Science

It was the terrible prospect of lightning one day striking the historic windmill that troubled Andrew Farrell. A bolt five times hotter than the surface of the sun instantly turning moisture in one of the mill’s timbers to steam, exploding it. What if a raging fire then engulfed the 160-year-old …

The global rise in antibiotic resistance is making bacterial infections harder to treat and increasing the risk of disease spread, severe illness, and death. Once considered miracle drugs, antibiotics are now losing their effectiveness against ever-evolving bacteria. One company is aiming to treat infections with a different strategy: arming tiny …

One of the most ambitious space tourism missions in history has launched, with the all-commercial crew set to hit a number of milestones during its five days in space, including the first-ever privately funded human space walk. The mission, called Polaris Dawn, took off from NASA’s Kennedy Space Center in …

Nearly a quarter century ago, four identical spacecraft launched into space. Now, they’re coming home. The European Space Agency sent a plane to capture footage of the first of four Cluster mission satellites reentering Earth’s atmosphere on Sept. 8. “The first recorded observation of a satellite reentry from a high-speed …

THIS ARTICLE IS republished from The Conversation under a Creative Commons license. How much do we really know about what else is out there in the universe? Let’s take an outlandish example. If there were aliens flying around our galaxy with the sort of warp drive technology we often see …

The original version of this story appeared in Quanta Magazine. Nearly a century ago, Edwin Hubble discovered that the universe is getting larger. Modern measurements of how fast it is expanding disagree, however, suggesting that our understanding of the laws of physics might be off. Everyone expected the sharp vision …

THIS ARTICLE IS republished from The Conversation under a Creative Commons license. A 10-month-old boy in the Gaza Strip was recently paralyzed by poliovirus—the first such case in the region this century. Israel and Hamas have agreed to a limited ceasefire to allow 640,000 children in the enclave to be …

This story originally appeared on Grist and is part of the Climate Desk collaboration. A 41-year-old man in New Hampshire died last week after contracting a rare mosquito-borne illness called eastern equine encephalitis virus, also known as EEE or “triple E.” It was New Hampshire’s first human case of the …

This story originally appeared on WIRED en Español and has been translated from Spanish. The wide mowed lawns and leafy trees, the sports fields shining under their illuminated lights, the bouncy castles in the children’s play areas—especially the bouncy castles—are what Celia Pérez Godínez envies. These are the trappings of …

Boeing's Starliner spacecraft, stricken with thruster problems and helium leaks, has left the International Space Station, wrapping up a disappointing test flight that has clouded the long-term future of the Starliner program. Astronauts Butch Wilmore and Suni Williams, who launched aboard Starliner on June 5, closed the spacecraft's hatch Thursday …