“It’s rare that something so loud comes to life in someplace so quiet, but that’s exactly how it happened with America’s greatest rock band. In the 1970s, Van Halen evolved into a musical force in Pasadena, a Los Angeles suburb of white picket fences, tree-lin... More »
NASA has selected two missions that have the potential to open new windows on one of the earliest eras in the history of our solar system – a time less than 10 million years after the birth of our sun. The missions, known as Lucy and Psyche, were chosen from f... More »
After the floats make their way down Colorado Boulevard, they come to rest at East Washington Boulevard and Sierra Madre Boulevard. This over two mile long float showcase gives guests a chance to get up close to the floats and admire the detailed work that wen... More »
NASA’s Jet Propulsion Laboratory says stargazers worldwide may be able to view one of the briefest but most spectacular meteor showers of the New Year. In North America, particularly west of the Mississippi River, the Quadrantid meteor shower, can be visible i... More »
Eyes, fragile but crucial for human and almost all other animal life, pose difficult challenges, both for basic research and for effective solutions to the medical problems that such research investigates. Caltech professors Yu-Chong Tai and Hyuck Choo work wi... More »
JPL’s NEOWISE mission has detected two celestial objects approaching Earth, one of which will approach Earth’s orbit in February. The good news is, at a distance of nearly 32 million miles from Earth, this pass will not bring it particularly close. The object,... More »
JPL’s NEOWISE mission has recently discovered some celestial objects traveling through our neighborhood, including one on the blurry line between asteroid and comet. Another — definitely a comet — might be seen with binoculars through next week. An object call... More »
Genes tell cells what to do—for example, when to repair DNA mistakes or when to die—and can be turned on or off like a light switch. Knowing which genes are switched on, or expressed, is important for the treatment and monitoring of disease. Now, for the first... More »
Caltech biologist Markus Meister is disputing recent research claiming to have solved what he describes as “the last true mystery of sensory biology”—the ability of animals to detect magnetic fields. This “magnetic sense” provides a navigational aid to a ... More »
Engineers at Caltech have developed a system of flat optical lenses that can be easily mass-produced and integrated with image sensors, paving the way for cheaper and lighter cameras in everything from cell phones to medical devices. The technology relies on s... More »
Lien Pham sometimes thinks of herself as a “spacecraft dressmaker.” She’s been making thermal blankets at Jet Propulsion Laboratory for 16 years. Just as clothing can be sewn too tight or too loose, thermal blankets — the glinting material each spacecraft is w... More »
In 1999, six career firefighters lost their lives responding to a five-alarm fire. They were part of a group of 73 dispatched to a smoke-filled warehouse in Worcester, Massachusetts. Lost inside the building’s tight corners, they were unable to find an exit be... More »
