Mar 12th, 2026 - March 12 (UPI) -- NASA said Thursday it plans to roll the Artemis II Space Launch System rocket and Orion capsule back out to the launchpad next week, aiming for a launch in early April. The SLS and Orion will start rolling back out to the launch pad at Kennedy Space Center in Florida on March 19, with an eye at launching as early as the evening of April 1, NASA officials said during a press briefing. The agency completed a flight readiness review for the SLS less than a month after the rocket was rolled back to the Vehicle Assembly Building in late February because of a helium flow issue ... [Read More]

Mar 12th, 2026 - Working with existing infrastructure, IBM is angling to expedite the benefits of quantum computing with help from classical architectures. IBM is betting on hybrid systems being the future of near-term quantum computing, introducing a new computing architecture that uses both classical and quantum-specific technology to apply the benefits of quantum-based capabilities to current problems.  Announced on Thursday, the new architecture combines quantum hardware with leading classical processing and graphics processing units — along with larger infrastructure like high-speed networks ... [Read More]

Mar 11th, 2026 - Follow Earth on Google Astronomers have created the most detailed three-dimensional map yet of faint hydrogen light filling the universe roughly 9 to 11 billion years ago. Instead of showing galaxies as isolated points, the map reveals a vast web of diffuse glow stretching between them – light that has remained largely invisible in previous surveys. The discovery offers a new way to trace how matter gathered and how galaxies formed during one of the most active periods of cosmic history. The glow between galaxies Across a huge volume of distant space, faint hydrogen emission spreads ... [Read More]

Mar 11th, 2026 - Follow Earth on Google Mars took a direct hit from a powerful solar storm. The eruption from the Sun was one of the strongest recorded in more than two decades. The same storm struck Earth and triggered bright auroras that spread unusually far south, glowing in skies as far down as Mexico. Around Mars, spacecraft recorded something far more turbulent. Radiation levels spiked and the planet's upper atmosphere filled with charged particles. For a short time, the normally thin layers above the Red Planet became unusually active. Scientists later studied the event using measurements from two ... [Read More]

Mar 11th, 2026 - Everything we thought we knew about where magic mushrooms came from is probably wrong. Magic mushrooms are stepping out of the underground and into the clinic. Increasing evidence suggests that psilocybin mushrooms help with treatment-resistant depression, anxiety, obsessive-compulsive disorder (OCD), addiction, and psychiatric illnesses related to a growing global mental health crisis. At the center of this psychedelic renaissance is Psilocybe cubensis , the golden-capped fungus cultivated by enthusiasts and more recently studied by neuroscientists globally. For all this time, we thought we ... [Read More]

Mar 11th, 2026 - To most people, calories are the North Star of nutrition: a rigid quantity assigned to each and every food that never wavers or changes. Two individuals who eat the exact same thing in the exact same amount will always absorb the exact same number of calories, right? Or will they? "This is probably one of the more robust dietary myths that circulates," Janice Dada, MPH, RDN , a certified intuitive eating counselor based in California, tells SELF. Contrary to what you've probably thought all your life, calorie absorption can vary depending on who's chowing down. "Our understanding of calories ... [Read More]

Mar 11th, 2026 - Reading time 3 minutes NASA hopes to return astronauts to the Moon by 2028, but building the spacecraft that will take them to the lunar surface is proving to be far more difficult than expected. A new watchdog report warns that the Artemis human lander program is not only facing delays and technical issues but also unresolved crew-safety risks. The findings, published by NASA's Office of the Inspector General on Tuesday, reveal critical gaps in testing and crew survival analyses for both prospective landers: SpaceX's Starship Human Landing System (HLS) and Blue Origin's Blue Moon Lander. ... [Read More]

Mar 11th, 2026 - We become forgetful as we age. This is often seen as a universal truth, but in fact it is far from universal: some people remain incredibly sharp at 100 years old, while others experience memory loss starting in middle age.  While it seems logical that age-related cognitive decline would be blamed on brain aging and degeneration (which, like anything in the brain, is notoriously hard to treat), there's some evidence that processes elsewhere in the body influence the brain's ability to form memories. In particular, neuronal pathways that sense the status of other organs in the body can ... [Read More]