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Plumes are common throughout the solar system. Jupiter's moon Io is constantly shooting volcanic material into the air. Saturn's icy moon Enceladus famously blasts water vapor and other material from its subsurface ocean into space via a set of geysers near the south pole. And Earth is rich in geysers, from Yellowstone National Park's Old Faithful to Iceland's Great Geysir. Firing off the gas that makes up these plumes requires an energy source, which usually heats up the ground around the plume source. Enceladus, Io and Earth all have hotspots around their geysers and volcanoes. But not Europa, as far...

NASA Hubble's designers prepared for gyroscope failure by equipping the observatory with a backup. Unfortunately, when one of Hubble's gyroscopes conked out in early October, the backup didn't work as expected -- it was rotating too fast and hence won't be able to hold the telescope in place when it needs to stay still and lock in on a target. NASA has since been able to reduce its rotation rates and fix its issues by implementing an age-old fix for malfunctioning electronics: turning it off and on again. Back to science! @NASAHubble is well on its way to normal...

An amazing new Nasa image captures the youngest pulsar ever found by scientists. The pulsar - an ultra-dense chunk of a star leftover from its explosive death into a supernova - sits just 19,000 light years from Earth. It provides our best look yet at the early stages of star death, a mysterious and violent process that scientists still don't fully understand. The image was taken using Nasa's Chandra X-ray Observatory, an orbiting telescope that has been out of action for nearly two weeks following a catastrophic gyroscope failure.

The common weed killer Roundup (glyphosate) is back in the news after a US court ruled it contributed to a man’s terminal cancer (non-Hodgkin lymphoma). Following the court’s order for manufacturer Monsanto to compensate the former school ground’s keeper US$289 million, more than 9,000 people are reportedly also suing the company. In light of this, Cancer Council Australia is calling for Australia to review glyphosate’s safety. And tonight’s Four Corner’s report centres around Monsanto’s possible cover-up of the evidence for a link between glyphosate and cancer. Juries don’t decide science, and this latest court case produced no new scientific data....

The Trump administration is considering narrowly defining gender as a biological, immutable condition determined by genitalia at birth, the most drastic move yet in a governmentwide effort to roll back recognition and protections of transgender people under federal civil rights law. A series of decisions by the Obama administration loosened the legal concept of gender in federal programs, including in education and health care, recognizing gender largely as an individual’s choice and not determined by the sex assigned at birth. The policy prompted fights over bathrooms, dormitories, single-sex programs and other arenas where gender was once seen as a simple...

NEW YORK — When future historians look back on the 21st century, one of the most iconic photos may be of a smiling, dark-haired man in blue scrubs protectively holding a newborn — the world’s first commercially produced “three-parent” baby. This is John Zhang, the Chinese-born, British-educated founder and medical director of a Manhattan fertility center that is blowing up the way humans reproduce. In 2009, Zhang helped a 49-year-old patient become the world’s oldest known woman to carry her own child. In the not-too-distant future, he says, 60-year-old women will be able to do the same. In 2015, Zhang...

The Three Supernovas By Philip Cottraux Atheists used to believe the universe was eternally pre-existing and static. By rejecting the biblical creation account, they couldn’t accept the idea of a universe that had a beginning. Bertrand Russell, Charles Darwin, and at one time even Einstein labored under this philosophy. The idea of the whole universe condensed to a small state whose expansion was triggered by a colossal explosion was first proposed by a Catholic priest, Georges LeMaitres. The idea seemed so preposterous that astronomer Fred Hoyle first coined the phrase “big bang” as a term of ridicule. But two years...

Astronomers have discovered a massive proto-supercluster of galaxies -- bigger than even one million billion Suns. Scientists have called the ancient colossal structure Hyperion, the European Southern Observatory announced Wednesday. It is reported to have appeared just 2.3 billion years after the Big Bang, which took place about 13.7 billion years ago. The cluster's namesake is one of 12 titans born to the gods Gaia and Uranus in Greek mythology.

SEX-BOTS will help humans colonise Mars, according to a love-doll enthusiast who helps "test drive" randy robots.YouTuber, love-doll collector and sex-bot consultant Brick Dollbanger told The Sun that we'll soon by relying on droids for space travel – and said we'll eventually become bots ourselves. A divorced property developer in his 60s, Brick (not his real name) has been buying sex dolls for over a decade, and regularly advises California sex robot firm Realbotix on their upcoming Harmony love droid.And he's convinced they're going to help advance the human race: "I think we have to remember [sex robots] are here to help us...

... The mesmerizing ad ends with these words on screen: "Unlock your past. Inspire your future. Ancestry." There are currently over 10 million people in Ancestry's DNA database, each of whom sent the company $99 plus tiny bit of saliva, hoping to discover more about where they came from, who they're related to, what they're made of, what hidden gifts might lie dormant within them – in short, who they really are. While a few fortunate customers are reunited with long-lost relatives, most people, in return for paying for the privilege of giving their most private, personal data – their...

