A New Quantum Algorithm Speeds Up Solving a Huge Class of Problems
The original version of this story appeared in Quanta Magazine. For computer scientists, solving problems is a bit like mountaineering. First they must choose a problem to solve—akin to identifying a peak to climb—and then they must develop a strategy…
Grid-Scale Battery Storage Is Quietly Revolutionizing the Energy System
Grid batteries have a halo effect for other power generators too. Most thermal power plants—coal, gas, nuclear—prefer to run at a steady pace. Ramping up and down to match demand takes time and costs money, but with batteries soaking up…
Eli Lilly Sues 4 GLP-1 Telehealth Startups, Escalating War on Knockoff Drugs
The FDA gave compounders a grace period to wind down their production of the drugs after the shortage was over. Small pharmacies had until February 18 to comply, while larger outsourcing facilities had until March 19. (Semaglutide compounders were ordered…
NASA’s Perseverance Rover Finds Strange Rocks on Mars
Satellite observations had shown alternating stripes of light-colored and dark-colored rock in this area. In late March, Perseverance excavated one of the light-colored formations and collected a sample. In the process it discovered the strange rock—which has been named “St….
This Artificial Wetland Is Reusing Wastewater to Revive a Lost Ecosystem
In the arid region south of Mexicali, where the pale desert dominates the landscape, the Las Arenitas wetland feels like a mirage. But it is real, and is an oasis for endemic and migratory birds that cross the Colorado River…
Scientists Find Measles Likely To Become Endemic in the US Over Next 20 Years
With vaccination rates among US kindergarteners steadily declining in recent years and Secretary of Health and Human Services Robert F. Kennedy Jr. vowing to reexamine the childhood vaccination schedule, measles and other previously eliminated infectious diseases could become more common….
Finland Could Be the First Country in the World to Bury Nuclear Waste Permanently
Together with his colleagues, Jinshan Pan, a professor of corrosion science at KTH Royal Institute of Technology in Sweden, published a study in January 2023 devoted to the risk of sulfides in groundwater corroding the copper used for spent nuclear…
Muscle Memory Isn’t What You Think It Is
We all want to know if and how we can come back to form after injury, illness, or a long hiatus. Muscles adapt in response to the environment: They grow when we put in the work and shrink when we…
Scientists Are Mapping the Bizarre, Chaotic Spacetime Inside Black Holes
The original version of this story appeared in Quanta Magazine. At the beginning of time and the center of every black hole lies a point of infinite density called a singularity. To explore these enigmas, we take what we know…
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Scientists Think They’ve Found the Region of the Brain That Regulates Conscious Perception
A team of scientists has identified areas of the brain that are activated when a person becomes aware of themself and their thoughts. This enigmatic process appears to be controlled by the thalamus, a central region of the brain already…
As Summer Approaches, Federal Cuts Threaten Program to Keep Vulnerable People Cool
This story originally appeared on Grist and is part of the Climate Desk collaboration. The summer of 2021 was brutal for residents of the Pacific Northwest. Cities across the region from Portland, Oregon, to Quillayute, Washington, broke temperature records by…
Measles Cases Are Rising. Other Preventable Diseases Could Follow
As the United States grapples with rising measles cases and outbreaks in several states, another vaccine-preventable disease is quietly spreading throughout the country. This year, there have been at least 7,599 cases of pertussis, also known as whooping cough, up…
FEMA Isn’t Ready for Disaster Season, Workers Say
Less than two months before the official start of hurricane season, the nation’s primary disaster-response agency faces an uncertain future. Employees working across the Federal Emergency Management Agency tell WIRED that a rapid erosion of tools, external partnerships, and practices—as…
Scientists Find Promising Indication of Extraterrestrial Life—124 Light-Years Away
Astronomers have found one of the most promising indications that there could be extraterrestrial life on another planet. With the help of the James Webb Space Telescope, researchers have detected what they believe could be biosignatures of marine microorganisms on…
Thousands of Urine and Tissue Samples Are in Danger of Rotting After Staff Cuts at a CDC Laboratory
Cathy Tinney-Zara, a worker at NIOSH’s Pittsburg facility who spoke to WIRED in her capacity as the union representative, says that before they lost their jobs, the researchers at the Morgantown facility had been actively studying how Gulf War soldiers…
DOGE Cuts Pull AmeriCorps Volunteers Off of Disaster Relief Jobs
AmeriCorps, the US federal agency that oversees volunteerism and service work, abruptly pulled teams of young people out of a variety of community service projects across the country on Tuesday. The work stoppage was due to cuts attributed to the…
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The Wild Plan to Terraform Mars by Slamming Asteroids Into It
It’s often the case that the more that planets are studied and understood, the more remote the possibility of inhabiting them seems. Mars, for example, is the closest celestial body to Earth in terms of distance, but data shows its…
‘We Are Not Programmed to Die,’ Says Nobel Laureate Venki Ramakrishnan
Venkatraman Ramakrishnan, the man of death. Although this does not sound like a good moniker, it is: Ramakrishnan is one of the world’s most eminent scientists in the fields of structural biology and cellular processes related to aging and death….
