Natural sciences

Since the gravitational waves predicted by Einstein were first detected in 2015, astrophysicists have been pondering the gravitational wave background—the cumulative undulations of these spacetime ripples as they cross the cosmos.First Full-Color Images From Webb Space TelescopeNow, one astrophysicist associated with the background hunt developed a model to sniff out ancient supermassive black holes, which could help explain how black holes form and evolve. The research was published in the Astrophysical Journal…

In arid southeastern California, just across the border from Nevada, sits the only large-scale rare-earth element mine in the Western Hemisphere. Here at Mountain Pass, rocks are dug out of a 600-foot pit in the ground, crushed, and liquified into a concentrated soup of metals that are essential for the magnets inside consumer electronics, wind turbines, and electric vehicles, or EVs.What Is Carbon Capture? With Gizmodo’s Molly Taft | TechmodoToday, that metallic soup is shipped to China, where individual rare earths are…

A 3-alarm fire in lower Manhattan killed four people and left two others in critical condition in the early hours of Tuesday morning. Lithium-ion e-bike batteries are to blame, according to the New York City Fire Department. The blaze, which began in an e-bike shop on the first floor of a multi-story, mixed-use building in the Two Bridges neighborhood, ignited because of a battery, according to Fire Commissioner Laura Kavanagh. What Is Carbon Capture? With Gizmodo’s Molly Taft | Techmodo“It is very clear that this was…

Over 20,000 galaxies glimmer in this sweeping view of the sky between the constellations of Pisces and Andromeda. But more than just an arresting sight, the view has helped astronomers determine what sparked the Epoch of Reionization, the period when the opaque universe gave way to the transparent one.First Full-Color Images From Webb Space TelescopeThe earliest days of the universe were cloaked in a dense gas that limited the amount light could travel through it. During the Epoch of Reionization—when the universe was…

For more than a year, the largest space-based telescope ever built has been observing the far ends of the cosmos with unprecedented detail. The Webb Space Telescope could soon get a little extra help in the form of a miniature satellite the size of a toaster oven and equipped with extremely powerful vision.Webb Telescope Images the Pillars of CreationNASA recently selected the Monitoring Activity from Nearby sTars with uv Imaging and Spectroscopy (MANTIS) to assist Webb by observing the skies in the full range of…

Although the Sun fuels life on our planet, Earth’s host star is not to be messed with. The inflamed ball of hot gas can often times get violent, flinging streams of plasma in our direction in the form of solar wind. By the time this solar wind reaches us, it has already traveled 93 million miles and interacted with Earth’s own magnetic field. What scientists really needed, however, was to get a closer look at what’s drivingsolar wind from the Sun’s burning surface.What Is Carbon Capture? With Gizmodo’s Molly Taft |…

It’s been two and a half years since the Arecibo Observatory’s collapse, and the future of the famous radio telescope’s site remains in limbo. Now, observatory astronomers have refined their plans for Arecibo’s successor by reducing the scope of their plans.First Full-Color Images From Webb Space TelescopeThe downsizing appears to be a result of lack of funding; even before the telescope’s collapse in December 2020, the National Science Foundation was seeking to reduce its spending on the massive observatory, according to…

Last October, astronomers witnessed a fleeting, extraordinarily bright gamma ray burst in the distant universe. Since dubbed the BOAT—the Brightest of All Time—a team of scientists has now reported an unusual structure to the gamma ray burst’s jet.What Is Carbon Capture? With Gizmodo’s Molly Taft | TechmodoGamma ray bursts are some of the universe’s largest fireworks shows. They’re tremendous explosions in the cosmos that emit—you guessed it—gamma rays, the most energetic type of electromagnetic radiation. They can be…

This infrared image taken by the Webb Space Telescope comprises more than 45,000 galaxies, many of which existed in the first billion years of the universe.First Full-Color Images From Webb Space TelescopeThe image captures the GOODS-S field, a region of space in the direction of the constellation Fornax. It was taken as part of the JWST Advanced Deep Extragalactic Survey (JADES), a program that takes deep field imagery of the cosmos to decipher how the universe as we know it came about.In the GOODS-S field—which was…

A team of astrophysicists has determined through simulations that the debris shed by dying stars may be a source of gravitational waves—those ripples in spacetime predicted by Einstein over a century ago.First Full-Color Images From Webb Space TelescopeGravitational waves are predicted by the general theory of relativity; they are ripples in spacetime generated by massive accelerating objects. The waves are also produced by the interactions of such objects, like binaries of and mergers between neutron stars and black…