From Ian Galloway I came to Robert College in 1979 as a young physics teacher, all the way from Tarsus Amerikan Lisesi (TAL). For the previous two years TAL, RC, Uskudar Kiz Lisesi and Izmir Amerikan Lisesi had been conducting a joint regular physics competition. Before returning to the UK I was asked by the headteacher (Jim Maggart) if I would consider teaching at RC and so I found myself one day buried in the RC physics store cupboard looking through piles of disorganised apparatus. It was here that I discovered some pieces of brass, clearly belonging to a nice piece of apparatus, which did not seem to belong anywhere. They had evidently been used for some student project in the past. I asked my colleague, Barrie Tranter then Head of Science, what on earth these pieces of brass belonged to. “No idea”, he said, “They’ve been there all the time I’ve been here and probably long before that!”. My curiosity was piqued and so I carefully collected all the pieces together and attempted to reassemble them into something recognisable. After some time I had in front of me what I thought was a Morse code machine. A device for sending messages along a wire in the form of short and long pulses, dots and dashes. Each group of pulses formed a letter or number and so messages could be sent long distances along a telegraph wire. I was pretty pleased and asked Barrie if he had ever come across any more such brass pieces in the college as I realised then that you needed two such instruments, one at each end of the wire. “No”, he said, “never seen anything else like it, but it certainly could be a Morse code device!”. A year later I was asked to teach in the Orta school where to my astonishment I discovered another machine. In amongst the stuffed animals and gorilla skeleton (another story!) was a second intact Morse Code device. I now had two instruments, but what were they doing here? Several years passed before I met May Fincanci who wrote The Story of Robert College Old and New: 1863-1982. May was attempting to piece together the archives of RC, and I had agreed to help her go through some documents in a room which was overflowing with records. This was around 1982/83 so May must have finished her book by then. Amongst other things (I discovered the first enrolment list for RC dated 1863), imagine my utter amazement when I read the name Sam* F B Morse at the bottom of an old letter! So here it was, the reason for the two machines being part of RC history. Morse had donated the machines, which by the way are not “models” as suggested in the library but fully working devices, to Cyrus Hamlin the cofounder of RC with Christopher Robert, because of his singular help with demonstrating the system to the Sultan, Abdülmecid I. The year was about 1844 and Cyrus Hamlin was running the Bebek seminary where he had established a by now well-known laboratory for the instruction of engineers. Hamlin was the owner of a very fine set of batteries, which at the time were not easy to come by, remember the battery had only ‘just’ been invented a few years previously (1800) by Volta. It was a matter of great convenience to have batteries available near the Beylerbeyi palace where the system was to be demonstrated. Hamlin was not happy with the way the device worked and made recommendations for improvement. Unfortunately Mr Chamberlain who was working for Morse with Hamlin was drowned in the Danube on his way to Vienna to have the necessary improvements made. Finally in 1847 the stage was set and Cyrus was on hand to ensure that the batteries functioned correctly. All worked well and Prof. Smith who led the demonstration party suggested to the Sultan that any thanks should be sent to Prof. Morse. Consequently the very first European power to recognise the potential of the Morse Code machine was Turkey and that was in no small way due to the help provided by Hamlin who later founded Robert College. Rightly so, these machines form part of the history of Robert College and, for me personally, it is very pleasing to see them on display in the library. Following the demonstration no telegraph line was built, at least not until the Crimean war in 1853. It is my belief that these two machines are the original two machines used by Prof Smith and Hamlin in the Beylerbeyi Palace in 1847. They were presumably collecting dust in Smith’s offices and simply collected by Mr Perkins on his way to see Hamlin and congratulate him on founding Robert College. * The only reference I can find to Chamberlain visiting Constantinople gives the date as 1839. This was too early for Hamlin who arrived himself in 1839 and almost certainly too early for Morse to be presenting to the Sultan. Chamberlain’s visit was almost certainly around 1845 as the necessary improvements would not have taken 8 years and Hamlin would by then have had time to establish the reputation of his seminary! Transcript of Morse’s letter to Hamlin. New York May 15 1863 My dear Sir By Mr Perkins who sails tomorrow for the Levant, I take great pleasure in sending you a set[t] of my telegraph instruments, in duplicate, furnishing two termini complete, and consisting of two registers, two receiving magnets, and two keys, handsomely mounted on walnut platforms. Accept them from me for your College, hoping they may be acceptable to Government, the Officers of the institution, and the pupils and be an agreeable appendage to your philosophical apparatus. I the more readily make this donation to an institution in the Turkish Empire, since I am proud to say that the first honorary acknowledgement of the value of my invention from a European Government was received from the late amiable Sultan Abdu[h]l Mejid Khan, being the Nishan Iftichar [sic] in diamonds, which honour has been since repeated, from other sovereigns in the bestowment of four several orders of knighthood. May God bless you, and prosper your efforts to promote [h]is glory and the highest happiness of man. With sincere respect Yr Ob Servt** Saml F B Morse Mr Hamlin Constantinople ** Your obedient servant

