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NASA is preparing to rocket around 5,000 tardigrades – those adorably pudgy 'water bears' – and 128 glow-in-the-dark baby squid into space. The animals are heading to the International Space Station (ISS) next week as part of SpaceX's 22nd cargo resupply mission. SpaceX is set to launch the microscopic critters onboard a Falcon 9 rocket on June 3, 1:29 pm EDT from Kennedy Space Center in Florida. 8 reasons why we love tardigrades Tardigrades are tiny, just 0.04 inches (1 millimeter) long, and get their popular nickname from their tubby, bear-like appearance when viewed through a microscope. And these little guys are no pushovers – capable of surviving extreme radiation; pressures six times those found in the deepest parts of the ocean; and the total vacuum of space, making the microscopic animals much tougher than their ursine namesakes. In fact, the Israeli spacecraft Beresheet was carrying thousands of dehydrated tardigrades onboard when it crashed into the moon during a ...

The microbes living in our gut are way less diverse than they were 2,000 years ago. That's one of the key findings from a genomic analysis of fossilized human feces from rock shelters across North America and Mexico. Eight samples dating to between 1,000 and 2,000 years ago reveal microbes that are totally new to science, as well as others completely absent from the gut microbiome today. By contrast, the modern gut microbiome contains vastly more antibiotic-resistant microbes than those of our ancestors. These findings could help us understand the connection - if there is one - between our diminished microbiome and the higher modern incidence of 'industrial' chronic diseases such as diabetes and obesity. The human microbiome is a fascinating and complex machine, and in recent years, scientists have been discovering that it plays a much more important role in keeping our bodies healthy than we previously realized. But our understanding of how the human microbiome has changed...

Researchers from Japan add a new wrinkle to a popular theory and set the stage for the formation of monstrous black holes. It seems that pretty much every galaxy we see is spinning around a supermassive black hole. When we say "supermassive," we mean BIG: Each is about 100,000 to tens of billions times the mass of our Sun. Serving as the loci around which our galaxies twirl, they're clearly important to maintaining the universal structures we see. It would be nice to know how they form. We have a pretty good idea how normally huge but not-massive black holes form, but as for the supermassive larger versions, not so much. It's a supermassive missing piece of the universe puzzle. Now, in research published in Monthly Notices of the Astronomical Society , astrophysicists at Tohoku University in Japan reveal that they may have solved the riddle, supported by new computer simulations that show how supermassive black holes come to be. The direct collapse theories Glowing g...

Using a robotic ‘Third Thumb’ can impact how the hand is represented in the brain, finds a new study led by UCL researchers. The team trained people to use a robotic extra thumb and found they could effectively carry out dextrous tasks, like building a tower of blocks, with one hand (now with two thumbs). The researchers report in the journal Science Robotics that participants trained to use the thumb also increasingly felt like it was a part of their body. Designer Dani Clode began developing the device, called the Third Thumb, as part of an award-winning graduate project at the Royal College of Art, seeking to reframe the way we view prosthetics, from replacing a lost function, to an extension of the human body. She was later invited to join Professor Tamar Makin’s team of neuroscientists at UCL who were investigating how the brain can adapt to body augmentation. Professor Makin (UCL Institute of Cognitive Neuroscience), lead author of the study, said: “Body augmentation is a growing...

A weeping migrant boy used plastic bottles to stay afloat during a desperate bid to reach a Spanish enclave. Footage captured on Wednesday shows the youngster crying as he paddled towards the shore and clung to a buoy, surrounded by floating soda bottles attached to his waist. The boy was one of thousands of people who attempted to make the crossing from Morocco into the Spanish city of Ceuta this week - after the African deliberately removed border guards and allowed the stampede to make a political point. Cueta is on the African mainland and a short swim around a promontory from Morocco, and the move by Rabat sparked accusations of 'aggression' and 'blackmail' from Madrid. As he left the water yesterday, the boy darted across the beach past Spanish soldiers and attempted to scale a wall barefoot before being detained. Since Monday, a record 8,000 migrants have crossed into Ceuta from Morocco, prompting chaotic scenes as authorities struggled to manage the unprecedente...

