On Monday evening, about seven million miles away, NASA’s Double Asteroid Redirection Test (DART), at last made contact with the asteroid Didymos and its football stadium-sized moonlet, a particularly small natural satellite, Dimorphus. The spacecraft journeyed for a little over 10 months to test if it would be possible to save Earth from future hazardous asteroids or comets by booting them off course. “We only have one home so we ought to take care of it,” said NASA Administrator Bill Nelson during a DART mission overview briefing on Monday afternoon before the mission collision....

How they did that is slightly tricky, so here’s some quick background. The Lunar Reconnaissance Orbiter is orbiting the Moon. NASA scientists want to see if long-distance communication to space is possible with lasers, and the LRO is tracked by laser, unlike other orbiters, which use radio waves. So, the LRO is perfect for an experiment. NASA converted an image of the Mona Lisa into a black and white, 152-by-200 pixel image....

Now, a team of researchers in southern Maryland have unearthed fossil evidence of a possible bottoms-up megalodon attack on a whale. The fossils were found close together in southern Maryland’s Calvert Cliffs, by Mike Ellwood, a Calvert Marine Museum volunteer and fossil collector. They date back to the Miocene Epoch (about 23 million to 5.3 million years ago), when Maryland was covered in a warm and shallow coastal sea with big plumes of sea algae and succulent aquatic plants that supported turtles, crustaceans, and marine mammals....

I’m an avid and very mediocre surfer at the breaks near my home in the San Francisco Bay Area. In January and February, when the waves are biggest, the water is so cold that a wipeout means surfacing with an ice cream headache. And yet I can stay out there for hours, thanks entirely to the material known as neoprene. It’s a synthetic polymer, and the gas bubbles inside make it an excellent thermal insulator....

“There are lots of ergonomic studies and other studies that show women prefer higher temperatures than men,” says author Agne Kajackaite, an economist at WZB Germany. That research surfaces in the popular press from time to time, prompting articles with headlines like “Can an office temperature be sexist? Women, and science, say so.” Kajackaite and her coauthor, economist Tom Y. Chang of the University of Southern California, wanted to see if it was just a matter of comfort, or if women were at a workplace disadvantage in terms of performance because of room temperature....

Today, 26,000 hectares of Almeria’s semi-arid pasture land is dominated by greenhouse horticulture in a constant change-over that has been occurring since the 1970s to improve the region’s agriculture. Using satellite data, scientists from the University of Almeria identified differences in surface radiation (how much heat is emanating from the ground) and albedo (the ability to reflect sunlight) between the greenhouse-covered land and the natural, semi-arid land. Simultaneously, they compared temperature trends inside the region with those throughout Spain....

Anyone with enough brains and balls can build their own rocket and fly it to space. Or at least that’s what the non-profit, open source space project Copenhagen Suborbitals wants to prove. In September, Motherboard scuttled out to Denmark to meet the pioneers behind this new wave in do-it-yourself space exploration to find out how these backyard space rockets are made. Founded in 2008 by two amateur engineers and entrepreneurs, Kristian von Bengtson and Peter Madsen, Copenhagen Suborbitals is now comprised of a coterie of 20-plus specialists determined to create the first homemade, manned spacecraft to go into suborbital flight....

The researchers identified 135,000 alleles, or variations in the genetic code, that some modern humans had inherited from Neanderthals. They then correlated the presence of those variations to more than 1,500 medical conditions listed in the patients’ electronic medical records. Neanderthal DNA was correlated with a higher incidence of depression, addiction to tobacco, skin lesions caused by the sun, a slower metabolism, too much blood clotting, and a mutation connected to Parkinson’s disease....

Fisheries scientists from the International Scientific Committee to Study the Tuna and Tuna-Like Species of the North Pacific Ocean estimate that the Pacific bluefin population has declined from its unfished level by more than 96 percent. The report warns that stock levels likely won’t improve by extending the current fishing levels. All the world’s scrombrids — a family that includes tunas and mackerels — are on the endangered list. One problem is the majority of bluefin fishermen are snagging fish are under a year old, further hindering the species’ chance to procreate....

According to CNET, the Bebop 2 is aimed at consumers who want a drone that requires no setup and can basically fly right out of the box. It weighs just over a pound, can reach 330 feet in 18 seconds, and can stay airborne in winds of up to 40 miles-per-hour, according to Parrot. It promises a starting flight time of 25 minutes from a full battery charge. The camera, identical to that of previous models, can record up to 8 GB of 1080p video, and it now comes with a design that better protects the lens....

