EverythingScience

It's a long ways down. This is a view from the vantage point of astronaut Shane Kimbrough during his spacewalk Friday outside the International Space Station. @Space_English @EverythingScience

Falcon 9 launch of SES-10; the first re-flight of an orbital class rocket. @EverythingScience

New Simulations Suggest Dark Energy Might Not Exist ⁣ Ever since the late 1990s, physicists have been fairly certain that the Universe isn't only getting bigger, it also appears to be expanding at an ever increasing rate. A mysterious force called dark energy is currently thought to be responsible for this accelerating growth, but a new study raises the possibility that what seems to be a type of energy could be an illusion caused by the changing structure of the Universe. Physicists from Loránd University in Hungary and the Institute for Astronomy at the University of Hawaii are now questioning if approximations in Einstein's equations introduced "serious side effects" that gave the illusion of a vast, unknown force pushing space apart. Article @EverythingScience

Scientists Have Detected an Unexplained Explosion Coming From a Galaxy 10.7 Billion Light-Years Away ⁣ Scientists have taken the deepest X-ray image of our Universe to date - and within it, they've found evidence of a huge, unexplained explosion coming from a galaxy around 10.7 billion light-years away. The galaxy itself appears to be fairly faint and unremarkable, but in October 2014, it suddenly became at least 1,000 times brighter over a few hours, before fading into oblivion again. No astronomical phenomenon that scientists currently know of can explain the behaviour. Article @EverythingScience

Lost in Space: How Mars' Atmosphere Evaporated Away ⁣ Mars may have once possessed an atmosphere about as thick as Earth's, but then lost most of it to space due to solar wind and ultraviolet rays, a new study found. The new finding could shed light on the habitability of not just early Mars, but also distant worlds, researchers said. Mars is currently a frigid desert world with extremely thin air. The atmospheric pressure on the Martian surface is on average only about one-hundredth to one-thousandth that on Earth at sea level. (In comparison, the atmospheric pressure at the highest point on Earth's surface, the top of Mount Everest, is about one-third that on Earth at sea level.) Article @EverythingScience

Gene editing of human embryos yields early results ⁣ Scientists have long sought a strategy for curing genetic diseases, but — with just a few notable exceptions — have succeeded only in their dreams. Now, though, researchers in China and Texas have taken a step toward making the fantasies a reality for all inherited diseases. Article @EverythingScience

Automated telescope to help identify fast radio bursts ⁣ A new Dutch telescope is set to help solve a nagging astrophysical mystery, by automatically scanning the southern skies alongside a giant array of radio dishes. MeerLICHT, a 65-centimeter optical telescope, is expected to help identify the sources of fast radio bursts (FRBs)—extremely brief, energetic flashes of radio waves from remote galaxies. In early April, after finishing tests at Radboud University in Nijmegen, the Netherlands, the telescope will be put in crates and shipped via cargo plane to the South African Astronomical Observatory near Sutherland. “We expect to be fully operational in July or August,” says MeerLICHT Project Manager Steven Bloemen. Article @EverythingScience

Relativity Just Passed a Major Test Involving the Most Accurate Clocks Ever ⁣ Science loves nothing better than to find new ways to kick well-tested theories even harder and see if they can't be made to bleed a little. Take time dilation for instance - the idea that time depends on your relative speed and gravity's pull. While it's been tested using highly accurate caesium atomic clocks, physicists have now put it to the test using even more accurate strontium atomic clocks, and they've found that Einstein still stands victorious. Article @EverythingScience

How Much Energy Would You Need to Power an Actual Time Machine? ⁣ There are two hypotheses for time travel that are most popular: wormhole tunneling and cosmic strings. A wormhole is a hypothetical, bi-directional tunnel connecting two space-time locations. Physicist Michio Kaku doesn't entirely rule this possibility out, but he cautions that powering a time machine to travel in this way is beyond human capabilities right now, and would demand either negative energy or the energy of a star. Physicist Brian Greene, a string theory expert, doubts that this kind of approach could ever work. Article @EverythingScience

This Object Has Been Sprayed With the World's Blackest Material, and It's Freaking Us Out ⁣ Well, we've finally cracked it. Scientists have finally figured out how to paint a portal to another dimension, as prophesied by Loony Tunes' the Roadrunner. Who wants to try driving a (very small) truck right through that gaping void circle? In all seriousness, what you're looking at isn't actually a portal to another dimension - but it's not Photoshop, either. That really is a physical object that's been sprayed with Vantablack - the blackest material known to science. Article @EverythingScience