The human experience of comets is a fleeting phenomenon at best. The dark night sky can reward those gazing upwards with a spectacular vision of these far-travelling objects, but it's a view that lasts only weeks or months, before these icy bodies c

Still warming to my favourite topic of climate change. Find below a complete story about how we are able to measure atmospheric temperatures from millions of years ago. Use this as a lesson starter or discussion topic with students. 400 years ago: Johannes van Helmont (born Brussels, Spanish/Dutch citizen), an early experimentalist, first coins the word gas. Probably from Greek chaos and his particular use of Flemish. Also famous for his 5 year tree experiment and for perhaps the first idea of an enzyme. 300 years ago: Réamur, French, invents the cupola furnace, similar to a modern blast furnace, for melting and smelting iron. A major by-product of extracting iron from its ore is of course carbon dioxide. The industrial revolution is now of course history! Also famous for his Reamur temperature scale. 200 years ago: The continent of Antarctica, a huge sheet of ice nearly 5 kilometers thick at one point, is sighted for the first time by three explorers independently. A Russian, von Bellingshausen, an American, Palmer and an Englishman, Bransfield. In the same year, electromagnetism is discovered by Oersted, Danish. Arago and Ampere, both French contribute with Ampere's Law and magnetization, while Schweigger, German, invents the galvanometer. These developments underpin all scientific efforts to make measurements, and in particular the mass spectrometer. 100 years ago: Aston, British, invents the first mass spectrometer for measuring the isotopic composition of the elements and discovers the whole number rule for atomic masses. Today: Antarctica is an area of enormous experimental interest, with many countries collecting data on the atmosphere, ice and the oceans, not to mention data about past climates. Many nationalities over four centuries have contributed to this scientific enterprise. We measure carbon dioxide concentrations in the atmosphere millions of years ago by examining tiny bubbles of air trapped in ice-cores. We can also measure the isotopic composition of gases trapped in these bubbles to determine past climate temperatures. In this way carbon dioxide concentrations can be correlated with atmospheric temperatures. Best wishes Ian

I have been thinking about the sustainability goals of the EU and our new content project, Sustainability in STEM education. Today is the birthday of Maria Goeppert-Mayer, Nobel Laureate in Physics 1963. After Marie Curie’s award in 1903, Maria is the second woman to win a Nobel in physics. Donna Strickland became the third woman Nobel prize-winner in physics in 2018. Roughly half a century between them! Goeppert-Mayer won her award for finding a mathematical model for the structure of the nucleus. Interestingly she submitted her paper to the Physical Review 3 months before a group of three male scientists submitted similar work. Their work was published first! Maria Goeppert-Mayer endured many years of working for nothing because she was a woman and did not obtain a paid university position until 1942, twelve years after winning her doctorate. When offered a position at the Argonne National Laboratory in 1946, she replied, “I don’t know anything about nuclear physics”. Despite this self-deprecation she had already predicted that the undiscovered trans-uranic elements would form a series similar to the rare earth metals, would go on to programme the first electronic computer ENIAC to solve complex problems on nuclear reactor cooling and later develop her model of the nucleus. Maria was educated at Gottingen University and would have met Emmy Noether, described by Einstein and others as the greatest woman mathematician in the history of mathematics. Few people know about Noether’s work. I never heard about her during my own studies in physics at university, yet Noether’s theorem concerns all the conservation laws. Essentially she proved that the Law of Conservation of Energy must exist. She provided the mathematical logic to explain why there is a law of conservation of momentum. In principle, Noether’s theorem explains why there is any physics at all, so it is worth pondering why we know so little about her. Thinking about Goeppert-Mayer’s work in nuclear physics reminded me that another famous woman in STEM working on the nucleus was born just 100 years ago. Her work was not about the atom’s nucleus but was on nucleic acid, DNA, and she was of course Rosalind Franklin. Franklin presented a paper at King’s College London in November 1951 suggesting the twin helical structure of DNA, two years before Crick and Watson published their work. Rosalind Franklin, who died in 1958, is perhaps the most famous ever non-recipient of a Nobel Prize. She was overlooked by the Nobel Committee for 1962 at a time when the current rule about not awarding prizes posthumously did not exist, meaning that she was almost certainly disregarded because she was a woman. Best wishes Ian Galloway

