Humans walked on the moon half a century ago, and it looks like we’re heading back. NASA aims to send astronauts to the lunar surface in the coming decade with the Space Launch System (SLS) and SpaceX Starship HLS, but SpaceX’s Elon Musk has his sights set on a more …
Read More »Octopuses Sleep States
In a new study, published this week in the journal iScience, a team of researchers showed that Brazil reef octopuses (Octopus insularis) have two different quiescence states that fulfill the behavioral criteria for sleep, namely ‘quiet sleep’ and ‘active sleep.’ Brazil reef octopuses (Octopus insularis) have ‘quiet’ and ‘active sleep,’ …
Read More »Northern Bahamas
Humans were present in Florida by 14,000 years ago, and until recently, it was believed The Bahamas — located only a few km away — were not colonized until about 1,000 years ago. New evidence indicates that Lucayans — an Arawakan-speaking Taíno people, whose name translates as ‘island men’ in …
Read More »NASA Orion Spacecraft
NASA is going back to the moon; at least that’s the plan. To get there, the agency has to develop a new generation of crewed spacecraft, including the Space Launch System (SLS) megarocket and the Orion crew module. While the SLS is still in development, Orion has already passed …
Read More »Kangaroos Communicate
Kangaroos, marsupial mammals that have never been domesticated, can intentionally communicate with humans, according to new research led by the University of Roehampton. The western gray kangaroo (Macropus fuliginosus) in Donnelly Mills, Western Australia. Image credit: Sean Mack / CC BY-SA 3.0. “Domestication is generally assumed to have resulted in …
Read More »Immune System of Humans
Other Mammals Could Struggle to Fight Extraterrestrial Microorganisms In a new study published in the journal Microorganisms, a team of researchers from the UK, the Netherlands and Germany tested how mammalian immune cells responded to peptides containing two amino acids that are commonly found in carbonaceous meteorites. The immune response …
Read More »First Humans Arrived in North America 116,000 Years Earlier than Thought: Evidence from Cerutti Mastodon Site
Researchers digging at the Cerutti Mastodon site, an archaeological site from the early late Pleistocene epoch near San Diego, California, found animal remains and stone tools that show the first humans were living in North America much earlier than previously thought. A concentration of fossil bone and rock at the …
Read More »DMOZ has officially closed after nearly 19 years of humans trying to organize the web
DMOZ — the Open Directory Project — officially closed today. The move comes three days later than originally planned. It marks the end of an era of humans trying to catalog the entire web. DMOZ was a project designed to organize the web using volunteer human editors and born during …
Read More »SpaceX plans to send humans on lunar orbit mission in 2018
Human space exploration has been limited to low-Earth orbit ever since the end of the Apollo program, but SpaceX is looking to change that. Of course, we’ve known that for a while, but a new announcement from CEO Elon Musk pushed the timeline for humanity’s return to the moon up …
Read More »Meet Saccorhytus coronarius, Humans’ Earliest-Known Ancestor
A microscopic, bag-like marine creature that lived approximately 540 million years ago (Fortunian stage of the Cambrian period) has been identified from microfossils found in Shaanxi Province, China. Reconstruction of Saccorhytus coronaries: lateral, hind and ventral views. Image credit: Jian Han et al, doi: 10.1038/nature21072. The ancient animal, named Saccorhytus …
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