Tracking Trends, Breaking News
After launching more than 100 small payloads from California on Tuesday and two commercial moon landers from Florida early Wednesday, both atop Falcon 9 rockets, SpaceX readied a huge Super Heavy-Starship for a ground-shaking launch from the Texas Gulf Coast to kick off the program’s seventh test flight. But bad weather prompted the California rocket
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Aircraft battling fires raging through the Los Angeles area are dousing the area with more than water: Hundreds of thousands of gallons of hot-pink fire suppressant have been dropped ahead of the flames in a desperate effort to stop them before they destroy more neighborhoods. The deadly fires have displaced thousands of residents and destroyed
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Cicadas are set to return this year in the U.S., but their numbers are not expected to be as overwhelming as they were in the spring of 2024, when multiple broods emerged simultaneously. Brood XIV, the second-largest group of periodical cicadas, known for their noisy mass emergence from the ground, is the only group of 17-year
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British researchers have unearthed some 200 dinosaur footprints dating back 166 million years in a find believed to be biggest in the United Kingdom. Teams from Oxford and Birmingham Universities made the “exhilarating” discovery at a quarry in Oxfordshire in central England after a worker came across “unusual bumps” as he was stripping clay back
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There’s a chance solar storms may bring northern lights to several northern U.S. states just in time for the new year. The sun expelled two bursts of plasma that are hurtling toward Earth and are expected to arrive early this week, according to the U.S. National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration. Once they arrive, they may
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A vampire hedgehog, a pygmy pipehorse, and a”blob-headed” fish were among the hundreds of new species identified in 2024. The range of species identified was quite eclectic, ranging from plants to mammals, and names for the new species ran the gamut across a broad spectrum of locations and formations — some even inspired by politicians
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Zhenbo Wang is an associate professor of mechanical, aerospace and biomedical engineering at the University of Tennessee. In 2024, space exploration dazzled the world. NASA’s Europa Clipper began its journey to study Jupiter’s moon Europa. SpaceX’s Starship achieved its first successful landing, a critical milestone for future deep space missions. China made headlines with the Chang’e 6
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An orca who made headlines in 2018 after she carried her dead calf on her head for more than two weeks and a distance of 1,000 miles has given birth again, according to the Center for Whale Research. The killer whale calf was spotted in the Puget Sound area off Washington state several days ago.
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Spanish archaeologists have successfully removed a 2,600-year-old shipwreck from waters off the country’s southeastern coast, two decades after the relic was initially found, officials said. The ancient Phoenician shipwreck dates back to the 7th century B.C.E. It was discovered in 1994 off the coast of Murcia in southeastern Spain, near the town of Mazarrón, according to
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The 2024 winter solstice, the shortest day of the year, happens on Saturday, Dec. 21, in the Northern Hemisphere. The celestial event signifies the first day of winter, astronomically. What is the winter solstice? The winter solstice is the day each year that has the shortest period of daylight between sunrise and sunset, and therefore
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