All posts tagged: origins

Blue Origin’s New Glenn put a customer satellite in the wrong orbit during its third launch

Blue Origin’s New Glenn put a customer satellite in the wrong orbit during its third launch

Published by skeptic

Jeff Bezos’ space company Blue Origin successfully re-used one of its New Glenn rockets for the first time ever on Sunday, but the company failed at its primary mission: delivering a communications satellite to orbit for customer AST SpaceMobile. AST SpaceMobile issued a statement Sunday afternoon that the upper stage of the New Glenn rocket placed BlueBird 7 satellite into an orbit that was “lower than planned.” The satellite successfully separated from the rocket and powered on, the company said, but the altitude is too low “to sustain operations” and will now have to be de-orbited — left to burn up in the atmosphere of Earth. The cost of the loss of the satellite is covered by AST SpaceMobile’s insurance policy, according the company, and there are successive BlueBird satellites that will be completed in around a month. AST SpaceMobile has contracts with more than just Blue Origin, and the company said it expects to be able to launch 45 more to space by the end of 2026. But this represents the first major failure …

Blue Origin’s third New Glenn launch faces key reuse test in rivalry with SpaceX

Blue Origin’s third New Glenn launch faces key reuse test in rivalry with SpaceX

Published by Sam Flores

April 16 : Blue Origin is set to launch its third New Glenn mission on Friday, carrying AST SpaceMobile’s BlueBird 7 satellite to low-Earth orbit in a flight that marks a pivotal step for the Jeff Bezos-led company’s ambitions. The mission is critical in proving New Glenn, a 29-story heavy-lift rocket, can compete with Elon Musk’s SpaceX, by demonstrating reliable booster reuse, a capability that has underpinned Falcon 9’s dominance. “The successful flight of New Glenn-3 would end SpaceX’s nine-year monopoly on orbital launch vehicle reusability, marking a historic shift toward a competitive, multi-player market,” said Micah Walter-Range, president of space consulting firm Caelus Partners. The mission is scheduled for a launch window between 6:45 a.m. and 12:19 p.m. ET from Cape Canaveral, Florida. Following a series of delays earlier this month, the mission comes amid a surge of activity in the space sector, including a successful NASA Artemis II lunar flyby. The rocket’s booster, “Never Tell Me the Odds,” previously flew on the NG-2 mission in November and was recovered, setting up this week’s …

Newly discovered Asgard microbe could explain the origins of complex life on Earth

Newly discovered Asgard microbe could explain the origins of complex life on Earth

Published by Jenni Sidey

At first sight, stromatolites may seem unremarkable. The stromatolite formations found in Shark Bay, Western Australia, do resemble dark, sediment-covered stones resting in shallow waters. However, they are rich in history through their layers of microbial life, whose interactions have occurred over time and are most likely indicative of a major occurrence in the timeline of Earth’s evolution. Stromatolites likely represent not only a cradle for the early evolution of microbial organisms’ interactions with one another, but also a model to understand how complex eukaryotic organisms may have arisen from these interactions in a long-term evolutionary progression. Although this idea as to how complex life originated may be a bold one, it builds on an age-old question. Approximately 2.3 billion to 2.1 billion years ago, it is believed that the first eukaryotic cells came into existence through a close association between an archaeal cell and a bacterium. Eventually, as the bacterial partner became an essential organelle in the eukaryotic cell, the mitochondrion, this close association or cooperation between the two cells directly contributed to the …

Gold’s origins lie beneath the ocean deep inside the Earth’s mantle

Gold’s origins lie beneath the ocean deep inside the Earth’s mantle

Published by Jenni Sidey

The first step in gold’s journey does not happen in a mine, a fault, or a hydrothermal vent. It begins far deeper, in mantle rock melting beneath the seafloor. That is the picture emerging from new work led by Dr Christian Timm, a marine geologist at the GEOMAR Helmholtz Centre for Ocean Research Kiel. Studying volcanic glass from the Kermadec island arc north of New Zealand, the team found that gold-rich magmas in this setting appear to be tied not to a single burst of melting, but to repeated, water-aided melting in the mantle below subduction zones. Island arcs are the curved chains of volcanoes that form where one oceanic plate sinks beneath another. These regions are already known for hosting some unusually gold-rich seafloor sulfide deposits. What has remained unsettled is why the magmas feeding those systems can carry so much gold in the first place. The chain bag dredge is being hauled back on board during the sampling expedition in the South Pacific with the research vessel SONNE. (CREDIT: Christian Timm) “Our research …

Scientists are rethinking the origins of living apes

Scientists are rethinking the origins of living apes

Published by Jenni Sidey

A jaw bone discovered in Egypt is changing the way scientists think about the origins of the ape family tree. The specimen, which is thought to be about 17 or 18 million years old, was found in the Wadi Moghra region of northern Egypt. According to the researchers that worked on it, it could help fill a long-standing gap in the understanding of the evolution of modern-day apes. This discovery is significant because, for many years, the fossil record from North Africa during the Early Miocene contained only fossils belonging to monkeys, and no apes. Therefore, the focus of many researchers has been East Africa to understand where modern apes might have evolved. Although this new fossil provides only one additional specimen to the existing fossil record, it does reinforce the existence of apes further north than previously thought. Sallam Lab team from Mansoura University Vertebrate Paleontology Center. (CREDIT: Professor Hesham Sallam) “We have spent five years looking for this type of fossil,” said Hesham Sallam, a paleontologist with Mansoura University and the senior author …

