Civil Liberties

The concept of touching the Sun can be traced back to the ancient Greek myth of Icarus, but scientists at NASA have turned that idea into a reality. On Dec. 24th, their Parker Solar Probe managed to travel to just within 3.86 million miles (6.1 million kilometers) of the Sun’s surface, a new record.... Read Original Article

Most people who own a smart watch or fitness watch use a band made of synthetic rubber to hold the device on their wrist. Although the bands are designed to feel comfortable against the skin, a recent study in the journal Environmental Science & Technology Letters found that they may be harmful.... Read Original Article

Back when the stars in our universe were initially being formed, they created rotating disks of dust and gas known as protoplanetary disks. These protoplanetary disks slowly congealed into planets — so slowly, in fact, that astronomers speculated all of the protoplanetary disks that once existed have since blown away.... Read Original Article

The year 2024 is on track to be the hottest in recorded history, as humanity has officially exceeded the 1.5º C threshold established by the 2015 Paris climate accord. Despite this milestone, President-elect Donald Trump is pushing environmental scientists out of the government. According to Dr. Mark Serreze and many other climate scientists who spoke with Salon, the new reality created in 2024 by unprecedented rising temperatures is the biggest news story today, despite relative lack of coverage.... Read Original Article

A long trip to space is about to get even longer. NASA astronauts Suni Williams and Butch Wilmore were originally supposed to spend only about a week aboard the International Space Station, but due to issues with their spaceship, have remained stuck for months. Originally slated to return in February, the two astronauts are now going to remain onboard on the ISS until “no earlier” than late March 2025, according to a recent report.... Read Original Article

There’s a lot of stuff in space that we know is there but we can’t see very well or at all. Some of this stuff is known as mysterious dark matter, others are things like dark comets, which as their name suggests, are far more difficult to see from Earth than something like Tsuchinshan-Atlas.... Read Original Article

Researchers have long wished to understand the connection between sleep and memory, especially how the brain encodes long-term memories during slow-wave sleep (while discarding others), or the deep sleep that occurs during the initial hours of one’s rest. Recent research sheds fascinating new light on the issue, but to understand how this works, scientists had to literally take brain samples from living people.... Read Original Article

Humans have yearned for immortality for as long as we‘ve understood our fragile permanence. But while dodging the Grim Reaper was once relegated to the realm of religious myth, now technology is attempting to find the cure for death. Most popular is the idea of cryopreservation — that is, any process which preserves biological tissues by storing them at extremely cold temperatures — which can be traced back to a 1931 science fiction novel, “The Jameson Satellite” by Neil R.... Read Original Article