Technology, features and articles | Educational Science

Mar 2, 2018

Pollution from Ships Creates Massive Clouds Visible from Space

NASA's Aqua satellite was orbiting over Portugal back in January when it snapped the above photo. It shows a thin film of clouds above the brilliant blue of the North Atlantic, slashed with white lines of thicker clouds that look like scars or etchings. Those thicker clouds, NASA officials explained...

Mar 13, 2018

The Science Websites That We Read Every Day

There's a lot of junk on the internet, but the web is still a wonderful place to share and discover knowledge. For science enthusiasts and news connoisseurs who don't want to waste time searching out the most interesting and legit conveyors of this knowledge, Live Science editors and reporters put...

May 31, 2018

What is Augmented Reality?

Augmented reality is the result of using technology to superimpose information — sounds, images and text — on the world we see. Picture the Minority Report or Iron Man style of interactivity. Augmented reality vs. virtual realityThis is rather different from virtual reality. Virtual reality means computer-generated environments for you...

Jun 4, 2018

Scientists Figured Out How to Make Ceramics That Bend and Mush Instead of Shattering

A team of scientists has figured out how to make ceramics that bend and mush instead of shattering (though under enough pressure they will still crack). That's a potentially lifesaving discovery: Heat-resistant ceramics are critical materials in machines that run hot, and they also coat the metal parts inside airplane...

Aug 31, 2018

Harvard Printer Blasts Droplets with 100 Times Earth's Gravitational Force (Video)

Stop a droplet. Let it grow. Then, pull on it harder than the gravity at the surface of the sun. A new printing technique designed at Harvard University's engineering school uses sound waves to control and fire droplets from a nozzle with incredible force, allowing researchers to print with liquids...

Oct 17, 2018

Jam-Resistant US Military Communications Satellite Lifts Off in Midnight-Hour Launch

A United Launch Alliance (ULA) Atlas V rocket launched the satellite, known as Advanced Extremely High Frequency 4 (AEHF-4), at 12:15 a.m. EDT (0415 GMT) from a pad at Cape Canaveral Air Force Station. AEHF-4 is an advanced jam-resistant and nuclear-hardened satellite designed to provide survivable, global, secure, protected and...

Oct 18, 2018

X-37B Military Space Plane Wings Past 400 Days on Latest Mystery Mission

The latest mystery mission of the U.S. Air Force's robotic X-37B space plane has now passed the 400-day mark . This mission — known as Orbital Test Vehicle (OTV-5) — was rocketed into Earth orbit on Sept. 7, 2017, atop a SpaceX Falcon 9 rocket from Launch Complex 39A at...

Nov 5, 2018

New Supercomputer with 1 Million Processors Is World's Fastest Brain-Mimicking Machine

Scientists just activated the world's biggest brain: a supercomputer with a million processing cores and 1,200 interconnected circuit boards that together operate like a human brain. Ten years in the making, it is the world's largest neuromorphic computer — a type of computer that mimics the firing of neurons —...

Jan 14, 2019

Physicists Built a Machine That Breaks the Normal Rules of Light

Physicists have built a ring in which pulses of light whip circles around each other and the normal rules that govern light's behavior no longer apply. Under normal circumstances, light displays certain kids of physical symmetry. First, if you were to play a tape of light's behavior forward and then...

Jun 24, 2019

NASA Set To Launch a Deep-Space Atomic Clock Tonight

NASA is set to launch an incredible new atomic clock into orbit on a Falcon Heavy today (June 24) in a technology demonstration mission that could transform the way humans explore space. The Deep Space Atomic Clock, developed by NASA's Jet Propulsion Laboratory, is a space-ready upgrade to the atomic...

Jul 6, 2019

Skywatcher Captures Rare Image of Mysterious X-37B Military Space Plane

Skywatcher and satellite tracker Ralf Vandebergh of the Netherlands recently caught a rare glimpse of the U.S. Air Force's secretive X-37B space plane. Vandebergh said he'd been hunting for the robotic spacecraft for months and finally managed to track it down in May. But it took a bit longer to...

Oct 1, 2019

Why You Shouldn't Worry About China’s New 'Hypersonic' Nuclear Death Machine

Nervous ripples spread across U.S. social media Monday night (Sept. 30), as reports spread of China unveiling a scary-sounding new nuclear missile at a military parade. The missile is designed to move very fast, even for a ballistic missile. (That's why they call it hypersonic.) It approaches its target at...

Oct 3, 2019

Could Elon Musk's Starship Threaten Alien Life?

Elon Musk, founder of private space-faring company SpaceX, recently unveiled his new Starship craft. Amazingly, it is designed to carry up to 100 crew members on interplanetary journeys throughout the solar system, starting with Mars in 2024. The announcement is exciting, invoking deep emotions of hope and adventure. But I...

Jan 14, 2020

World's First 'Living Machine' Created Using Frog Cells and Artificial Intelligence

What happens when you take cells from frog embryos and grow them into new organisms that were evolved by algorithms? You get something that researchers are calling the world's first living machine. Though the original stem cells came from frogs — the African clawed frog, Xenopus laevis — these so-called...

Jan 24, 2020

DARPA scraps XS-1 military space plane project after Boeing drops out

Phantom Express won't get off the ground after all. Boeing has withdrawn from Experimental Spaceplane (XSP), a U.S. Defense Advanced Research Projects Agency (DARPA) program designed to increase the nation's access to space. The aerospace giant had named its hypersonic concept vehicle Phantom Express. That moniker is now oddly appropriate,...