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Scientists turn mammalian cells into complex biocomputers ⁣ Computer hardware is getting a softer side. A research team has come up with a way of genetically engineering the DNA of mammalian cells to carry out complex computations, in effect turning the cells into biocomputers. The group hasn’t put those modified cells to work in useful ways yet, but down the road researchers hope the new programming techniques will help improve everything from cancer therapy to on-demand tissues that can replace worn-out body parts. Article @EverythingScience

Best evidence yet that hypnotised people aren’t faking it ‍ You are feeling sleepy…or are you? In a hypnotism performance, ordinary people seem to somehow become puppets, made to talk in silly accents, or act like a baby or in other embarrassing ways. But have they really lost command of their bodies, or are they just pretending? Now we have some of the best evidence yet that people who are hypnotised really feel like they are acting involuntarily. When estimating split-second timings, hypnotised people behaved as though their actions were outside their control, in ways that would have been difficult to fake. Article @EverythingScience

Two-Thirds of Cancer Mutations Are Random and Unavoidable, Scientists Claim ‍ Almost two-thirds of cancer mutations are caused by random DNA-copying errors during cell division and are impossible for us to avoid, regardless of lifestyle and the genes we inherit from our parents, according to new research. The findings – which estimate that 66 percent of cancer mutations are effectively bad luck that we can't do anything about – support the conclusions of a controversial paper released in 2015 by the same researchers, which came under fire for appearing to suggest that there was nothing we could do to prevent various cancers. Article @EverythingScience

Astronomers to Peer Into a Black Hole for 1st Time with Event Horizon Telescope Ever since first mentioned by Jon Michell in a letter to the Royal Society in 1783, black holes have captured the imagination of scientists, writers, filmmakers and other artists. Perhaps part of the allure is that these enigmatic objects have never actually been "seen." But this could now be about to change as an international team of astronomers is connecting a number of telescopes on Earth in the hope of making the first ever image of a black hole.Black holes are regions of space inside which the pull of gravity is so strong that nothing – not even light – can escape. Their existence was predicted mathematically by Karl Schwarzchild in 1915, as a solution to equations posed in Albert Einstein's theory of general relativity. Astronomers have had circumstantial evidence for many decades that supermassive black holes – a million to a billion times more massive than our sun – lie at the hearts of massive galaxies. That's because they can see the gravitational pull they have on stars orbiting around the galactic centre. When overfed with material from the surrounding galactic environment, they also eject detectable plumes or jets of plasma to speeds close to that of light. Last year, the LIGO experiment provided even more proof by famously detecting ripples in space-time caused by two medium-mass black holes that merged millions of years ago. Article @EverythingScience

Secrets of What Ancient Mummies Look Like Under Their Wrappings Are Finally Being Revealed If you'd like to be mummified when you die, you can contact an organisation in Salt Lake City, Utah, to arrange the procedure for around US$70,000. Pets are cheaper, around US$4,000 for an animal under 15 pounds (7 kilograms). It's expensive partially because mummification is pretty rare these days. But for thousands of years, people preserved the remains of their dead as mummies. This was especially true in places with hot and dry climates, like parts of ancient Peru and Egypt. Article @EverythingScience

It's Happening: Scientists Can Now Reverse DNA Ageing in Mice Researchers have identified a cellular mechanism that allows them to reverse ageing in mouse DNA and protect it from future damage. They've shown that by giving a particular compound to older mice, they can activate the DNA repair process and not only protect against future damage, but repair the existing effects of ageing. And they're ready to start testing in humans within six months. Article @EverythingScience

The Sun Is Nearly Spotless, Hinting at Solar Lull Talk about spick and span! The sun was nearly spotless for more than two weeks this month, a clue that the star may be nearing its next lull in activity, according to NASA. No sunspots on the sun's surface were visible during a 15-day stretch that began on March 7, despite constant observation by NASA's powerful Solar Dynamics Observatory spacecraft. "This is the longest stretch of spotlessness since the last solar minimum in April 2010, indicating the solar cycle is marching on toward the next minimum, which scientists predict will occur between 2019—2020," NASA officials wrote in a statement. Articles @EverythingScience

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