The Japanese spacecraft Hayabusa 2 has successfully pulled off a second touchdown on the surface of the distant asteroid Ryugu. The risky dive saw the probe collect material that had been exposed during the creation of an artificial crater on April 5.
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In many arid coastal regions, a great quantity of fresh water is lost into the atmosphere every day, as it evaporates from the ocean. This situation prompted scientists to create a new hydrogel that's highly effective at capturing moisture from the sea air, and then releasing it as fresh water.
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Looking for impurities in drinking water or other liquids typically involves chemical analysis, which may be time-consuming. Now, however, scientists have created an inexpensive system in which light – that's converted to sound – is used to instantly determine if water is safe to drink.
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Potentially fatal to both animals and humans, blue-green algae blooms occur when overly-abundant cyanobacteria in the water produce harmful substances known as cyanotoxins. The sooner those toxins are detected, the better – which is where a new smartphone-connected device comes into the picture.
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"Solar steaming" is a form of water purification in which sunlight is used to heat tainted water, turning it to steam which condenses back into liquid. That clean liquid is then collected as drinking water. A new system offers improved performance, and it copies the structure of the rose flower.
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Curiosity has begun investigating one of the most interesting regions so far – the clay-bearing unit. After drilling two new samples last month, the rover has confirmed high amounts of clay minerals, providing further proof that ancient Mars was once much wetter.
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Strangely enough, the mechanisms behind thirst and satiation are somewhat of a mystery to science. Now researchers from Caltech have investigated and found two connections between body and brain that control the process.
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In a huge global study hundreds of rivers around the world have been tested for levels of common antibiotics. It found 65 percent of all samples contained some concentration of antibiotics, with the worst cases showing levels more than 300 times higher than the generally accepted safe threshold.
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Earth is a famously wet planet, but where all that water came from in the first place remains a mystery. New observations of a comet that whizzed by Earth a few months ago show that it contains “ocean-like” water – and this may apply to other previously-dismissed comets too.
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Studies have shown that billions of years ago Venus might have been just as habitable as Earth. So what happened? New research has found that if ancient Venus was home to vast oceans, tidal drags may have slowed down the rotation of the planet and let it bake into the lifeless world we know today.
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