The prize united two distinct fields of research—cosmology and astronomy—on the basis of the shared guiding principle of better understanding the cosmos, according to the Nobel committee. Peebles’ work in cosmology has helped define our understanding of the origin and evolution of the universe, while Mayor and Queloz’s discoveries in astronomy have helped expand our understanding of Earth’s place within it. Nobel committee member Ulf Danielsson began his explanation of Jim Peebles’ Nobel Prize-worthy research by referencing The Big Bang Theory‘s theme song, which gets at the basic gist of cosmology: “Our whole universe was in a hot, dense state / then nearly fourteen billion years ago expansion started....

But drones —small, commercially available flying unmanned aerial vehicles— are suddenly giving wings to whole swaths of new maritime threats. A paper published in the Journal of Military and Strategic Studies (h/t: Motherboard) gives us a weird vision of our future present: drones, except operated by pirates. “Maritime Non-state Actors: A Challenge for the Royal Canadian Navy?” by David Rudd, offers a glimpse into this strange new waterworld. Historically, piracy has always been a close-quarters affair, with ship-borne guns threatening vessels or smaller craft landing heavily armed boarding parties to hold crew and cargo hostage while demanding ransom....

Liquid nitrogen is a relatively inexpensive cryogenic liquid. It is created by fractional distillation of liquid air. Fractional distillation is the process of separating chemical compounds by their boiling points. Nitrogen has a lower boiling point than oxygen, so it can be distilled and collected from the liquid air first. Liquid nitrogen freezes at -210°C and boils at –195.8°C. It is also notable in that it boils immediately upon contact with warmer temperatures....

If you’d like a little more control over the flight path of your Pocket Rocket Komet, try adding the receiver/motor from a RadioShack ZipZap. The front steering motor can be salvaged from one of these micro RC cars and connected to the Komet’s rudder. Simply slice the kit’s rudder in half, attach three sets of alternating fabric hinges to both the movable rudder and the fixed vertical stabilizer, connect a wire control linkage from one of the ZipZap’s moveable steering wheels to the rudder, and mount the micro receiver and battery in the Komet’s cockpit area....

Intrigued by Massaud’s spaceship-like design and the possibility of a new aeronautics market, Onera has been testing the aerodynamics and flight-control capabilities of a scale model for the past year. This spring, the agency recommended a slightly less grand version of the airship, capable of carrying 15 passengers and traveling at 80 mph. Massaud hopes the new design will attract the attention of private investors, from whom he aims to secure as much as $15 billion to begin building the Manned Cloud, with a sail date of 2020....

These documents, called “The Facebook Papers,” formed the basis of reported news articles and analysis about Facebook’s behavior in response to key issues like how its platform might harm children, or play a role in enabling political violence, and how it reportedly prioritizes profit over safety. Redacted versions of these papers with the names of Facebook users and lower-level employees blacked out were also shared with Congress for its investigation....

Today is the 27th anniversary of the loss of the space shuttle Challenger, which broke apart because of a failed seal on its right solid rocket booster. Yesterday was the 46th anniversary of the Apollo 1 fire, which happened during a launch pad test. And Friday is the 10th anniversary of the loss of space shuttle Columbia, which suffered a fatal injury on the launch pad that doomed its reentry....

But consumers like pickup trucks. The Ford F-Series, Chevrolet Silverado, and Ram pickup were the number one, two, and three-selling vehicles in the US last year. The GMC Sierra and Toyota Tacoma were numbers nine and 10. Meanwhile, electric vehicles accounted for just 1.8 percent of US vehicle sales last year, according to IHS Markit. So rather than handicapping itself by targeting a niche vehicle segment with EV technology, Rivian pivoted to the idea of building an electric pickup....

The company showed off the alpha version of its Guardian XO exoskeleton earlier this year at CES. It’s part of a collaboration with Delta Air Lines, which has started testing the suit starting in the Q1 of 2020. According to Sarcos, other private companies and government entities have started doing the same and it plans on using feedback from those trial runs to enter commercial production in Q4. The Guardian XO has come a long way....

Thankfully, there are a few starter drones that are not only really fun to fly but also affordable. The Fader Stealth Drone is among the easiest drones to fly and right now you can get it on sale for just $59.99 (reg. $129) and you’ll receive it in time for Christmas. There’s not much that the Fader Drone can’t do and it’s basically ready to take to the sky once it’s delivered to your front door....