Highly durable aerogel could ultimately be an upgrade for insulation on spacecraft. UCLA researchers and collaborators at eight other research institutions have created an extremely light, very durable ceramic aerogel. The material could be used for applications like insulating spacecraft because it can withstand the intense heat and severe temperature changes that space missions endure.

Ceramic aerogels have been used to insulate industrial equipment since the 1990s, and they have been used to insulate scientific equipment on NASA’s Mars rover missions...

Queen Mary University of London has led a study which describes the first direct measurement of how energy is transferred from the chaotic electromagnetic fields in space to the particles that make up the solar wind, leading to the heating of interplanetary space.

The study, published in Nature Communications and carried out with University of Arizona and the University of Iowa, shows that a process known as Landau damping is responsible for transferring energy from the electromagnetic plasma turbulence in space to electrons in the solar wind, causing their energisation.

This process, named after the Nobel-prize winning physicist ...

Deactivated platelets offer a potential drug-free, reversible antiplatelet therapy. What do heart disease, stroke, sepsis, and cancer have in common, aside from being deadly diseases? They’re all linked to activated platelets. New research has created ‘decoy’ platelets that can both prevent blood clots and keep cancer from spreading.

Several antiplatelet drugs have been developed to combat platelet-related conditions, but their effects are not easily reversible, and patients taking these drugs are at risk of uncontrolled bleeding if injured...

Desert ants are extraordinary solitary navigators. Researchers were inspired by these ants as they designed AntBot, the first walking robot that can explore its environment randomly and go home automatically, without GPS or mapping. This work opens up new strategies for navigation in autonomous vehicles and robotics.

Human eyes are insensitive to polarized light and ultraviolet radiation, but that is not the case for ants, who use it to locate themselves in space. Cataglyphis desert ants in particular can cover several hundreds of meters in direct sunlight in the desert to find food, then return in a straight line to the nest, without getting lost...