It was 2,300 years ago that the ancient Chinese poet Qu Yuan wrote the poem “Tianwen,” or “Heavenly Questions.” It is only now that China’s Tianwen spacecraft have begun flying missions designed to come up with some heavenly answers. And as Space.com reports, those missions are becoming increasingly ambitious. In 2020, the Tianwen 1 spacecraft was launched to Mars,...
Dimorphos is easily one of the least interesting objects in the solar system. It’s a rock—a moonlet, really—measuring just 160 m (525 ft.) across, orbiting the asteroid Didymos, which itself measures only 780 m (2,560 ft). Located 11 million km (6.8 million mi.) from Earth, the Didymos-Dimorphos system is just one tiny part of the river of rubble that circles the sun in the...
Puppies aren’t born barking, just as children aren’t born chattering. They learn their voice, and then they learn to use it—partially from others, partially from the effect the behavior has. With the litter of eleven mixed-breed puppies that I observed from birth, I first heard a bark come out of a puppy mouth at three weeks. It was the suggestion of a bark, an evocation of a...