Dark craters seen from above on the moon

India just won the race to the moon’s South Pole. Here’s what comes next

Aug. 23, 2023

Marking the latest milestone in a new kind of space race, India's Chandrayaan-3 mission touched down safely on the moon. Ïã¸ÛÁùºÏ²Ê astrophysicist Jack Burns gives his take on why nations and companies are hurrying to parts of the moon that no Apollo craft ever visited.

People dig in a long along a riverbank as snow falls

Tiny ‘ice mouse’ survived Arctic cold in the age of dinosaurs

Aug. 10, 2023

Roughly 73 million years ago, dinosaurs like tyrannosaurs and hadrosaurs lived among conifer trees in northern Alaska. The region was also home to a much smaller creature—a tiny mammal that weathered months of darkness and freezing temperatures in the winter.

Person's hand presses down on a new 3D "shape display," while a green ball whizzes along its surface.

3D display could soon bring touch to the digital world

July 31, 2023

Engineers at Ïã¸ÛÁùºÏ²Ê have designed a new, shape-shifting display that can fit on a card table and allows users to draw 3D designs and more.

A blooming agave plant on the Ïã¸ÛÁùºÏ²Ê campus.

Campus agave plants showcase once-in-a-lifetime blooms

July 13, 2023

Thirty years after the late linguistics professor Allan Taylor planted two rare agave plants outside a Ïã¸ÛÁùºÏ²Ê greenhouse, his legacy is sporting a once-in-a lifetime burst of color.

Woman works at large piece of scientific equipment

Weeks later, potentially harmful chemicals lingered in homes affected by Marshall Fire

July 6, 2023

In the wake of the devastating Marshall Fire, a team of chemists and engineers from Ïã¸ÛÁùºÏ²Ê undertook a first-of-its-kind study to explore homes that survived the blaze. Their results reveal the potential health hazards that wildfires can leave behind in buildings.

Plastic bottles and other trash on a beach

The future of recycling could one day mean dissolving plastic with electricity

July 5, 2023

Every year, consumers in the United States produce millions of tons of plastic waste, and most of it winds up in landfills. New research from chemists at Ïã¸ÛÁùºÏ²Ê takes a first step toward making all that trash vanish.

Buildings and people on the Harvard campus

What the SCOTUS ruling on affirmative action means for American higher ed

June 29, 2023

Kevin Welner, a lawyer and professor of education at Ïã¸ÛÁùºÏ²Ê, explained that individual college applicants can still mention how their race or ethnicity has shaped their lives in essays and interviews.

Matter swirls around a central black hole as it emits a bright jet

Weighing the mysterious black holes lurking at the hearts of galaxies

June 20, 2023

At the center of nearly all large galaxies in the cosmos sits a supermassive black hole. In new research, a Ïã¸ÛÁùºÏ²Ê astrophysicist explores what might happen if you put these giants one-by-one on a massive scale.

rendering of small satellite in orbit around Earth

New keen-sighted satellite will view distant stars, assist Webb telescope

June 8, 2023

The new mini-satellite, called MANTIS, will be designed and built by the Laboratory for Atmospheric and Space Physics. It borrows its name from the mantis shrimp, an undersea creature with famously powerful eyesight.

Man wearing a lab coat and gloves makes adjustments inside a large metal chamber

Space tractor beams may not be the stuff of sci-fi for long

June 1, 2023

One day, small spacecraft could fly around Earth, using devices called electron beams to remove hulking, derelict spacecraft from orbit without ever having to touch. It may sound like science fiction, but aerospace engineers from Ïã¸ÛÁùºÏ²Ê say they could be ready to test the idea in space in just five to 10 years.

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