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Experimentation is the basis of the scientific process – and it is at the heart of what it means to be human and to question the world around us.
Thousands of years ago, our ancestors created the first star charts and practiced alchemy, the precursor to chemistry.
Even Sir Isaac Newton, considered the father of physics, was an avid alchemist who wrote a recipe for a key ingredient needed to make the fabled philosopher’s stone. The stone was thought to turn any metal into silver or gold.
Chemists in the 1700s sought to consider alchemy a pseudoscience. But ancient alchemists actually developed technology and discovered chemical elements that are still widely used today.
Now, a new discovery links astronomy and alchemy to an intriguing figure who lived during the Renaissance.
Danish astronomer Tycho Brahe changed the way people understood the heavens in the 1500s by seeing a supernova and suggesting that the moon orbited the Earth – all before telescopes existed.
But in the basement of his castle called Uraniborg, which included an observatory, the astronomer performed secret alchemical work for elite royal clients. Little is known of Brahe’s work, other than his commitment to developing medicinal recipes instead of gold.
A new analysis of glass shards from the destroyed alchemy laboratory has revealed the ingredients Brahe used in his mysterious preparations, including tungsten – which was not formally described until more than 180 years after his death.
NASA astronauts Butch Wilmore and Suni Williams have spent more than 50 days aboard the International Space Station after piloting the first crewed mission of Boeing’s Starliner spacecraft. And there is still no set date for the astronauts’ return to Earth.
But NASA and Boeing are now looking into the “root cause” of the spacecraft’s problems that surfaced during its journey, including helium leaks and propellant problems.
Engineers have been conducting ground tests for weeks to replicate the anomalies, and additional tests this weekend should fully reveal the problems, said Mark Nappi, Boeing’s Commercial Crew Program manager.
Meanwhile, SpaceX has received approval to continue launches using its Falcon 9 rocket, which recently suffered an end-of-mission failure during a routine trip. After the Starliner mission is complete, SpaceX will transport a quartet of astronauts for NASA’s Crew-9 mission to the space station.
Marine scientists found an unusual type of oxygen produced without photosynthesis on the seafloor – more than 13,000 feet below the ocean’s surface – that could help unravel the origins of life.
When Andrew Sweetman, a professor at the Scottish Society for Marine Science, first discovered the unexpected phenomenon in the Pacific Ocean a decade ago, he thought the sensor equipment was faulty. No light can reach the depths of the ocean, and oxygen is not known to be produced by organisms along the seabed.
But now, new research from Sweetman and his team suggests that “dark” oxygen can be created by potato-sized metal nodules that act as “geobatteries” within the deep-sea ecosystem.
A camera attached to an endangered shark captured the harrowing moment a boat hit the marine animal, and it may be some of the first footage showing just how common boat strikes are for ocean dwellers.
Researchers don’t know if the 7-meter-tall shark that lived in the waters around the Blasket Islands, off the coast of Ireland, survived the collision. But the impact clearly left a large scratch and lines of ink on the shark’s mottled skin.
Scientists are working to better understand the species, which is among the largest fish in the world. The footage was intended to shed more light on the submerged shark’s eating habits as it feeds on the ocean’s surface with its jaws open.
Instead, the video highlights why the shark and other endangered sea creatures need protection.
Separately, cocaine has been detected in sharks living off the coast of Brazil and is the first time the drug has been found in free-ranging sharks.
The Perseverance rover has found something that may indicate that Mars may have been home to microbial life in the distant past.
The robotic explorer has investigated a cliff nicknamed Cheyava Falls. The rover used its instruments to analyze the leopard-spotted rock and found signatures and chemical structures that may have been formed by life billions of years ago when water was present on the red planet.
“These spots are a big surprise,” said David Flannery, an astrobiologist on the Persistence science team. “On Earth, these types of features in rocks are often associated with fossilized records of microbes living underground.”
These fresh findings may surprise you:
– Komodo dragons, the world’s largest lizards, have iron-tipped teeth that stain their jagged edges orange and help the deadly predators tear apart their prey, according to a new study.
— The Chandra X-ray Observatory just celebrated a quarter of a century in space by releasing 25 never-before-seen glowing images of the cosmos — but NASA budget cuts could bring the mission to an early end.
– Humans are not the only ones capable of blushing. Domestic chickens have been observed blushing to express fear or excitement, and researchers working on a French farm have images of pink chickens to prove it.
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