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Researchers studying Dublin Bay have said recent sea level rise there has happened at “approximately double the rate of global sea level rise”. The study examined sea level trends over eight decades and confirmed elevated rates in recent years. Researchers at the Hamilton Institute and ICARUS Climate Research Center at Maynooth University found that the Dublin sea level rose by an estimated 1.1 mm per year between 1953 and 2016. Researchers said the overall sea level rise is “in line with expected trends”, but large variability across many decades has led to higher rates in recent years. The research published...

In collaboration with the European Space Agency (ESA), the team is launching the Solar Orbiter that will use Venus's and Earth's gravity to swing itself out of the ecliptic plane — the area of space aligned with the sun's equator, where all planets orbit. From this position, the craft will feast its eyes on the first-ever look of the massive yellow dwarf star, which will provide scientists with better data to predict solar storms more accurately. Solar Orbiter is equipped with a custom-designed titanium heat shield coated with a specific phosphate that withstands temperatures over 900 degrees Fahrenheit, allowing it...

Scott Amos says his mom’s been after him to get his childhood junk out of her Reno, Nevada, attic since he moved out on his own more than 20 years ago, and now, his whole family’s glad he did. When he went through one of the boxes, he came across a rare unopened copy of the Nintendo Entertainment System game “Kid Icarus” that has been sold at auction for $9,000, including the buyer’s premium. The shrink-wrapped cartridge was still in a JCPenney bag along with a receipt showing that it was purchased in December 1988, when Amos was 9. Amos...

Say hello to electroaerodynamic propulsion The feat was achieved using electroaerodynamic propulsion, which uses a pair of electrodes to push around ions and create ionic wind. The phenomenon has been known about since the 1960s (in fact, Apple even considered using it to cool its laptops back in 2012), but this is the first time it’s been used to propel a plane.

Lance Armstrong has thrown his support behind the Netflix documentary Icarus, which details the alleged Russian state doping system put in place at the Sochi Olympics. Armstrong has pledged to host a screening of the film on January 6 in New York City. Oscar nomination voting opens on January. (Update: it's been nominated.) Fogel told the Hollywood Reporter that he first learned Armstrong had watched the film when he saw Armstrong's tweet in December, and he was happy that Armstrong responded positively. "He was certainly punished in having his seven Tour titles stripped from him, and this is a subject...

The honorary president of Russia’s Olympic Committee believes the man responsible for exposing the country’s state-sponsored doping program should be executed. Grigory Rodchenkov, the former director of Moscow’s anti-doping lab, exposed the scheme in 2016 after fleeing to the United States. “Rodchenkov should be shot for lying, like Stalin would have done,” Olympic official Leonid Tyagachev said on a Russian radio station, according to the Guardian. Tyagachev’s remark may sound like hyperbole but Russia has a long history of killing political opponents—two former doping officials died under mysterious circumstances last year—and Rodchenkov fled to the U.S. over fears for his...

An independent experiment confirms that subatomic particles have wrong energy spectrum for superluminal travel. The claim that neutrinos can travel faster than light has been given a knock by an independent experiment. On 17 October, the Imaging Cosmic and Rare Underground Signals (ICARUS) collaboration submitted a paper1 to the preprint server arXiv.org, in which it offered a rebuttal of claims2 to have clocked subatomic particles called neutrinos travelling faster than the speed of light. The original results were published on 22 September by the Oscillation Project with Emulsion-Tracking Apparatus (OPERA) experiment. Both experiments are based at Gran Sasso National Laboratory...

The biggest moon in the solar system is Ganymede, the third large moon out from Jupiter. Larger than Mercury, Ganymede has a heterogeneous surface of dark and light areas (picture), grooved terrain, abrupt changes of landforms, and bright splashes where impacts have scarred its icy surface (gallery). What goes on inside, though, is more surprising: it has an intrinsic magnetic field. Researchers could only make it last for the assumed age of the solar system by appealing to “special conditions” that are not necessarily compatible with theories of its formation...

Probe to 'look inside' asteroids By Paul Rincon BBC News Online science staff in Paris, France Studies of asteroids would aid Earth-protection strategies A new space mission concept unveiled at a Paris conference aims to look inside asteroids to reveal how they are made. Deep Interior would use radar to probe the origin and evolution of two near-Earth objects less than 1km across. The mission, which could launch some time later this decade, would also give clues to how the planets evolved. The perceived threat of asteroids colliding with our planet has renewed interest in space missions to understand these...