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The Athena Lunar Lander Also Fell Over on its Side

Rotating Black Holes are Packed with Energy. Here's How to Unlock It

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Today we have part 9 of Robert Lang‘s collection of photos that he took while visiting Brazil’s region last year. Robert’s captions and IDs are indented, and you can enlarge his photo by clicking on them.

Readers’ Wildlife Photos: The Pantanal, Part IX: Birds

Continuing our mid-2025 journey to the Pantanal in Brazil, by far the largest category of observation and photography was birds: we saw over 100 different species of birds (and this was not even a birding-specific trip, though the outfitter also organizes those for the truly hard core). Here we continue working our way through the alphabetarium of common names.

Potoo (Nyctibius sp.). Our guide spotted this one at night atop a roadside post, and while the lighting made it far beyond the abilities of my big-lens Canon, my iPhone 14 managed to get a decent picture—as one of several tries, mostly unsuccessful, but this one came out:

Purplish jay (Cyanocorax cyanomelas):

Red-crested cardinal (Paroaria coronata):

Red-legged seriema (Cariama cristata):

Greater rhea (Rhea americana):

Rhea chicks:

Ringed kingfisher (Megaceryle torquata):

Roadside hawk (Rupornis magnirostris). Saw a lot of these, some of them even along the side of the road:

Roseate spoonbill (Platalea ajaja) among the caimans:

Caatinga cacholote (Pseudoseisura cristata). Formerly called the rufous cacholote (which was what our guide identified it as):

More birds to come.

A star has been spotted shooting away from the heart of our galaxy at around 500 kilometres per second, giving astronomers clues about a group of stellar objects that are hard to observe directly

How sexual reproduction came about has long been a mystery, but an evolutionary model suggests it could have started with cells fusing to increase their food reserves

Mosquito-borne diseases like West Nile virus could become a growing concern in the UK and other northern European nations as the climate warms, with a virus affecting blackbirds showing how these pathogens can take hold

When young stars form, they accumulate an accretion disk of gas and dust, which eventually forms planets. Typically, this process lasts less than 10 million years, as the increasing radiation from the star disperses the remaining material. However, recent observations from the James Webb Space Telescope have revealed a protoplanetary disk in a system estimated to be 30 million years old—three times longer than the expected lifespan. Scientists have already determined this is not a debris disk created by colliding planets, it’s an intriguing discovery that has forced a review of our model of planetary system and stellar evolution.

After a long ‘eclipse drought,’ lunar totality once again spans the Americas The end is in sight. If skies are clear, North and South America will witness a fine total lunar eclipse early Friday morning, March 14th. This is the first eclipse of 2025, and the first total lunar eclipse for the hemisphere since November 2022.

Myths spread by contrarian doctors to minimize COVID are being recycled to minimize measles. The anti-vaccine circle is complete.

The post Everything Old Is New Again, Again first appeared on Science-Based Medicine.

For the second time in a row, SpaceX lost the second stage of its Starship launch system during a flight test, while recovering the first-stage Super Heavy booster.

An X-ray signal has been detected at the very centre of the Helix Nebula, at the site of its central white dwarf star. It’s a burned out stellar remnant that doesn’t usually emit flashes of X-ray radiation but a new study has been analysing the outburst. The team of researchers think that the stellar corpse smashed into one of its surviving planets and that the X-rays are coming from the planetary debris as it falls onto the surface of the white dwarf.

An ultra-hot Neptune exoplanet has been observed by JWST and the image reveals dramatically different hemispheres. The planet orbits so close to its host start that it is tidally locked so one hemisphere remains facing the star. On this permanent daytime side, temperatures reach 2,000°C but the temperatures plummet on the daytime side. The observations show that the daytime side has bright reflective clouds on its cooler western hemisphere but not on its eastern side!

Intuitive Machines' Athena spacecraft has landed on the surface of the moon, but it seems to have fallen over and we do not yet know if it will be able to drill for ice

The Gaia Hypothesis theorizes that all of Earth's systems are tied together, making one large, living organism. While there's still some disagreement about whether or not that hypothesis is true, it is undeniable that many of Earth's systems are intertwined and that changes in one can affect another. As our technology advances, we are becoming more and more capable of detecting changes in those systems and how those changes affect other systems as well. A new proposal from a robotics expert at NASA's Jet Propulsion Laboratory (JPL) takes that exploration one step further by trying to develop a system that takes the "pulse" of a planet.

Flying commercially in the US remains low risk despite a recent mid-air collision, near misses and job cuts at the Federal Aviation Administration. But aviation safety experts and former FAA employees identify warning signs that would stop them from flying in the future

Researchers have discovered techniques to bestow superpowers upon sapphire, a material that most of us think of as just a pretty jewel.

The US Department of Agriculture announced it will allocate $100 million to develop vaccines and other therapies to help contain the spread of bird flu on poultry and dairy farms

Researchers have enabled a man who is paralyzed to control a robotic arm through a device that relays signals from his brain to a computer. He was able to grasp, move and drop objects just by imagining himself performing the actions.

Researchers have enabled a man who is paralyzed to control a robotic arm through a device that relays signals from his brain to a computer. He was able to grasp, move and drop objects just by imagining himself performing the actions.

A new technique builds inorganic and polymer battery electrolytes at the same time, in the same vessel. This 'one-pot' in-situ method creates a controlled, homogeneous blend, pairing the conductivity of the inorganic solids with the flexibility of the polymers.