Interstellar comet 3I/ATLAS packed with alcohol stuns astronomers: Here’s what its alien chemistry could reveal about planet formation |

Astronomers have spotted something unusual in a comet passing through our Solar System. 3I/ATLAS, only the third confirmed interstellar visitor ever seen, appears to be stuffed with methanol, an alcohol you might find in a lab, not your drink. Using the Atacama Large Millimetre/submillimeter Array (ALMA) in Chile, researchers reportedly measured methanol at levels far…

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Yass Queen: How the bumble stays alive underwater |

There are some scientific discoveries that feel immediately sensible. Water is wet, fire is hot, politicians lie. And then there are discoveries that sound as though a group of slightly overworked researchers accidentally wandered into a Transformers writers’ room and decided to take the script seriously. Bumblebee queens, it turns out, can survive underwater for…

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The astronaut who returned to a country that no longer existed: Sergei Krikalev’s unbelievable 10-month mission in space |

A routine space mission could turn into a historic ordeal. In May 1991, Sergei Krikalev blasted off for what was meant to be a standard five-month mission to the Mir space station. He was to perform experiments, maintain equipment, and keep the station in working order. Everything seemed ordinary at the time.Back on Earth, the…

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Is diamond no longer the hardest? Chinese scientists claim a breakthrough with hexagonal diamond |

Scientists from China have claimed they might have found a mineral that is harder than the cubic diamond, which is known to the world as the hardest existing mineral. The hexagonal diamond (HD) is supposedly the toughest mineral, though its existence remains questionable. Hexagonal diamond (also known as lonsdaleite) is usually found at sites impacted…

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