Each day a different image or photograph of our fascinating universe is featured, along with a brief explanation written by a professional astronomer. 2020 April 9

Researchers Derya Akkaynak and Tali Trebitz started work on the technology – called Sea-thru — more than three years ago. Akkaynak told Business Insider via email that Sea-thru's mission is to enable huge, artificial intelligence-powered analysis of underwater images

The big black hole at the center of the galaxy recently flared twice as bright as ever seen before in near-infrared wavelengths.

Scientists estimated the change in total number of individual birds since 1970. They found profound losses spread among rare and common birds alike.

Strong civil society movements are needed to ramp up pace of change, says study

Unprecedented feat reveals little-known Denisovans resembled Neanderthals but had ‘super-wide’ skulls

ScienceAlert Is Joining The Global Climate Strike on September 20

For the very first time, the Hubble Space Telescope has captured the formation of a giant storm - or a Great Dark Spot - on the icy surface of Neptune.

Over a dozen dolphins, stranded on the beaches of Florida and Massachusetts, have been found with brains full of amyloid plaques, a hallmark of Alzheimer's disease.

When a person dies, cremation is an increasingly popular option. The practice eclipsed burials in the US in 2015 and is expected to make up more than half of all body disposals by 2020, according to the Cremation Association of North America.

The cave is near the desert site where the Bible says Lot’s wife was turned into a pillar of salt

The theoretical physicist and bestselling author answers questions from famous fans and Observer readers

East Antarctica drilling project will give snapshot of Earth’s atmosphere and climate

Discovery in 71-year-old Jo Cameron may aid development of new pain relief treatments

Fish and other ocean creatures face deadly conditions during a hurricane. The extreme weather can generate massive waves, so most animals — including dolphins, whales, and sharks — swim to calmer seas. But sometimes, hurricanes help animals thrive. Here's what happens underwater during a hurricane.

When I was at elementary school, my teacher told me that matter exists in three possible states: solid, liquid and gas. She neglected to mention plasma, a special kind of electrified gas that's a state unto itself.

What would actually happen to your body if you stopped drinking water, including all beverages that contain water, like juices, soft drinks, and tea?

Hurricane Maria and its chaotic aftermath in Puerto Rico led to at least 4,645 deaths, according to a new estimate based on household surveys. That’s thousands more than the 64 official storm-related deaths counted from death certificates. The Category 5 storm hit the U.S. Caribbean territory on September 20, 2017, bringing down trees, houses and the electricity system.

Vitamin and mineral supplements are a staple in many people's diets, but there is increasing evidence to suggest the most popular ones are essentially useless. A new systematic review of data and trials published between January 2012 and October 2017 found that many popular multivitamins – as well as vitamin C, vitamin D, and calcium supplements – had no real advantage to people's health and that there was no evidence taking them reduced the risk of cardiovascular disease, heart attack, stroke, or early death.

The famed EM Drive is a bust - that's the take-home message from a team of physicists who have tested the controversial fuel-less propulsion system that appears to produce thrust while violating Newton's third law.Which means physics as we know it might be safe for a little bit longer.

Field experiments add vitamins to list of nutrients at risk from a changing atmosphere.By the end of this century, rice may not deliver the same B vitamin levels that it does today. Protein and certain minerals will dwindle, too, new data suggest.

Humankind is pathetically lightweight in comparison to the mass of almost all other living things on Earth, but while our bodies (and thinking) may be tiny, our crushing footprint is not.The most comprehensive study ever of the weight of all living biomass on the planet has discovered humans account for only about 0.01 percent of life on Earth – but despite our physical insignificance compared to the teeming masses around us, history shows there's no doubt over whose dominion this is.

The Kīlauea volcano in Hawaii began causing earthquakes on Wednesday afternoon, after morning explosions of "ballistic blocks" three times larger than bowling balls.Earthquakes up to 4.4 magnitude have been measured after Kilauea's caldera, one of its large craters, dropped 90cm causing nearby faults to move.

