Understanding the limits on what microbial life can endure is important for preventing contamination of the Red Planet with terrestrial microbes when our human and robotic explorers arrive.
Using sunlight to drive chemical reactions, such as artificial photosynthesis, could soon become much more efficient thanks to nanomaterials.
Researchers presenting at the 2016 United European Gastroenterology conference have identified a group of non-gluten proteins that can trigger symptoms of asthma, multiple sclerosis, chronic pain, and more.
Astronomers have uncovered a supermassive black hole that has been propelled out of the center of a distant galaxy by what could be the awesome power of gravitational waves.
NASA’s Technology Transfer Program is “the agency’s oldest continually operated program,” according to Spinoff, its annual guide of consumer products developed from NASA technology.
For the last few decades, microchip manufacturers have been on a quest to find ways to make the patterns of wires and components in their microchips ever smaller, in order to fit more of them onto a single chip and thus continue the relentless progress toward faster and more powerful computers. That progress has become more difficult recently, as manufacturing processes bump up against fundamental limits involving, for example, the wavelengths of the light used to create the patterns.
The mystery isn’t just that we see methane when we shouldn’t. It’s also that, in a sense, we see too much of it.
Scientists studying the conditions on Saturn’s largest moon, Titan, have found that the particles covering much of its surface are electrically charged. Not only that, but the particles tend to clump together and become immovable dunes climbing to as high as 300 feet.
The massive black hole is able to rapidly grow as intense radiation from a galaxy nearby shuts down star-formation in its host galaxy.
The huge rocks that hurtle through space may prove to be lifesavers for astronauts. Clays extracted from asteroids could be used on deep space missions to shield against celestial radiation.
