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lite.cnn.com - on gopher - inofficial | |
ARTICLE VIEW: | |
‘Never quit the lunar quest’ was this moon mission’s motto. | |
Here’s its tragic tale | |
By Ashley Strickland, CNN | |
Updated: | |
11:00 AM EDT, Sat June 7, 2025 | |
Source: CNN | |
As scientists search for worlds that may be habitable for life, | |
they’ve discovered a type that is common in the universe — but | |
doesn’t exist in our own solar system. | |
These enigmatic planets are called sub-Neptunes, which are larger than | |
Earth but smaller than Neptune. | |
An April study catapulted one such world, named K2-18b, into the | |
spotlight. Astronomers at the University of Cambridge claimed they | |
detected molecules in the planet’s atmosphere that might be | |
biosignatures — markers of biological activity that could hint at | |
past or present life. | |
Now, other groups of astronomers have looked at the same data and | |
disagree with the findings, saying there is more to the story. | |
The twists and turns in the ongoing conversation around planet K2-18b | |
showcase why the search for evidence of . | |
Lunar update | |
Indeed, persistence is everything when it comes to space investigation. | |
“Never quit the lunar quest” was the motto underpinning a | |
high-stakes mission that aimed to touch down on the moon Thursday. But | |
Tokyo-based Ispace at the time it should have landed. | |
The Resilience spacecraft was Ispace’s second bid at a soft lunar | |
landing. The company’s previous try with the Hakuto-R lunar lander | |
crashed into the moon in April 2023. | |
“This is our second failure, and about these results, we have to | |
really take it seriously,” said Ispace CEO Takeshi Hakamada of the | |
nail-biting attempt. Ispace has its work cut out for it, but it isn’t | |
giving up. | |
A long time ago | |
New research combining artificial intelligence with radiocarbon dating | |
is changing the way scholars think about the Dead Sea Scrolls. | |
Bedouin shepherds first spotted the scrolls in 1947 within a cave in | |
the Judaean Desert. Archaeologists then recovered thousands of scroll | |
fragments, including the oldest copies of the Hebrew Bible, from 11 | |
caves near the site of Khirbat Qumran. | |
“They completely changed the way we think about ancient Judaism and | |
early Christianity,” said lead study author Mladen Popović, a dean | |
at the University of Groningen in the Netherlands. | |
Scholars thought the roughly 1,000 manuscripts, written mostly on | |
parchment and papyrus, ranged from the third century BC to the second | |
century AD. But some of the scrolls, which serve as a crucial | |
intellectual time capsule, , the new analysis suggests. | |
Ocean secrets | |
A World War I-era submarine was lost at sea off California’s coast | |
nearly 108 years ago, killing 19 crew members. Now, researchers from | |
the Woods Hole Oceanographic Institution have captured | |
never-before-seen . | |
Curiosities | |
The plague pandemic known as the Black Death killed at least 25 million | |
people across medieval Europe over five years. | |
The culprit behind the disease is a bacterium called Yersinia pestis, | |
which has led to three major plague outbreaks since the first century | |
AD — and it still exists today. | |
How has the plague persisted for centuries? Changes to one gene in the | |
bacterium created new, less deadly strains that kept hosts alive longer | |
so it could keep spreading. | |
The weaker strains have since gone extinct, according to new research. | |
But the findings could yield key clues to help scientists manage the | |
current bacterium’s dominant lineage, which is . | |
Fantastic creatures | |
If you’ve ever walked through a fruit orchard, you might have been | |
steps away from a living tower of worms. | |
That’s what researchers from the Max Planck Institute of Animal | |
Behavior and the University of Konstanz in Germany found when they | |
inspected rotten pears and apples. | |
Hundreds of the microscopic worms, called nematodes, climbed on top of | |
one another to form structures 10 times their size — even making a | |
— leading scientists to question what’s driving the behavior. | |
“What we got was more than just some worms standing on top of each | |
other,” said senior study author Serena Ding, a Max Planck research | |
group leader of genes and behavior. “It’s a coordinated | |
superorganism, acting and moving as a whole.” | |
Discoveries | |
These stories will pique your curiosity: | |
— For over a century, astronomers thought the Milky Way and Andromeda | |
galaxies would collide in 4.5 billion years, but new telescope | |
observations may change that. However, sooner. | |
— Archaeologists who uncovered the remains of an ancient Mayan | |
complex in Guatemala named the site after that are believed to | |
represent an “ancestral couple,” according to the country’s | |
Ministry of Culture and Sport. | |
— A fossil of the earliest known bird that was kept in a private | |
collection for decades has provided scientists with “one ‘Wow!’ | |
after another,” including the specimen, said Dr. Jingmai O’Connor, | |
associate curator of fossil reptiles at the Field Museum. | |
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