Scientists have detected an unexpected rise in atmospheric levels of CFC-11, a chlorofluorocarbon (CFC) highly damaging to the ozone layer. Banned by the Montreal Protocol in 1987, CFC-11 was seen to be declining as expected but that fall has slowed down by 50% since 2012. Researchers say their evidence shows it's likely that new, illegal emissions of CFC-11 are coming from East Asia.

Kilauea isn’t about to become another Krakatoa. So let’s just stop that rumor right there. Twitter was awash last weekend in indignant volcanologists responding to a now-corrected Associated Press story that appeared to link the Hawaii volcano to the so-called Ring of Fire, and suggest its eruption could spark others in the ring. That’s just wrong, for a number of reasons.

Wild flowers are being driven off Britain's roadside verges by air pollution and poor management​, the charity Plantlife claims. It says emissions from vehicle exhausts are acting as a fertiliser for a group of nitrogen-loving plants like nettles, which outcompete traditional flowers.

Sometimes mushroom hunting can yield much more than you bargain for. In the case of a forest delver in Minnesota, the discovery was straight out of a twisted tale on mutant creatures - a deceased, two-headed deer fawn.

A crucial period for language learning may extend well into teen years, a new study suggests.EmailPrintTwitterFacebookRedditGoogle+ Language learning isn’t kid stuff anymore. In fact, it never was, a provocative new study concludes. A crucial period for learning the rules and structure of a language lasts up to around age 17 or 18, say psychologist Joshua Hartshorne of MIT and colleagues.

Sometimes the most amazing discoveries can happen just by chance. Case in point: an international team of astronomers accidentally photographed what they think is a planet in the process of growing bigger, 600 light-years away.

Cracks open in the ground. Lava creeps across roads, swallowing cars and homes. Fountains of molten rock shoot up to 70 meters high, catching treetops on fire. After a month of rumbling warning signs, Kilauea, Hawaii’s most active volcano, began a new phase of eruption last week.

After a successful 2017 Kickstarter campaign, the Power Glove documentary – perfectly titled 'The Power of Glove' – is starting to hit the public sphere and what we've seen so far is everything we could have asked for.

A new kind of navigation system could help self-driving cars take the road less traveled. Most autonomous vehicles test-driving in cities navigate using 3-D maps marking every curbside and off-ramp with almost centimeter-level precision. But there are millions of miles of open road that tech companies aren’t likely to plot in such detail any time soon.

Groundbreaking physicist Stephen Hawking left us one last shimmering piece of brilliance before he died: his final paper, detailing his last theory on the origin of the Universe, co-authored with Thomas Hertog from KU Leuven.

Yale physicists have uncovered hints of a time crystal—a form of matter that "ticks" when exposed to an electromagnetic pulse—in the last place they expected: a crystal you might find in a child's toy.

Filling your diet with plants, fish and oil and limiting your intake of processed food may slow the build-up of amyloid plaque, delaying the onslaught of Alzheimer's

Scientists find the first clear evidence of rapid cooling of a neutron star by neutrino emission.

It was the eclipse felt ‘round the world. The August 21, 2017, total solar eclipse that crossed the United States launched a wave in the upper atmosphere that was detected nearly an hour later from Brazil.

People tracking giant sloths thousands of years ago in what is now New Mexico left footprints that confirm humans once hunted the giant creatures, researchers report April 25 in Science Advances. Giant ground sloths, which vanished at the end of the last Ice Age around 10,000 years ago, could weigh more than an elephant.

Peering billions of light-years back to when the Universe was just 10 percent of its current age, astronomers have spotted a colossal pile-up: 14 young, starbursting galaxies merging into one of the most massive structures in the Universe.

Ornithologists have classified the Vogelkop superb bird-of-paradise as its own species after recognizing differences in two similar-looking kinds of the birds.These birds-of-paradise are famous for evolving super-black feathers that absorb nearly all light, and their haunting courtship dances (see video below). But now scientists have discovered there are actually two species.

Record levels of microplastics have been found trapped inside sea ice floating in the Arctic. Ice cores gathered across the Arctic Ocean reveal microplastics at concentrations two to three times higher than previously recorded. As sea ice melts with climate change, the plastic will be released back into the water, with unknown effects on wildlife, say German scientists.

A survey of hundreds of galaxies found a clear link between their shapes and their stars’ ages, astronomers report April 23 in Nature Astronomy. Galaxies with younger stars are more squashed into flatter shapes, while galaxies with older stars are more blobby, says astronomer Jesse van de Sande of the University of Sydney.

