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A nearby exploding star is due to offer a spectacular show that could outshine our North Star this year.The star, which is 3,000 light-years from Earth, is expected to burst in a gigantic explosion – known as a nova – in the coming months. NASA said in a statement that the once-a-lifetime event could be so big that it can be seen by the naked eye. It should be visible for up to a week. It will be "fun and exciting upcoming cataclysm," Bradley Schaefer, an astrophysicist at Louisiana State University, told The New York…

SpaceX is reportedly eyeing a quick turnaround for its fourth Starship launch. Following a very successful third launch earlier this month, SpaceX seems keen on a May launch date for Starship’s fourth iteration, according to some reports.The news first broke during the Satellite 2024 conference on March 19, when Gynne Shotwell, the president and chief operating officer at Space, said that the company was still reviewing the data gathered from Starship’s third launch but that it would be ready to launch another…

Researchers at Tokyo Tech identify the quantum critical point in superconductors, solving a three-decade-old mystery and enhancing the understanding of superconductivity fluctuations. Credit: SciTechDaily.comThermoelectric effect reveals full picture of fluctuations in superconductivity.Weak fluctuations in superconductivity, a precursor phenomenon to superconductivity, have been successfully detected by a research group at Tokyo Institute of Technology (Tokyo Tech). This breakthrough was achieved by measuring the…

That virus likely came from a single employee who happened to be shedding an enormous quantity of a very weird variant. The researchers would desperately like to find that person. But what if that person doesn’t want to be found? A few years ago, Marc Johnson, a virologist at the University of Missouri, became obsessed with weird covid variants he was seeing in wastewater samples. The ones that caught his eye were odd in a couple of different ways: they didn’t match any of the common variants, and they didn’t circulate.…

Our love for coffee means millions of tons of spent coffee grounds going to waste every single year. Scientists have been working on ways to make use of them, and we now have another to add to the list: old coffee grounds have been shown to absorb bentazone, a herbicide used in agriculture. If the technology can be developed, it would solve two environmental problems in one: coffee ground waste, and damage caused by farming herbicides to wildlife and the surrounding natural world. A team from the Federal Technological…

Scientists have created the largest ever supermassive black hole map. The map, which is featured in a paper in The Astrophysical Journal, showcases more than 1.3 million quasars found in space and time. The furthest black hole featured in the map existed when the universe was only 1.5 billion years old, over 12 billion years ago.The map itself is showcased in a video within the paper, and it’s somewhat terrifying to think of all those supermassive black holes bounding their way through our universe, including…

Citizen scientists and researchers, collaborating through Taxon Expeditions, have discovered and documented a new beetle species, Clavicornaltica mataikanensis, in Borneo’s rainforests, showcasing the significant, yet largely uncharted, biodiversity of tropical forests. Credit: Taxon Expeditions – Holm FriedrichThe undiscovered small beetles in the tropical rainforest are probably endless. But that did not discourage citizen scientists on expeditions to the Ulu Temburong forest in Borneo to keep adding them to scientific…

On Thursday, Meta CEO Mark Zuckerberg announced a new WhatsApp feature that allows users to pin three messages on chats. Earlier, the feature was only limited to pinning a single message, but now WhatsApp has increased its count to three. This feature will allow users to easily access the information they need right at the top of the chat. Three messages can be easily pinned on contact as well as group chat. This does not include text but also images, videos, polls, etc. Know more about this newly announced WhatsApp…

A recent study reveals that “odd viscosity,” a unique property where fluid particles spin uniformly, can cause regular patterns to emerge from the chaotic motion of turbulent fluids, such as those seen in a tumbling river or jet engine outflow. This discovery highlights the potential of controlling turbulence and has implications for natural phenomena like the solar corona and solar wind. Credit: SciTechDaily.comPhysicists have demonstrated the emergence of patterns from chaos in turbulent fluids.The turbulent motion of a…

Even when it’s ground into microparticles, 97% of an algae-based plastic biodegrades in compost and water in under seven months, a new study has reported. The researchers hope their plastic will eventually replace existing petroleum-based ones, which have caused concern due to their effects on health and the environment.In recent years, there has been a great deal of chatter about – and research into – microplastics, the tiny, almost indestructible fragments shed from everyday plastic products. Much of that research has…