Little Grace has never had a bit of refined sugar, as her health-conscious mom put her on a strict diet as soon as she was born. This is what the little girl looks like today. Shan Cooper and her daughter, Grace. (Photo Credit: My Food Religion/Instagram) Shan Cooper refuses to feed her daughter Grace most of the foods a typical kid eats. Little Grace is more likely to have organic chicken and a plate of vegetables than peanut butter and jelly sandwich with the crust cut off. Shan has had Grace on a “Paleo Diet” since she was born. The paleo diet bans grains and dairy in favor of foods “cavemen could scavenge for,” such as meat, fish, eggs, fruits, and vegetables. While the lifestyle Shan has chosen for Grace may seem a bit extreme, the Australian mother claims that her daughter almost never gets sick and that she “loves” eating healthy foods. A typical breakfast for Grace might include eggs fried in coconut oil with roasted veggies including sweet potato, carrots, potatoes, and steame...

The point at which our nerve cells meet to share information was thought to be a one-way street, with electrochemical signals strictly flowing from one neuron's sending axons to the next neuron's receiving dendrites. Now, for the first time, researchers have shown that information can also flow in the opposite direction at the neuron intersection we call a synapse. "Once again, exact measurements have shown that reality is more complex than a simplified model would suggest," said cellular neuroscientist Peter Jonas from Austria's Institute of Science and Technology (IST). Within the hippocampus, the bit of our brains involved in memory and learning, is the mossy fiber pathway. This network of cells is crucial for storing short-term memory and has been shown in mice to be involved in spatial learning. Using naturally networked cells from rat brains, IST neuroscientist David Vandael and colleagues recorded the interaction between the mossy neurons' sending axons...

But don’t go adding the invasive, biting insects to your home as an arachnid repellent Chemicals left behind by European fire ants (Myrmica rubra, shown here in Finland) appear to drive away some North American spiders. The finding could help researchers develop spider repellents to keep the arachnids out of homes. To make a spider flee, bring on the fire ants. Or rather, just their chemical signals. Some spiders common in North American homes avoid building their webs in chambers that recently housed European fire ants, researchers report May 19 in Royal Society Open Science. The ants probably left behind chemical traces, the researchers say. That could signal danger to the arachnids because ants sometimes feast on spiders. The reaction hints that the insects might be a source of natural spider-repelling chemicals. “A lot of people are afraid of spiders, and there’s nothing on the market that is reliable that keeps the spiders away,” says Andreas Fischer, an arachnologist at Simon Fra...

Gravitational wave measurements put the object’s mass between a neutron star and a black hole In a first, the LIGO and Virgo gravitational wave detectors have spotted a collision between a black hole (illustrated left) and a mystery object (right), which could be either the heaviest neutron star ever discovered or the lightest black hole. Ripples in spacetime have revealed a distant collision between a black hole and a mystery object, which appears too massive to be a neutron star but not massive enough to be a black hole. At first glance, the event — detected by the LIGO and Virgo gravitational wave detectors on August 14, 2019 — looked like a collision between a black hole and neutron star (SN: 8/15/19). But a new analysis of the gravitational waves emanating from the merger tells a different story. It shows that a black hole about 23 times as massive as the sun crashed into a compact object of about 2.6 solar masses, researchers report June 23 in the Astrophysical Journal Letter...

Tens of thousands of Filipinos answered the call to fight in World War II when the Philippines was an American commonwealth. On an early December morning in 1941, waves of Japanese bombers roared through American airspace. While air sirens wailed and guns blazed, American nationals took cover as a surprise attack in the Pacific sank U.S. battleships and crippled the largest aggregation of American warplanes outside of North America. This Japanese attack didn’t occur on the infamous date of December 7, 1941, however, but a day later on the other side of the International Dateline. And the target wasn’t Hawaii’s Pearl Harbor, but the Philippines, which had been an American possession since the 1898 Spanish-American War. Hours after the air raids, First Lady Eleanor Roosevelt spoke on the radio to decry the Japanese “bombing our citizens in Hawaii and the Philippines.” After the attacks that drew the United States into World War II, President Franklin D. Roosevelt pledged to defend the Am...

