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07.27.24

Welcome to your weekly space

and science digest.

By Ashley Strickland

Experimentation is the basis of the scientific process — and it’s at the heart of what it means to be human and question the world around us.

Thousands of years ago, our ancestors produced the first maps of the stars and practiced alchemy, the precursor to chemistry.

Even Sir Isaac Newton, considered the father of physics, was an avid alchemist who wrote a recipe for a main ingredient needed to make the fabled philosopher's stone. The stone was thought to turn any metal into silver or gold.

Chemists in the 1700s sought to deem alchemy a pseudoscience. But ancient alchemists actually developed technology and discovered chemical elements that are still widely used today.

Now, a new discovery links both astronomy and alchemy in one intriguing figure who lived during the Renaissance.

Danish astronomer Tycho Brahe changed the way people understood the heavens in the 1500s by spotting a supernova and suggesting the moon orbited Earth — all before telescopes existed.

But in the basement of his castle named Uraniborg, which included an observatory, the astronomer conducted secretive alchemical work for elite royal clients. Little is known about Brahe's work, apart from his commitment to developing medicinal recipes rather than gold.

A new analysis of glass shards (above) from the demolished alchemy lab revealed ingredients Brahe used in his mysterious concoctions, including tungsten — which wasn't officially described until more than 180 years after his death.

NASA astronauts Butch Wilmore and Suni Williams have spent more than 50 days aboard the International Space Station after piloting the first crewed mission of Boeing's Starliner spacecraft. And there is still no set date for the astronauts to return to Earth.

But NASA and Boeing are now zeroing in on the "root cause" of the spacecraft's problems that cropped up during its journey, including helium leaks and thruster issues.

Engineers have conducted ground tests for weeks to replicate the anomalies, and additional tests this weekend should fully reveal the issues, said Mark Nappi, Boeing's Commercial Crew Program manager.

Meanwhile, SpaceX has received approval to continue launches using its Falcon 9 rocket, which recently experienced a mission-ending failure during a routine journey. Once the Starliner mission concludes, SpaceX will ferry a quartet of astronauts for NASA's Crew-9 mission to the space station. 

Marine scientists found an unusual type of oxygen produced without photosynthesis on the seabed — more than 13,000 feet below the ocean's surface — that could help unravel the origins of life.

When Andrew Sweetman, a professor at the Scottish Association for Marine Science, first detected the unexpected phenomenon in the Pacific Ocean a decade ago, he thought the sensor equipment was faulty. No light can reach the ocean depths, and no oxygen is known to be produced by organisms along the seafloor.

But now, new research by Sweetman and his team suggests the “dark” oxygen may be created by potato-size metallic nodules that act like "geobatteries" within the deep-sea ecosystem. New species such as Relicanthus sp. (above) were also discovered living on sponge stalks attached to the nodules.

A camera strapped to an endangered shark captured the jarring moment a boat struck the marine animal, and it may be some of the first footage to show how common boat strikes are for ocean dwellers.

Researchers don't know whether the 23-foot basking shark inhabiting the waters around the Blasket Islands, off the coast of Ireland, survived the collision. But the run-in clearly left a large scratch and paint streaks on the shark's speckled skin.

Scientists are working to better understand the species, which is among the largest fish in the world. The footage was meant to shed more light on the basking shark’s eating habits as it feeds at the ocean's surface with jaws agape.

Instead, the video highlights why the basking shark and other endangered sea creatures require protection.

Separately, cocaine has been detected in sharks living off the coast of Brazil, and it's the first time the drug has been found in free-ranging sharks.

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The Perseverance rover has found something that might indicate Mars could have been home to microbial life in the distant past.

The robotic explorer has been investigating a rock (above) nicknamed Cheyava Falls. The rover used its instruments to analyze the leopard-spotted rock and found chemical signatures and structures that may have been formed by life billions of years ago when water was present on the red planet.

“These spots are a big surprise,” said David Flannery, an astrobiologist on the Perseverance science team. “On Earth, these types of features in rocks are often associated with the fossilized record of microbes living in the subsurface.”

These fresh finds may take you by surprise:

— Komodo dragons, the world's largest lizards, have iron-tipped teeth that stain their serrated edges orange and help the deadly predators rip their prey apart, according to new research.

— The Chandra X-ray Observatory just celebrated a quarter century in space by releasing 25 never-before-seen glowing images of the cosmos — but NASA budget cuts could bring the mission to an untimely end.

— Humans aren't the only ones capable of blushing. Domestic hens have been observed blushing to express fear or excitement, and researchers working on a French farm have images of the pink-tinged chickens to prove it.

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