Lifeboat Foundation

• Fox and the producers of “Cosmos” have opened an investigation into multiple sexual misconduct claims against the show’s host, astronomer Neil deGrasse Tyson.
• Dr. Katelyn N. Allers of Bucknell University claimed deGrasse Tyson groped her at an event in 2009.
• Another woman, Ashley Watson, claimed that she quit her former job as Tyson’s assistant in response to repeated inappropriate sexual advances he made toward her.
• Both allegations came to light roughly a year after musician Tchiya Amet claimed that Tyson raped her when they were both graduate students.

Fox and the producers of the television series “Cosmos” have opened an investigation into multiple sexual misconduct claims against the show’s host, Neil deGrasse Tyson. The move follows a report on the website Patheos in which two women accused Tyson of inappropriate sexual behavior.

“The credo at the heart of ‘Cosmos’ is to follow the evidence wherever it leads,” the producers said in a joint statement. “The producers of ‘Cosmos’ can do no less in this situation. We are committed to a thorough investigation of this matter and to act accordingly as soon as it is concluded.”

To get to the Moon, Mars and beyond: we’re going to need a bigger boat. NASA’s Space Launch System will be the largest rocket ever assembled. So how do you build a rocket of unprecedented size? Find out: https://go.nasa.gov/2reryWv&h=AT1kQENIbN8mgnEjOtOB961e5lWIk9…o6EX1Flehg

NASA astronaut Anne McClain is expected to take her first spaceflight aboard Soyuz, as every U.S. astronaut has done since 2011 — but she may be one of the last.

NASA’s Lunar Reconnaissance Orbiter captured this stunning image of a lunar crater on Nov. 3.

I hope you’re not all partied out after the InSight lander’s successful touchdown on Mars this week, because there’s another big spaceflight event just around the corner.

NASA’s OSIRIS-REx probe will officially arrive at the near-Earth asteroid Bennu at about 12 p.m. EST (1700 GMT) on Monday (Dec. 3), ending a 27-month deep-space chase. NASA will mark the occasion with a special webcast event from 11:45 a.m. to 12:15 p.m. EST (1645 to 1715 GMT), which you can watch live here at Space.com, courtesy of NASA TV.

The space agency will also air an “arrival preview program” at 11:15 a.m. EST (1615 GMT). You can catch that here at Space.com as well. [OSIRIS-REx: NASA’s Asteroid Sample-Return Mission in Pictures].

Continue reading “The Space Party Continues: NASA Probe Arrives at Asteroid Bennu Monday” »

There’s a new form of matter out there and it’s called a supersolid. Born in the labs of researchers from the Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT), this new matter is seemingly a contradiction. The supersolid combines properties of solids and superfluids — or fluids with zero viscosity, thereby flowing without losing kinetic energy. Supersolids have previously been predicted by physicists, but have not been observed in a lab until now.

“It is counterintuitive to have a material which combines superfluidity and solidity,” says team leader Wolfgang Ketterle, the John D. MacArthur Professor of Physics at MIT and 2001 Noble laureate. “If your coffee was superfluid and you stirred it, it would continue to spin around forever.” Their research was published in the journal Nature.

To develop this seemingly contradictory form of matter, Ketterle’s team manipulated the motion of atoms in a superfluid state of dilute gas, called a Bose-Einstein condensate, or BEC. Ketterle co-discovered BEC, which won him his Noble prize in physics. “The challenge was now to add something to the BEC to make sure it developed a shape or form beyond the shape of the ‘atom trap,’ which is the defining characteristic of a solid,” Ketterle explained.

As an international relations scholar who studies space law and policy, I have come to realize what most people do not fully appreciate: Dealing with space debris is as much a national security issue as it is a technical one.

Considering the debris circling the Earth as just an obstacle in the path of human missions is naive. As outer space activities are deeply rooted in the geopolitics down on Earth, the hidden challenge posed by the debris is the militarization of space technologies meant to clean it up.

To be clear, space debris poses considerable risks; however, to understand those risks, I should explain what it is and how it is formed. The term “space debris” refers to defunct human-made objects, relics left over from activities dating back to the early days of the space age. Over time that definition has expanded to include big and small things like discarded boosters, retired satellites, leftover bits and pieces from spacecraft, screwdrivers, tools, nuts and bolts, shards, lost gloves, and even flecks of paint.

Continue reading “The Hidden Danger of Cleaning Up Our Space Junk” »

Supersonic air travel is back. 15 years after the Concorde was grounded, everyone from aerospace companies to NASA to small startups is working to bring back ultrafast civilian aircraft. We take a look at the engineering challenges that make supersonic flight so difficult, and try to figure out what’s different about this new generation of planes.

The Verge’s sponsors play an important role in funding our journalism, but do not influence editorial content. For more information about our ethics policy, visit https://www.theverge.com/ethics-statement.

Continue reading “Supersonic air travel is finally coming back” »

Probing the brain is brutal work.