In a historic blow to its space programme, China suffered two rocket launch failures in a single day for the first time over the weekend. While Saturday’s failed launches gained immediate attention on social media, with some describing the day as “Black Saturday”, space observers said the setbacks were part of the growing pains the country’s rapidly developing aerospace industry would inevitably experience. They also drew parallels with similar problems Elon Musk’s firm SpaceX had experienced,...

In a historic blow to its space programme, China suffered two rocket launch failures in a single day for the first time over the weekend. While Saturday’s failed launches gained immediate attention on social media, with some describing the day as “Black Saturday”, space observers said the setbacks were part of the growing pains the country’s rapidly developing aerospace industry would inevitably experience. They also drew parallels with similar problems Elon Musk’s firm SpaceX had experienced,...

Chinese scientists have found a way to recycle lithium batteries using only carbon dioxide and water – eliminating the need for harsh, polluting chemicals to extract the lithium and upcycle cathode materials. The team from the Chinese Academy of Sciences and Beijing Institute of Technology said they used a “three-in-one” strategy to improve lithium recovery, upgrade transition metals like cobalt and nickel, and sequester carbon to eliminate waste by-products. Their method achieved a lithium...

Chinese scientists have made the first direct observation of a quantum effect that was proposed almost 90 years ago and could help detect dark matter, the universe’s invisible “glue”. Soviet physicist Arkady Migdal developed a theory in Leningrad in 1939 about what would happen when a neutral particle – such as dark matter – collided with an atomic nucleus. Migdal believed that the collision would cause the nucleus to recoil and trigger a secondary electronic recoil, generating a detectable...