NASA is considering a spectacular airship concept for Venus exploration. The space agency’s Systems Analysis and Concepts Directorate (SACD) has posted potential designs of the High Altitude Venus Operational Concept (HAVOC) on its website. The airships have even been compared to a “cloud city” by Space.com. A similar size to Earth, Venus is our closest planetary neighbor. However, exploring Venus poses a unique set of challenges, according to NASA. “Though its internal geology is similar to Earth’s, its surface is hot enough to melt lead and is covered with craters, volcanoes, mountains, and lava plains,” it explains.

Galaxy clusters contain thousands of galaxies of all ages, shapes and sizes. Typically, they have a mass of about one million billion times the mass of the Sun and form over billions of years as smaller groups of galaxies slowly come together.The large mass of the galaxy cluster SDSS J0952+3434 creates the fascinating phenomenon of strong gravitational lensing.The cluster’s gravity bends light coming from behind it in a similar way to how the base of a wine glass bends light.The effects of this lensing can be clearly seen as an arc of light in the lower part of the new...

(Screenshot: CBS.com)Mary holds her song while in prayer, during season 2, Episode 3 of "Young Sheldon," aisr date Oct 4, 2018.A new episode of CBS' "Young Sheldon" offers a scientific explanation for why belief in a creator is logical.The spinoff of the hit series "The Big Bang Theory" aired last Thursday in an episode titled, "A Crisis of Faith and Octopus Aliens."WARNING: SPOILERS AHEADPromotional photo for CBS comedy series "Young Sheldon"The show began with a family visit to their home church. During the service, nine-year-old Sheldon interrupts the pastor to ask if Jesus came to save the octopus aliens in...

The wizards of early Europe wore hats of gold intricately embellished with astrological symbols that helped them to predict the movement of the sun and stars... ...Wilfried Menghin, the director of the Berlin Museum... carrying out detailed research on a 3,000-year-old 30in high Bronze Age cone of beaten gold that was discovered in Switzerland in 1995... ...discovered that the 1,739 sun and half-moon symbols decorating the Berlin cone's surface make up a scientific code which corresponds almost exactly to the "Metonic cycle" discovered by the Greek astronomer Meton in 432bc - about 500 years after the cone was made --...

Baby mice have been made with two mums and no dad, say researchers at the Chinese Academy of Sciences. It took a substantial feat of genetic engineering to break the rules of reproduction. The scientists said the "bimaternal" (two mammas) animals were healthy and went on to have pups of their own. But there was bad news on the all-male front. Mice with double-dads were attempted, but died within days of being born. Why even try?The researchers were trying to answer fundamental questions about why we have sex. Mammals, including us, can make babies only through sexual reproduction - aka...

A massive glowing "rogue" planetary-mass object has been discovered, surprising scientists with not only its size, but also the fact it's not orbiting a star. The object, named SIMP J01365663+0933473, has a magnetic field more than 200 times stronger than Jupiter’s and is nearly 13 times the size of the gas giant. At its size, it's right between the size of a planet and a failed star, so scientists will need to study it further to determine exactly what it is. “This object is right at the boundary between a planet and a brown dwarf, or ‘failed star,’ and is...

A rogue, planet-size object 20 light-years away from Earth has stunned astronomers with its incredibly powerful magnetic field. The scientists found that the object's magnetic field is more than 200 times stronger than Jupiter's, which, in turn, is between 16 and 54 times stronger than Earth's, according to NASA. How the object, which scientists call SIMP J01365663+0933473, can maintain a magnetic field so strong, as well as generate spectacular auroras, is still unclear. "This particular object is exciting because studying its magnetic dynamo mechanisms can give us new insights on how the same type of mechanisms can operate in extrasolar...

A bizarre rogue planet without a star is roaming the Milky Way just 20 light-years from the Sun. And according to a recently published study in The Astrophysical Journal, this strange, nomadic world has an incredibly powerful magnetic field that is some 4 million times stronger than Earth’s. Furthermore, it generates spectacular auroras that would put our own northern lights to shame. The new observations, made with the National Science Foundation’s Karl G. Jansky Very Large Array (VLA), not only are the first radio observations of a planetary-mass object beyond our solar system, but also mark the first time...

Astronomers using the National Science Foundation's Karl G. Jansky Very Large Array (VLA) have made the first radio-telescope detection of a planetary-mass object beyond our Solar System. The object, about a dozen times more massive than Jupiter, is a surprisingly strong magnetic powerhouse and a "rogue," traveling through space unaccompanied by any parent star. "This object is right at the boundary between a planet and a brown dwarf, or 'failed star,' and is giving us some surprises that can potentially help us understand magnetic processes on both stars and planets," said Melodie Kao, who led this study while a graduate...

"The new images of Occator Crater and the surrounding areas have exceeded expectations, revealing beautiful, alien landscapes," Dawn principal investigator Carol Raymond, of NASA's Jet Propulsion Laboratory (JPL) in Pasadena, California, said in a statement yesterday (July 16).  The $467 million Dawn mission launched in September 2007 with a bold goal: to orbit and study the two largest bodies in the asteroid belt: Vesta and Ceres. Both objects are considered leftovers from the solar system's planet-formation period (hence the mission's name).  Dawn reached Vesta in July 2011 and eyed the object up close for more than a year, finally leaving...