It is one of the most mysterious planets in the universe – and one we know very little about.

Now European space bosses hope to send two probes stacked on the same craft to the rocky planet in 2018.

Last year, the Russian billionaire Yuri Milner committed to spending $100 million on “Breakthrough Starshot,” a massive engineering project with the intention of developing a fleet of miniature spacecraft capable of travelling to our nearest neighboring star system, Alpha Centauri — some 20 to 30 years away from Earth travelling at less than a quarter the speed of light.

How low can they go? Almost as low as you can go, it seems. For the first time, transistors of the sort used in computers, smartphones, and other consumer devices have been tested successfully at temperatures a whisker above absolute zero.

Volcanologists are warning over the destructive power of the Phlegraean Fields, also known as Campi Flegrei, near to Naples, Italy, as it is showing signs of erupting.

As NASA inches closer to launching new missions to the solar system’s outer moons in search of life, scientists are renewing their focus on developing a set of universal characteristics of life that can be measured.

A commentator in a previous post said:

DC:  “When you change the amount of energy streaming in from the outside, or out – TO the outside, you change the equilibrium temperature, the temperature it settles on after a time.”

I totally agree with that. And the only way to do that with radiation is by changing emissivity.

Hopes of finding life on Mars, at least on the surface, were dealt a blow Thursday by a study revealing that salt minerals present on the Red Planet kill bacteria.

A balanced diet is chocolate in both hands — a phrase commonly used to justify one’s chocolate snacking behavior. A phrase now shown to actually harbor some truth, as the cocoa bean is a rich source of flavanols: a class of natural compounds that has neuroprotective effects.

Volcanoes erupt when magma rises through cracks in the Earth’s crust, but the exact processes that lead to the melting of rocks in the Earth’s mantle below are difficult to study.

Lowest global temperature anomaly in last 2 years (since July 2015)

The Version 6.0 global average lower tropospheric temperature (LT) anomaly for June 2017 was +0.21 deg. C, down from the May 2017 value of +0.44 deg. C (click for full-size version).

Way, way back in April 2017, scientists around the world participated in the ‘March for Science’ as a show of force and unity against an allegedly anti-science Trump administration. Their motto was “science not silence”: many wrote that mantra on pieces of duct tape and stuck it across their mouths.

As The Verge reports, self-driving, i.e. “autonomous cars” (ACs) have a problem, at least in Aussie-land. They can’t figure out whether the kangaroos are going to jump or not or, and if so, where to.

A new study found adjustments made to global surface temperature readings by scientists in recent years “are totally inconsistent with published and credible U.S. and other temperature data.”

Twice in the space of six weeks, the world has suffered major attacks of ransomware — malicious software that locks up photos and other files stored on your computer then demands money to release them.

It’s clear that the world needs better defenses, and fortunately, those are starting to emerge, if slowly and in patchwork fashion. When they arrive, we may have artificial intelligence to thank.

European and Japanese scientists Thursday proudly unveiled the BepiColombo spacecraft ahead of its seven-year journey to Mercury, one of the Solar System’s most enigmatic planets.

The Peruvian priestess dubbed Lady of Cao died 1,700 years ago, but her face has come back to life, thanks to 3D printing.