Daily News update on – Science

Space.com

Now you see it, now you don’t. The Mars Express spacecraft has witnessed a rare spectacle, spotting Mars’ moon Deimos appearing to pass in front of Jupiter and its moons on Valentine’s Day (Feb. 14). The event, called an occultation, allows scientists …

The Washington Post

James A. McDivitt, who served as commander in two pivotal NASA missions in the early, awe-inspiring days of spaceflight — including the Gemini launch that featured the first American spacewalk — died Oct. 14 at a hospital in Tucson. He was 93.

CNN

The James Webb Space Telescope captured a highly detailed snapshot of the so-called Pillars of Creation, a vista of three looming towers made of interstellar dust and gas that’s speckled with newly formed stars. The …

Phys.Org

As warming atmospheric temperatures lead to glacier thinning and retreat around the world, understanding how glaciers are responding to climate change, algal growth, and impurities like dust and black carbon is vital. Understanding the response helps …

The New York Times

It’s difficult to believe that anything would want to make a meal of such a venomous arachnid, but in California and other Western states, the alligator lizard snarfs up widows like crunchy black popcorn. That fascinated …

The New York Times

Yes, it’s full of stars, and stars to be. Twenty-seven years ago, in 1995, the Hubble Space Telescope wowed the world with a cosmic landscape called Pillars of Creation. The image revealed towering mountains of gas and dust in the Eagle Nebula, …

MIT News

APS honors Anna Frebel, Liang Fu, Nuh Gedik, Or Hen, Nuno Loureiro, and Jesse Thaler for research, applications, teaching, and leadership. School of Science.

Reuters

Researchers on Wednesday described genomic findings from the remains of 13 Neanderthals – 11 from Chagyrskaya cave and two from Okladnikov cave in the Altai Mountains of Russia – in one of the largest genetic studies of a Neanderthal population to date.

MIT News

MIT astronomers have found a way to determine an asteroid’s interior structure based on how its spin changes during a close encounter with Earth. The tool may improve the aim of future asteroid-targeting missions like the recent DART mission.

Smithsonian

Enormous, birdlike dinosaurs strutted across ancient Mississippi around 85 million years ago. The precise appearance of these saurian behemoths is as yet unknown. Paleontologists have only found a smattering of leg and foot bones from these massive …