ADITHI RAMAKRISHNAN Science Writer, Author at The Rapid City Post

This is an image provided by NASA shows the planet Uranus, taken by the spacecraft Voyager 2 in 1986. (NASA via AP)

NASA’s Webb telescope finds a new tiny moon around Uranus

August 19, 2025

The Webb Space Telescope has spotted a new tiny moon orbiting Uranus. NASA announced the discovery on Tuesday. The moon appears to be just six miles wide. It was spotted by the telescope’s near-infrared camera during observations in February. Scientists think it hid for so long because of its faintness and small size. Uranus has 28 known moons that are named after characters from Shakespeare and Alexander Pope. About half are smaller and orbit the planet at closer range. This newest addition, still nameless, ups the planet’s total moon count to 29.

FILE - A girl looks through a telescope in Caracas, Venezuela, on Sunday, May 15, 2022. (AP Photo/Matias Delacroix, File)

Six planets are hanging out in early morning skies this month. Here’s how to spot them

August 14, 2025

Six planets are hanging out in the sky this month. It’s what’s known as a planetary parade and it’s the last one of the year. These fairly common linkups happen when several planets appear to line up in the night sky at once. Venus, Jupiter, Saturn and a faint Mercury are visible this month to the naked eye, and the best chances to spot them are over the next week. Uranus and Neptune can only be glimpsed through binoculars and telescopes. To spot the planets, go out on a clear morning shortly before sunrise and look east.

The headquarters of the National Science Foundation is photographed May 29, 2025, in Alexandria, Va. (AP Photo/Mark Schiefelbein)

Judge allows the National Science Foundation to withhold hundreds of millions of research dollars

August 1, 2025

The National Science Foundation can continue to withhold hundreds of millions of dollars from researchers in several states until litigation aimed at restoring it plays out. A federal judge on Friday declined to grant a preliminary injunction in a lawsuit filed by sixteen Democrat-led states. In April, the NSF announced a new set of priorities and began axing hundreds of grants for research focused on things like misinformation and diversity, equity and inclusion. A lawyer for the NSF said at the hearing that the agency has the authority to fund whatever research it deems necessary.

This image provided by the NSF-DOE Vera C. Rubin Observatory shows 678 separate images taken by the observatory in just over seven hours of observing time. Combining many images in this way clearly reveals otherwise faint or invisible details, such as the clouds of gas and dust that comprise the Trifid nebula (top right) and the Lagoon nebula, which are several thousand light-years away from Earth. (NSF-DOE Vera C. Rubin Observatory via AP)

The largest digital camera ever built has released its first shots of the universe

June 23, 2025

The largest digital camera ever built has released its first shots of the universe. The Vera C. Rubin Observatory, located on a mountaintop in Chile, unveiled vibrant images Monday of colorful nebulas, stars and galaxies. Funded by the U.S. National Science Foundation and Department of Energy, the observatory will survey the southern sky for the next 10 years. The observatory hopes to track 20 billion galaxies and discover new asteroids and other celestial objects. The effort is named after astronomer Vera Rubin, who offered the first tantalizing evidence of a mysterious force called dark matter.

What is Fusarium graminearum, the fungus US authorities say was smuggled in from China?

June 4, 2025

Federal prosecutors have charged two Chinese researchers with smuggling a crop-killing fungus into the U.S. last summer. The charges against Yunqing Jian and Zunyong Liu come amid heightened political tensions between the two countries. They are accused of trying to smuggle in the fungus Fusarium graminearum, which causes a disease called Fusarium head blight that can wipe out crops such as wheat, barley and maize and rice. It’s unclear why someone would want to smuggle the fungus because it is already found throughout the Upper Midwest and parts of the Eastern U.S. The Department of Agriculture says it causes more than $1 billion in U.S. crop losses annually.

A long-running experiment finds a tiny particle is still acting weird

June 3, 2025

Final results from a long-running U.S.-based experiment show a tiny particle continues to act strangely — but that’s still good news for the laws of physics as we know them. The mysterious particles called muons wobble like a top when inside a magnetic field. Previous experiments found the muons were behaving strangely, which didn’t fit well with the foundational rulebook of physics. New data adds fuel to that fire, but scientists have found a way to make the findings agree with the Standard Model of Physics. Results were announced Tuesday and were submitted to the journal Physical Review Letters.

FILE - An aurora borealis, also known as the northern lights, is seen in the night sky over the Tallinn bay of the Baltic sea in Tallinn, Estonia, April 2, 2025. (AP Photo/Sergei Grits, file)

Northern lights could be visible again in some US states after weekend solar storms

June 2, 2025

Space weather forecasters say northern lights may be visible in parts of the northern United States following weekend solar storms. The sun burped out another burst of energy Monday that’s headed to Earth. Colorful auroras could be visible in Alaska, Washington, Montana, North Dakota, South Dakota, Minnesota, Michigan, Wisconsin, Maine and parts of Idaho, Wyoming, Iowa, New York, Vermont and New Hampshire. The sun is at the maximum phase of its 11-year activity cycle, making auroras more common and widespread. Last year, the strongest geomagnetic storm in two decades slammed Earth, producing light displays across the Northern Hemisphere.

Ancient DNA reveals a new group of people who lived near land bridge between the Americas

May 28, 2025

Scientists have identified a new pod of ancient people who lived near the land bridge between North America and South America. Discovered through ancient DNA, the group lived 6,000 years ago in the high plateaus of present-day Bogotá, Colombia. Scientists aren’t sure exactly where they fall in the family tree because they’re not closely related to ancient Native Americans in North America. They’re also not linked to ancient or present-day South Americans. They faded away 2,000 years ago and scientists aren’t sure why. The new study was published Wednesday in the journal Science Advances.

Scientists date the oldest known tools made from whale bones to 20,000 years ago

May 27, 2025

Scientists have pinpointed the oldest known evidence of humans making tools from whale bone. The bones, fashioned into narrow projectiles for hunting reindeer or bison, had been uncovered in excavations dating back over a century in the Bay of Biscay near Spain and France. Technological advancements in the past decade have now made it possible to date the oldest of the tools to about 20,000 years ago. The instruments indicate that ancient humans in the area took advantage of resources near the sea for survival. The research was published Tuesday in the journal Nature Communications.

ADITHI RAMAKRISHNAN Science Writer.