meteorites and at atomic bomb test sites.  Quasicrystals are materials that break the traditional rules of crystallography. Before they were first reported in 1984, scientists thought materials could either be crystalline — with symmetrical, repeating patterns — or amorphous, meaning randomly arranged and disordered. In addition, scientists believed crystals could only be symmetrical a limited number of times when rotated around an axis — two, three, four or six…

A lethal pulse of ultraviolet (UV) radiation may have played a role in Earth‘s biggest mass extinction event, fossilized pollen grains reveal.  Pollen that dates to the time of the Permian-Triassic mass extinction event, roughly 250 million years ago, produced “sunscreen” compounds that shielded against harmful UV-B radiation, the analysis found. At that time, approximately 80% of all marine and terrestrial species died off.  For the study, which was published Jan. 6 in the journal Science Advances (opens in new tab), a team of international scientists developed a new method…

That loveable Floral colossus with the limited vocabulary known as Groot is an indelible part of the Marvel Cinematic Universe and was first seen in Marvel Comics’ “Tales To Astonish #13” in 1960 as a highly evolved tree creature from Planet X. Created by Stan Lee, Larry Lieber, and Jack Kirby, the original Groot has popped up in numerous comics and miniseries prior to his cinematic team-up with the Guardians of the Galaxy. Sure, we’ve learned about pieces of his life but we’ve never had a full-blown origin story  to…

SpaceX’s powerful Falcon Heavy rocket now has five flights under its belt. A Falcon Heavy launched from NASA’s Kennedy Space Center (KSC) in Florida on Sunday (Jan. 15) at 5:56 p.m. EST (2256 GMT), kicking off a classified mission for the U.S. Space Force called USSF-67. “Liftoff of USSF-67. Go Falcon Heavy! Go Space Force!” a mission team member said over SpaceX’s communications line during the launch, which the company webcast live. Related: SpaceX’s Falcon Heavy launches US military satellites in 1st flight in 3 years A SpaceX Falcon Heavy rocket…