Two half brothers wrongfully sent to death row have been awarded $75 million in damages after spending decades behind bars for the 1983 rape and murder of an 11-year-old girl. A jury in a North Carolina federal civil rights case on Friday decided Henry McCollum and Leon Brown should receive $31 million each in compensatory damages, $1 million for every year spent in prison, The News & Observer reported. The eight-person jury also awarded them $13 million in punitive damages. Raleigh attorney Elliot Abrams said: 'The first jury to hear all of the evidence - including the wrongly suppressed evidence - found Henry and Leon to be innocent, found them to have been demonstrably and excruciatingly wronged, and has done what the law can do to make it right at this late date.' Brothers McCollum and Brown have pursued the civil case against law enforcement members since 2015, arguing that their civil rights were violated during the interrogations that led to their convictions. The ...

A red giant star 16,000 light-years away appears to be a bona fide member of just the second generation of stars in the Universe. According to an analysis of its chemical abundances, it seems to contain elements produced in the life and death of just a single first-generation star. Therefore, with its help, we might even find the first generation of stars ever born - none of which have yet been discovered. Additionally, the researchers performed their analysis using photometry, a technique that measures the intensity of light, thus offering a new way to find such ancient objects. "We report the discovery of SPLUS J210428.01−004934.2 (hereafter SPLUS J2104−0049), an ultra-metal-poor star selected from its narrow-band S-PLUS photometry and confirmed by medium- and high-resolution spectroscopy," the researchers wrote in their paper . "These proof-of-concept observations are part of an ongoing effort to spectroscopically confirm low-metallicity candidates identified from nar...

NASA rebuked China for failing to meet responsible spacefaring standards after remnants of the nation's rogue Long March 5B rocket landed in the Indian Ocean near the Maldives early Sunday. Sightings of the Chinese rocket debris reentering Earth's atmosphere and scorching across the pre-dawn skies were reported in Jordan, Oman and Saudi Arabia. "It is clear that China is failing to meet responsible standards regarding their space debris," NASA Administrator Sen. Bill Nelson said in a statement. Nelson said all spacefaring nations must be transparent in their operations regarding the reentry of objects from space in order to minimize the risks to people and property on Earth. "It is critical that China and all spacefaring nations and commercial entities act responsibly and transparently in space to ensure the safety, stability, security, and long-term sustainability of outer space activities," Nelson said. China's official Xinhua News Agency reported t...

China's Long March 5B rocket body is predicted to make an uncontrolled re-entry on Saturday night or Sunday morning and experts say it is difficult to pinpoint where remnants might land. A huge 18-tonne chunk of China's largest model of rocket is set to crash back to Earth amid fears that pieces of it could fall on populated areas. The Long March 5B rocket body is predicted to make an uncontrolled re-entry about 190 minutes on either side of 0211 GMT on Sunday, said EU Space Surveillance and Tracking (EU SST). The Center for Orbital Reentry and Debris Studies (CORDS) at Aerospace Corporation, a US federally funded space-focused research and development centre, updated its prediction for re-entry to four hours on either side of 0330 GMT on Sunday. Earlier, the Pentagon had predicted a re-entry of 2300 GMT on Saturday with a window of nine hours on either side. An area near New Zealand's North Island was identified as a possible crash location, but experts have said it is...

A Chinese rocket will likely fall to Earth on Saturday, the US Defence Department has said, but it's still impossible to know where it will land due to it traveling at 18,000 miles per hour. A 21-tonne "out of control" Chinese rocket is expected to land on Earth on Saturday, the US defence department has said. The rocket launched on Wednesday and successfully managed to deliver the core module of China's space station. While the rocket will explode once it falls out of orbit, there are concerns the Long March 5B's debris could fall and potentially land on an inhabited area, Space News reports. But according to experts, it is impossible to know where exactly it will land as its speed makes it too unpredictable. US Department of Defense Spokesperson Mike Howard said: “US Space Command is aware of and tracking the location of the Chinese Long March 5B in space". But the statement adds: "Its exact entry point into the Earth’s atmosphere cannot be pinpointed...