The Surprising Origins of Samara Weaving Sequel

The Surprising Origins of Samara Weaving Sequel

Published by Daniella Wilson

Plenty of sequels flirt with nonexistence, and Ready or Not 2: Here I Come is no exception. But even if filmmakers Matt Bettinelli-Olpin and Tyler Gillett hadn’t gotten the chance to make their upcoming follow-up, they very nearly blew its entire premise on a post-credits scene in the original. “I don’t think we ever thought of a sequel,” Bettinelli-Olpin told a South by Southwest crowd in Austin over the weekend. “I think we thought we were making it this is one and done.” The 2019 original starred Samara Weaving as a woman, Grace, who, on her wedding night, discovers that she’s married into a cabal of extremely wealthy satanists. The Le Domas family inform her that she has to survive until dawn while they hunt her down in service of the devil — who they simply refer to as “Mr. Le Bail.” It’s very bloody, very funny and, it’s not a spoiler to say given the sequel, Weaving’s character ultimately gets her final girl victory. No. 2 picks up exactly where the first left off, revealing …

New psychedelic fungus rewrites origins of magic mushrooms

New psychedelic fungus rewrites origins of magic mushrooms

Published by Jenni Sidey

Get the Popular Science daily newsletter💡 Breakthroughs, discoveries, and DIY tips sent six days a week. The discovery of a new magic mushroom species in Africa is forcing mycologists to take another look at the famous psychedelic fungi’s evolutionary history. According to a study published today in the journal Proceedings B of the Royal Society, both the popular Psilocybe cubensis and a newly described species shared a common ancestor roughly 1.5 million years ago—but not in the region of the world many assumed. When you hear about “magic mushrooms,” it’s generally referring to P. cubensis. At moderate and high doses, the fungi cause sensory hallucinations and altered perceptions of time. Increasing evidence also indicates microdoses may have extremely beneficial therapeutic uses. While it thrives in tropical climates and famously prefers growing on cow dung, ecologists have long puzzled over how it spread across the Americas due to a very specific historical event. Cattle simply did not exist in that region of the world before European colonists brought it in the 16th century. Researchers have long …

Chimps’ taste for fermented fruit hints at origins of human love of alcohol : NPR

Chimps’ taste for fermented fruit hints at origins of human love of alcohol : NPR

Published by Sam Flores

Researchers collected and analyzed urine from chimpanzees in a Ugandan forest after they’d eaten fermented fruit to determine how much alcohol they’d consumed. Sharifah Namaganda hide caption toggle caption Sharifah Namaganda For 11 days in late summer 2025, Aleksey Maro found himself in the Ugandan rainforest, doing whatever he could to collect chimpanzee urine. “The most consistent, predictable time is in the morning. Just like people, the first thing they do when they wake up is they go pee,” says Maro, a Ph.D. student in integrative biology at the University of California, Berkeley. Now, in a study published recently in Biology Letters, Maro and his colleagues explained what those urine samples reveal: Chimpanzees appear to consume a fair amount of alcohol when eating ripe, fermenting fruit. The findings may tell us something about human evolution. “In primates,” says Maro, “it could be that when you smell alcohol, that means that’s where the sugars are.” In other words, the scent of fermentation might be a shortcut to more calorie-dense food. Maybe it’s this tendency to associate …

Humans’ pull toward alcohol may have ancient origins (according to chimp pee) : NPR

Humans’ pull toward alcohol may have ancient origins (according to chimp pee) : NPR

Published by Sam Flores

Scientists learned that wild African chimpanzees consume alcohol by eating fermented fruit, suggesting that human attraction to alcohol may have ancient evolutionary origins. JUANA SUMMERS, HOST: Ever wonder why people are so drawn to alcohol? Where does that attraction come from? Science reporter Ari Daniel says perhaps we should look to our primate relatives. ARI DANIEL, BYLINE: Late last summer, Aleksey Maro was in the Ugandan rainforest collecting chimpanzee urine. ALEKSEY MARO: The most consistent predictable time is in the morning. Just like people, the first thing they do when they wake up is they go pee. DANIEL: Maro, a Ph.D. student at UC Berkeley, had a few collection techniques. One involved catching urine droplets from the chimps overhead in a plastic bag stretched over a forked branch. Sharifah Namaganda is a Ph.D. candidate at the University of Michigan who assisted in the field. SHARIFAH NAMAGANDA: You need to make sure that you are not going to be splashed. But plastic bag pee is the best pee you can get, and it is also the …

Hannibal Lecter origins: A review of Brian Raftery’s Thomas Harris biography

Hannibal Lecter origins: A review of Brian Raftery’s Thomas Harris biography

Published by Sam Flores

Book Review Hannibal Lecter: A Life By Brian RafterySimon & Schuster: 336 pages, $30 If you buy books linked on our site, The Times may earn a commission from Bookshop.org, whose fees support independent bookstores. Of all President Trump’s rather peculiar hyper-fixations — rigged elections, left-wing fake news and Rosie O’Donnell — there is one that particularly stands out, and his name is Hannibal Lecter. At times the president either compliments the serial killer or compares Lecter’s time in an asylum to that of immigrants seeking asylum — though the constant references to Hannibal the Cannibal might fall into comparison given the president’s own rather carnivorous-leaning diet. Brian Raftery cleverly opens his new biography, “Hannibal Lecter: A Life,” with this heightened focus on how the once side character became such a household name. In introducing Lecter to this culturally embalmed state only offered to a select golden group of characters, the Los Angeles-based author sets the stage to unravel the mysterious character’s origins through his elusive creator, Thomas Harris, and the real-life crimes and surprising …