The human mind may find it difficult to conceptualize: a cosmic cloud so colossal it surrounds the Sun and eight planets as it extends trillions of miles into deep space. The spherical shell known as the Oort Cloud is, for all practical purposes, invisible. Its constituent particles are spread so thinly, and so far from the light of any star, including...

SpaceX accomplished a groundbreaking engineering feat Sunday when it launched the fifth test flight of its gigantic Starship rocket and then caught the booster back at the launch pad in Texas with mechanical arms seven minutes later. This achievement is the first of its kind, and it's crucial for SpaceX's vision of rapidly reusing the Starship rocket,...

On October 10, 2018, Tyndall Air Force Base on the Gulf of Mexico—a pillar of American air superiority—found itself under aerial attack. Hurricane Michael, first spotted as a Category 2 storm off the Florida coast, unexpectedly hulked up to a Category 5. Sustained winds of 155 miles per hour whipped into the base, flinging power poles, flipping F-22s,...

Early Sunday morning, SpaceX will try something no one has ever done before. If all goes according to plan, around seven minutes after lifting off from South Texas, the huge stainless steel booster from SpaceX's Starship rocket will come back to the launch pad and slow to a hover, allowing powerful mechanical arms to capture it in midair. This is SpaceX's...

Pamela Goodwin has received hundreds of emails from patients asking if they should take a cheap, readily available drug, metformin, to treat their cancer. It’s a fair question: Metformin, commonly used to treat diabetes, has been investigated for treating a range of cancer types in thousands of studies on laboratory cells, animals, and people. But...

More than 86 percent of healthcare providers surveyed across the US are experiencing shortages of intravenous fluids after Hurricane Helene's rampage took out a manufacturing plant in western North Carolina that makes 60 percent of the country's supply. IV fluids are used for everything from intravenous rehydration to drug delivery. The plant also...