Astronomers have finally figured out what the clouds of Uranus consist of - and as it turns out, they smell terrible. For the first time, there's been a clear detection of hydrogen sulfide, the gas that gives rotten eggs - and flatulence - their dist

Two years ago, former NASA climate scientist James Hansen and a number of colleagues laid out a dire scenario in which gigantic pulses of fresh water from melting glaciers could upend the circulation of the oceans, leading to a world of fast-rising s

Nanoparticle breakthrough could capture unseen light for solar energy conversion

Rising CO2 levels might not be as good for plants as we thought

If someone's ever accused you of sounding less intelligent because you swear too much, don't worry - science has got your back. A 2015 study found that those who have a healthy repertoire of curse words at their disposal are more likely to have a ric

Closing the gender gap in physics will take hundreds of years, given the current rate of progress.That's the finding of research analysing the names of authors listed on millions of scientific papers. Physics, computer science, maths and chemistry had the fewest women, while nursing and midwifery had the most.

The US space agency's Tess satellite has launched from Cape Canaveral in Florida on a mission to find thousands of new worlds beyond our Solar System. The mission will survey a great swathe of stars, hoping to catch the dips in brightness that occur when orbiting planets traverse their faces.

A type of plankton described as part of "the beating heart" of the oceans has been named after the BBC's Blue Planet series. The tiny plant-like organism is regarded as a key element of the marine ecosystem. Scientists at University College London (UCL) bestowed the honour on Sir David Attenborough and the documentary team. It's believed to be the first time a species has been named after a television programme.

The breakthrough, spurred by the discovery of plastic-eating bugs at a Japanese dump, could help solve the global plastic pollution crisis

A new, hard-fought international deal will set limits on greenhouse gas emissions from international shipping for the first time. Delegates to the United Nations’ International Maritime Organization, or IMO, met for a week in London to hash out the details of the plan.

In the summer of 1935, the physicists Albert Einstein and Erwin Schrödinger engaged in a rich, multifaceted and sometimes fretful correspondence about the implications of the new theory of quantum mechanics.

Reaction Engines Limited (REL), the UK company developing a revolutionary aerospace engine, has announced investments from both Boeing and Rolls-Royce. REL, based at Culham in Oxfordshire, is working on a propulsion system that is part jet engine, part rocket engine.

We can demonstrate, suggest, and convince ourselves that a scientific truth is valid. But proof? That's an impossibility for science.

There's a surprising amount of order in this chaotic Universe of ours, but this is a pretty weird one - astronomers have found that all galaxies, regardless of their size, take around one billion years to complete a full rotation.

An emerging field that has generated a wide range of interest, spin caloritronics, is an offshoot of spintronics that explores how heat currents transport electron spin. Spin caloritronics researchers are particularly interested in how waste heat could be used to power next-generation spintronic devices. Some of these potential devices range from ultrafast computers that need next to no power, to magnetic nanoparticles that deliver drugs to cells.

Artificial intelligence does the funniest things. A new crowd-sourced list tells the times when AI did the unexpected

Of all of the brain's functions, it's probably fair to say its ability to produce consciousness is the most challenging for us to make sense of.To better understand how our grey matter accomplishes this perplexing task, researchers from the University of Michigan's Center for Consciousness Science have taken a closer look at what the brain is doing when it's drifting into unconsciousness.

Scientists observe a signature on the sky from the very first stars to shine in the Universe.They did it with the aid of a small radio telescope in the Australian outback that was tuned to detect the earliest ever evidence for hydrogen. This hydrogen was in a state that could only be explained if it had been touched by the intense light of stars.

Early plants made Earth muddier. Ancient riverbed deposits of mud rock — rocks containing bits of clay and silt smaller than grains of sand — began increasing around 458 million years ago, around the time that rootless plants became common across Earth, researchers say.

In recent years, scientists have been uncovering potential therapeutic benefits of psychedelic substances like psilocybin and lysergic acid diethylamide (LSD) - it looks like they can 'reset' the brain in people with mental health conditions.

A new understanding of why synthetic 2-D materials often perform orders of magnitude worse than predicted was reached by teams of researchers led by Penn State. They searched for ways to improve these materials' performance in future electronics, photonics, and memory storage applications.

Earth microbes have shown they can withstand the environment on Enceladus. If alien life is similar, the methane we’ve found on Saturn’s moon could be from life

String theorists lament the death of Joe Polchinski, one of their field’s most esteemed and respected thinkers.

Vietnam's tech economy is experiencing an innovation renaissance, with the return of overseas nationals injecting fresh ideas and a new energy.

