NASA is launching a study of UFOs as part of a new push toward high-risk, high-impact science. The space agency announced Thursday that it’s setting up an independent team to see how much information is publicly available on the matter and how much more is needed to understand the unexplained sightings. The experts will also
Boeing’s crew capsule rocketed into orbit Thursday on a repeat test flight without astronauts, after years of being grounded by flaws that could have doomed the spacecraft. Only a test dummy was aboard. If the capsule reaches the International Space Station on Friday and everything else goes well, two or three NASA test pilots could
The world’s first image of the chaotic supermassive black hole at the center of our Milky Way galaxy doesn’t portray a voracious cosmic destroyer but what astronomers Thursday called a “gentle giant” on a near-starvation diet. Astronomers believe nearly all galaxies, including our own, have these giant black holes at their bustling and crowded center,
Scientists think there are 300 million habitable planets in the Milky Way, and some may be home to intelligent life. Bruno Gilli/ESO, CC BY Chris Impey, University of Arizona If a person is lost in the wilderness, they have two options. They can search for civilization, or they could make themselves easy to spot by
Image: Artist’s rendering of the OSIRIS-APEX spacecraft firing thrusters near the surface of the asteroid Apophis. Credit: Heather Roper, NASA graphic designer Because of the potential to deepen our understanding of the solar system and beyond, NASA this week extended the missions of eight of its spacecraft, including OSIRIS-REx—and NAU planetary geologist Chris Haberle will be one
Zeros and ones, qubits, superpositions, quantum photonics, entanglements, subatomic particles, artificial molecules; all terms that can sound like a foreign language—and that is because, in some sense, the world of quantum computing is. Ph.D. students Jaime Diaz and Taylor Begay-Wilson worked on a project in Bertrand Cambou’s class using IBM’s open software development kit, called qiskit, to better understand quantum computing and
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