Science Summary: NASA chief announces Alabama facility; Genetic study implicates humans

Japanese researchers build a robotic tail to keep elderly upright

Millions of years after the ancestors of humans evolved to lose their tails, a research team at Japan’s Keio University have built a robotic one they say could help unsteady elderly people keep their balance. Dubbed Arque, the grey one-meter device mimics tails such as those of cheetahs and other animals used to keep their balance while running and climbing, according to the Keio team.

Genetic study implicates humans in the demise of the prehistoric cave bear

Genetic research that reconstructed the past population dynamics of the cave bear, a prominent prehistoric denizen of Europe, implicates Homo sapiens rather than climate cooling in the Ice Age extinction of these brawny plant-loving beasts. Scientists said on Thursday they obtained genome data from 59 cave bears from bones unearthed at 14 sites in France, Germany, Italy, Poland, Serbia, Spain, and Switzerland.

NASA chief announces Alabama facility as moon spacecraft headquarters

NASA Administrator Jim Bridenstine on Friday said Marshall Space Flight Center in Alabama will serve as headquarters for the U.S. space agency's program to build a spacecraft to put astronauts back on the moon by 2024. Bridenstine made the announcement at the Alabama facility, accompanied by lawmakers from that state. The announcement, which means potential jobs and prestige for Alabama, disappointed lawmakers from Texas who had lobbied for a site in their state.

Planet 10 times Earth's mass may have smacked Jupiter long ago

Jupiter, the solar system's largest planet, may have been smacked head-on by an embryonic planet 10 times Earth's mass not long after being formed, a monumental crash with apparent lasting effects on the Jovian core, scientists said on Thursday. The violent collision, hypothesized by astronomers to explain data collected by NASA's Juno spacecraft, may have occurred just several million years after the birth of the sun roughly 4.5 billion years ago following the dispersal of the primordial disk of dust and gas that gave rise to the solar system.

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