Endangered humpback whales in nine of 14 newly identified distinct population segments have recovered enough that they don’t warrant listing under the Endangered Species Act, NOAA Fisheries said Tuesday. International conservation efforts to protect and conserve whales over the past 40 years proved successful for most populations. Four of the distinct population segments are […]
Astronomers using ESO telescopes and other facilities have found clear evidence of a planet orbiting the closest star to Earth, Proxima Centauri. The long-sought world, designated Proxima b, orbits its cool red parent star every 11 days and has a temperature suitable for liquid water to exist on its surface. This rocky world is a […]
After losing communication with a space probe two years ago, NASA says it has reestablished contact. NASA said it lost contact with the Solar Terrestrial Relations Observatories, known as the STEREO-B spacecraft, on Oct. 1, 2014, but that on Aug. 21, the Deep Space Network (DSN) established a link with the craft. Contact with the […]
The search for habitable, alien worlds needs to make room for a second “Goldilocks,” according to a Yale University researcher. For decades, it has been thought that the key factor in determining whether a planet can support life was its distance from its sun. In our solar system, for instance, Venus is too close to […]