Interest in Enceladus as a potential host for alien life likely to intensify as tests show Earth bacteria thrive in similar conditions.Deep-sea bacteria thrive in conditions designed to closely match those on Saturn’s tiny moon, Enceladus, according to scientists investigating the potential for alien life forms to survive there.

Bee viruses have been found in hoverflies for the first time, raising new concerns about disease threats.The brightly-coloured flies may be picking up bee viruses as they forage at the same flowers. And scientists think hoverflies could then be spreading the deadly infections long distances when they migrate.

The leaflet inside a packet of contraceptive pills lists side effects women might experience, including breast pain, migraines or headaches, stomach problems, and acne. It also says you might experience changes in mood, and depression.

Engineers are taking a counterintuitive approach to protecting future spacecraft: Shooting at their experiments. The image above and high-speed video below capture a 2.8-millimeter aluminum bullet plowing through a test material for a space shield at 7 kilometers per second. The work is an effort to find structures that could stand up to the impact of space debris.

For people with an anxiety disorder, everyday tasks can seem impossible.In its worst form, anxiety can cause trouble sleeping, heart palpitations, or the inability to leave the house.

Tap — gently — the plump rear of a young Nessus sphinx hawk moth, and you may hear the closest sound yet discovered to a caterpillar voice. Caterpillars don’t breathe through their mouths. Yet a Nessus sphinx hawk moth, if disturbed, will emit from its open mouth a sustained hiss followed by a string of scratchy burplike sounds. “Hard to describe,” says animal behaviorist Jayne Yack of Carleton University in Ottawa, who urges people just to listen to it for themselves.

Climate change could drive most of the birds' global population from their current nesting islands.The scientists have assessed the birds' fragmented population in the Southern Ocean and concluded that some island strongholds will become unsustainable.

ABD'de yapılan yeni araştırma, çiftlerin el ele tutuşarak birbirlerinin fiziksel acılarını azaltabildiğini ortaya koydu. Araştırmaya göre sevdiğimiz kişinin elini tutmak, deriye bastırılan sıcak bir metal parçasının vereceği acıyı uyuşturabilecek kadar etkili.

The European Union is preparing legislation to force companies to turn over customers' personal data when requested even if it is stored on servers outside the bloc, a position that will put Europe at loggerheads with tech giants and privacy campaigners.

What is inside an atom between the nucleus and the electron? Usually there is nothing, but why could there not be other particles too? If the electron orbits the nucleus at a great distance, there is plenty of space in between for other atoms. A "giant atom" could be created, filled with ordinary atoms. All these atoms form a weak bond, creating a new, exotic state of matter at cold temperatures, referred to as Rydberg polarons.

The headline was that an ancient Briton from 10,000 years ago had dark skin, but the genetics of skin colour are so complex that we can’t be sure

An amateur astronomer has caught a supernova explosion on camera.

The 40 highest-paying jobs you can get without a bachelor's degree. You don't need a four-year degree to make bank.

The networks' failure to tackle cyber-bullying is damaging youngsters' mental health, a survey finds.

It's another demonstration of the power of Big Data - of mining a huge batch of statistics to see patterns of behaviour that were simply not apparent before.Satellite tracking shows fishing's footprint on Earth is now over four times that of agriculture.

One photon can transmit information in two directions at once.Communication is a two-way street. Thanks to quantum mechanics, that adage applies even if you’ve got only one particle to transmit messages with.

SpaceX turned heads around the world on February 6 with the first-ever launch of Falcon Heavy.The 230-foot-tall (70 metres tall) rocket's three boosters helped push Elon Musk's Tesla Roadster into space, peeled off after running low on fuel, and then careened toward Earth.

Fishing has left a hefty footprint on Earth. Oceans cover more than two-thirds of the planet’s surface, and industrial fishing occurred across 55 percent of that ocean area in 2016, researchers report in the Feb. 23 Science. In comparison, only 34 percent of Earth’s land area is used for agriculture or grazing.

The history of medicine is studded with tales of self-experimentation.In 1961, Victor Herbert deprived himself of folic acid for weeks (he basically boiled his food to deplete its nutritional value), ultimately learning the hard way that it's a key part of the diet.

“There’s a very faint dimple here,” Sterling Nesbitt says, holding up a palm-sized fossil to the light. The fossil, a pelvic bone, belonged to a creature called Teleocrater rhadinus. The slender, 2-meter-long reptile ran on all fours and lived 245 million years ago, about 10 million to 15 million years before scientists think dinosaurs first appeared.