Mar 24th, 2026 - Pinot noir's grip on people's tastebuds is surprisingly old "In wine there is truth," to cite a proverb quoted by Pliny the Elder—truth about humans, that is. Wine has been a staple of human drinking for thousands of years: it is captured in the frescoes in Pompeii and celebrated in epic poems such as the Iliad and the Odyssey . It was found inside King Tut's tomb and in trace amounts on 9,000-year-old Chinese pottery and was written about in the Bible. But despite wine's ubiquity and enduring popularity, scientists have struggled to place exactly when and how humans first made the ... [Read More]

Mar 24th, 2026 - The find ends a lengthy, difficult search. After years of failed searches, CERN has finally caught a needle in a subatomic haystack: a heavy relative of the proton called Ξcc⁺. Ξ (or Xi) is a Greek letter pronounced like the word "Zye" (rhymes with "eye" or "pie"). This discovery lands at the crossroads of an old mystery and a new machine. Scientists have been trying to detect it for two decades, but the particle stubbornly evaded detection. Its appearance now proves that CERN's upgraded detectors are working perfectly. More importantly, it gives us a new lens through which to ... [Read More]

Mar 23rd, 2026 - New supercool alloy could take the heat off helium-3 The heated race to achieve the extreme cold that quantum technologies demand may have a frontrunner. Chinese scientists have developed an alloy that almost reaches absolute zero, the coldest possible temperature, without using the scarce isotope, helium-3. By harnessing the strange behavior of particles at the tiniest scales, quantum technologies are enabling applications that are borderline science fiction across various industries. A good example is quantum computing. Unlike conventional computers, which store information as 0s and 1s, ... [Read More]

Mar 23rd, 2026 - Reading time 2 minutes A large meteor fell toward Earth over the weekend, exploding with a visible flash and fragmenting into smaller chunks across Houston, Texas. Local residents first spotted a bright fireball around 5:40 p.m. ET on Saturday. NASA later confirmed that a meteor had traveled over Texas, causing a loud boom heard across the Houston area. The meteor broke apart into fragments, some of which may have crashed through a home and punctured a hole in the ceiling, The Guardian reported . The American Meteor Society (AMS) received over 150 eyewitness reports of the meteor flying over ... [Read More]

Mar 23rd, 2026 - UKHSA reports 29 cases, the same figure as on Sunday, raising hopes the outbreak has been well contained No new cases of meningitis linked to the outbreak in Kent have been detected, raising hopes that it has been well contained and has not led to people elsewhere catching the disease. The number of people affected remains at 29, of which 20 are are confirmed and nine probable cases in what health officials say is an "explosive" outbreak – the biggest to occur in the UK in a generation. Two of the 20 people confirmed with the disease have died: Juliette Kenny, 18, a secondary school ... [Read More]

Mar 23rd, 2026 - CLEVELAND, Ohio – NASA's Artemis II rocket made its way back to the launch pad last week at the Kennedy Space Center at Cape Canaveral, Florida, in preparation for an early April liftoff. The mission, aided by the NASA Glenn Research Center in Cleveland, has been delayed twice this year. The first time was for a hydrogen leak. The second delay resulted from a helium flow problem, after which NASA removed the rocket from the launch pad and returned it to the Vehicle Assembly Building. On Friday, NASA's crawler-transporter 2 returned the rocket to the launch pad traveling at a speed of 1 ... [Read More]

Mar 23rd, 2026 - Larger, more powerful storms on Jupiter produce stronger lightning than on Earth. New measurements could shed light on electrical phenomena associated with thunderstorms on our planet. Jupiter, the most massive planet in our solar system, has correspondingly humongous storms, some of which last for centuries. Some of these storms also generate terrific bolts of lightning, according to a new study by University of California, Berkeley scientists. Some flashes are 100 times more powerful than lightning on Earth — and possibly much stronger. The results come from analysis of data from ... [Read More]

Mar 23rd, 2026 - Reading time 2 minutes A Russian cargo spacecraft carrying supplies to the International Space Station (ISS) failed to deploy two of its antennas, jeopardizing its ability to dock with the space station. The Roscosmos Progress 94 spacecraft launched on Monday at 7:59 a.m. ET on a Soyuz rocket from the Baikonur Cosmodrome in Kazakhstan. After liftoff, two of the spacecraft's automated rendezvous antennas did not deploy as planned, NASA revealed in an update . The spacecraft is scheduled to dock with the ISS on Tuesday at 9:45 a.m. ET. The Russian space agency is attempting to troubleshoot the ... [Read More]