Forbes contributors publish independent expert analyses and insights. I cover aerospace, astronomy & hosted The Cosmic Controversy Podcast. Photograph showing the cracks in Saturn s moon, Enceladus, ...

"Remove the Kapton tape and activate the battery." "But captain, these batteries must be 100 years old!" "They'll work, trust me." That may sound like a scene from a Star Trek rerun, but it could ...

Getting microbes to eat plastic is a frequently touted solution to our growing waste problem, but making the approach practical is tricky. A new technique that impregnates plastic with the spores of ...

(Nanowerk News) Bacterial spores are one of nature’s most resilient organisms. These tiny, seed-like structures form when bacteria enter a dormant state to survive unfavorable conditions. They can ...

Bacterial spores can survive for years, even centuries, without nutrients, resisting heat, UV radiation, and antibiotics. How inert, sleeping bacteria -- or spores -- spring back to life has been a ...

When the going gets tough for certain bacteria, they form into spores that can withstand the harshest of environments. Scientists have now utilized that fact to produce "living plastic" that ...

Researchers led by a team at the University of California San Diego have developed a biodegradable form of thermoplastic polyurethane (TPU) that could help reduce the plastic industry’s environmental ...

One reason plastic waste persists in the environment is because there’s not much that can eat it. The chemical structure of most polymers is stable and different enough from existing food sources that ...

Bacterial spores – the hardy survival structures formed by certain bacterial species – are proving to be a game changer in the field of engineered living materials (ELMs). These autonomously grown ...