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The physicist trying to build humanity's lunar future with moon dirt

Space

The physicist trying to build humanity's lunar future with moon dirt

When it comes to sending humans back to the moon, knowing how to work with the regolith that coats the ground will be make-or-break. Phil Metzger is studying how to mitigate its dangers and use it as a crucial resource

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Incredible images show the moment SpaceX's Starship exploded

Space

Incredible images show the moment SpaceX's Starship exploded

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Atlas C2024-G3 Jan 11, 2025

Space

See comet C/2024 G3 (ATLAS) as viewed from Earth's orbit

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The physicist on a mission to understand Mercury's epic solar storms

Space

The physicist on a mission to understand Mercury's epic solar storms

Features

n 2025 BepiColombo image1 Top three images from BepiColombo's sixth Mercury flyby 09/01/2025 619 views 4 likes ESA / Science & Exploration / Space Science / BepiColombo On 8 January 2025, the ESA/JAXA BepiColombo mission flew past Mercury for the sixth time, successfully completing the final ?gravity assist manoeuvre? needed to steer it into orbit around the planet in late 2026. The spacecraft flew just a few hundred kilometres above the planet's north pole. Close-up images expose possibly icy craters whose floors are in permanent shadow, and the vast sunlit northern plains. At 06:59 CET, BepiColombo flew just 295 km above Mercury's surface on the planet's cold, dark night side. Around seven minutes later, it passed directly over the Mercury's north pole before getting clear views of the planet's sunlit north. European Space Agency (ESA) Director General Josef Aschbacher revealed the first image during his Annual Press Briefing on 9 January. As during BepiColombo's previous flybys, the spacecraft's monitoring cameras (M-CAMs) did not disappoint. This flyby also marks the last time that the mission's M-CAMs get up-close views of Mercury, as the spacecraft module they are attached to will separate from the mission's two orbiters ? ESA?s Mercury Planetary Orbiter and JAXA?s Mercury Magnetospheric Orbiter ? before they enter orbit around Mercury in late 2026. Celebrating the M-CAMs' final hurrah, let's explore the best three images from BepiColombo's sixth close encounter with the little planet, and what they reveal about mysterious Mercury.

Space

BepiColombo snaps Mercury's dark craters and volcanic plains

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Ritual Sticks - Uncle Russell Mullett on the balcony of Cloggs Cave

Humans

Ancient humans understood the future and the past pretty much as we do

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Mathematics

How a typo spoiled my proof of Fermat’s last theorem

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How the covid-19 pandemic distorted our experience of time

Health

How the covid-19 pandemic distorted our experience of time

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2M9CJ0J 1940s SCATTERED PAGES FROM A ONE DAY AT A TIME FLIP DESK CALENDAR NUMBERS DAYS OF WEEK PATTERN PAPER TEXTURE - s10448 HAR001 HARS REPRESENTATION

Mathematics

This mathematical trick lets you work out the weekday of any date

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Physics

Physicists in 2024 searched the quantum realm for the truth about time

Two separate theoretical studies published this year argued that time itself is bound up in the odd quantum property of entanglement, but deep mysteries remain

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Space

The Vera C. Rubin Observatory gets started next year. I can't wait

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Space

The best space images from 2024

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Video

2024 review: Stunning JWST images that reveal the beauty of space

Video

Physics

The wild physics that could actually be used to build a time machine

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