Science News

By Will Dunham WASHINGTON, Nov 4 (Reuters) - An orbiting atmospheric research spacecraft has detected the pungent gas hydrogen chloride above surface fissures along a massive ancient volcano on Mars in a finding that suggests Earth's planetary neighbor...

By Steve Gorman Nov 3 (Reuters) - An aging NASA satellite telescope that a robotic spacecraft was sent to retrieve on a failed rescue mission this summer was headed for a fiery re-entry into Earth's atmosphere on Wednesday, nearly 22 years after it was...

By Will Dunham Nov 2 (Reuters) - Scientists have discovered what they consider the strongest evidence yet of blood cells in a dinosaur fossil inside bone from the right leg of a medium-sized meat-eater that prowled Brazil some 115 million years ago dur...

By Will Dunham Nov 1 (Reuters) - The four members of a crew who took part in a simulated mission to Mars have emerged after 378 days in isolation at the US space agency's Johnson Space Center in Houston, an endeavor designed to help prepare ​for a poss...

By Will Dunham WASHINGTON, Oct 30 (Reuters) - While dinosaurs ate a lot of different things, including each other, fruit long seemed to have been absent from their menu. But scientists now have found fossils of a turkey-sized and toothless dinosaur pos...

By Marta Serafinko Oct 30 (Reuters) - People who travel across many time zones, like a trip from London to Tokyo, may experience jet lag, with the body's internal 24-hour clock - the circadian rhythm - thrown out of sync with the local time at the arri...

By Will Dunham WASHINGTON, Oct 29 (Reuters) - A meteorite found in 2022 in the Sahara in Mali formed in the Martian crust at least 4.1 billion years ago, according to scientists, making the reddish igneous rock perhaps the oldest of the 435 meteorites ...

By Gianluca Lo Nostro Oct 29 (Reuters) - Eutelsat expects commercial services revenue of more than €10 billion ($11.1 billion) between 2032 and 2040 as it takes a leading role ​in the European Union's planned alternative to Elon Musk's ‌Starlink satell...

By Will Dunham WASHINGTON, Oct 28 (Reuters) - Scientists using a Chile-based telescope have identified an icy object orbiting beyond Pluto that may join our solar system's small roster of dwarf planets. Researchers said the candidate, named 2026 ED138,...

By Will Dunham WASHINGTON, Oct 28 (Reuters) - Mars is a dusty place. Dust is circulated by everyday winds, whirlwinds called dust devils and larger dust storms raging at local, regional and global scales. Dust is a factor that must be addressed in any ...

By Will Dunham WASHINGTON, Oct 27 (Reuters) - Amphibians rely on their permeable skin for the crucial functions of breathing and drinking, a wonderful adaptation in freshwater that is subverted by the salt in seawater. As a result, there has been no kn...

WARSAW, Oct 26 (Reuters) - Poland sees a lot of room to deepen cooperation with Germany in the space sector, Polish ​Finance Minister Andrzej Domanski said on ‌Monday, underscoring the need to possess sovereign technology in order to bolster security i...

WASHINGTON, Oct 23 (Reuters) - People can readily share images and sounds digitally, as evidenced by the billions of smartphones in use globally that often overload the human senses of sight and hearing. But smell generally remains missing from remote ...

By Marta Serafinko Oct 22 (Reuters) - Anyone who has watched a manta ray glide over a reef knows how unhurried these marine animals can look. Yet researchers working off Costa Rica found their movements are varied, with juveniles staying nearby and clo...

By Will Dunham Oct 21 (Reuters) - Crocodilians - today's crocodiles, alligators, caimans and gharials and their many extinct relatives - have been a roaring success since debuting more than 240 million years ago. And new research identifies one importa...

By Will Dunham Oct 20 (Reuters) - The Bangka slow loris is one of Earth's most exotic primates, a slow-moving tree dweller that happens to be venomous. It was listed as critically endangered and possibly extinct, last scientifically documented in the 1...

MINAMITANE, Japan, Oct 20 (Reuters) - Japan launched an uncrewed spacecraft toward the Martian moon Phobos on Tuesday on a mission intended ​to become the first to collect samples ‌from the small rocky body and return them to Earth for analysis. The Ja...

By Will Dunham Oct 19 (Reuters) - A Siberian cave already famous for yielding the first remains of an extinct human lineage called the Denisovans, who once roamed widely in Eurasia, has now produced evidence of a previously unknown large Ice Age mammal...

By Sergiy Chalyi DONETSK REGION, Ukraine, Oct 16 (Reuters) - For one artillery unit fighting in eastern Ukraine, the US decision this week to reduce services provided by satellite company Starlink to the military had an immediate impact. Communications...

By Sam Tabahriti LONDON, Oct 16 (Reuters) - A surge in octopus numbers in British waters due to unusually warm seas is presenting fishermen with an interesting new catch - albeit one that's devouring one of their ​usual staples. The value of British oc...