Headlines

Upcoming telescopes could shed light on dark matter

NASA's plans to return astronauts to the moon through the Artemis program and ultimately send humans to Mars highlight just how far space exploration has come. Yet while the moon and Mars remain compelling destinations filled with scientific mysteries, looking beyond our solar

Rocket launches and reentries harm Earth's ozone layer

The space industry is surging. In coming years, nearly 10,000 spacecraft are slated to launch into low-Earth orbit for a variety of purposes, such as global surveillance, space tourism, and satellite "megaconstellations" providing internet service.

Toward standardized microplastics monitoring in rivers

Microplastics (MPs), defined as plastic fragments smaller than 5 mm, have become so pervasive that they are detectable in nearly every environment studied—from remote ocean trenches to urban air, tap water, and human blood. MPs are hardly uniform; they span an enormous size

Plants could be used to grow medicines in space, study shows

Astronauts on long space missions may one day use plants to produce fresh stocks of medicines on demand, thanks to new research by engineers at the University of California San Diego. The team developed a simple method to grow and repeatedly harvest pharmaceuticals from plants

Physicists create new family of Schrödinger-cat states

Quantum mechanics, unlike classical physics, allows objects to exist in more than one state at the same time. This idea is often illustrated by Schrödinger's cat, imagined as being both alive and dead until it is observed. In the laboratory, physicists can create less dramatic