Small Language Models Are the New Rage, Researchers Say
The original version of this story appeared in Quanta Magazine. Large language models work well because they’re so large. The latest models from OpenAI, Meta, and DeepSeek use hundreds of billions of “parameters”—the adjustable knobs that determine connections among data…
Proposed NASA Budget Cuts ‘Would Decimate American Leadership in Space’
This week, as part of the process to develop a budget for fiscal-year 2026, the Trump White House shared the draft version of its budget request for NASA with the space agency. This initial version of the administration’s budget request…
One Man’s Quest to Reforest the Rio Grande Valley
The Tamaulipan thorn forest once covered 1 million acres on both sides of the US-Mexico border. Restoring even a fraction of it could help the region cope with the ravages of a warming world.
This Famous Physics Experiment Shows Why the Government Should Support ‘Useless’ Science
The lighter creates a tiny spark that jumps from one wire to the other in the front pair. This spark creates electromagnetic waves, with the two wires serving as transmission antennas to amplify the waves. The two wires in back…
An Experimental Obesity Pill Mimics Gastric Bypass Surgery
The drug is based on research conducted at MIT by Giovanni Traverso, a gastroenterologist and mechanical engineer, and Robert Langer, a chemical engineer who has launched more than two dozen biotech companies. The two discovered the mechanism when working on…
Donald Trump Wants to Save the Coal Industry. He’s Too Late
The promise of new demand is driving some utilities to reconsider scheduled coal plant retirements. In Virginia, where Amazon Web Services keeps 96 data centers and is investing $35 million to expand its campuses, the regional transmission organization, PJM Interconnection,…
States Are Banning Forever Chemicals. Industry Is Fighting Back
In 2021, James Kenney and his husband were at a big box store buying a piece of furniture when the sales associate asked if they’d like to add fabric protectant. Kenney, the cabinet secretary of New Mexico’s Environment Department, asked…
Scientists Claim to Have Brought Back the Dire Wolf
Studying the dire wolf’s genome also allowed the Colossal team to figure out which features distinguished the ancient wolf from its modern relatives. They settled on traits involving size, musculature, hair color, hair texture, hair length, and coat patterning. They…
An IVF Alternative Could Make Having Babies Less Onerous
More and more people are turning to in vitro fertilization, or IVF, to have babies. The process can be arduous, requiring injections of costly hormones twice a day for two weeks to mature eggs so that they can be retrieved…
Scientists Are Mapping the Boundaries of What Is Knowable and Unknowable
Moore designed his pinball machine to complete the analogy to the Turing machine. The starting position of the pinball represents the data on the tape being fed into the Turing machine. Crucially (and unrealistically), the player must be able to…
Welcome to the Worst Allergy Season Ever
This story originally appeared on Vox and is part of the Climate Desk collaboration. The warming spring air is a welcome relief from the bitterly cold winter across much of the US, but millions of seasonal allergy sufferers are getting…
Torpedo Bats and the Physics of the Sweet Spot
If the ball hits the stick and bounces back, what will happen to the stick? If you said the stick will recoil to the right, you’re correct. We can think of this as a collision. When two objects collide, they…
SpaceX Took a Big Step Toward Reusing Starship’s Super Heavy Booster
SpaceX is having trouble with Starship’s upper stage after back-to-back failures, but engineers are making remarkable progress with the rocket’s enormous booster. The most visible sign of SpaceX making headway with Starship’s first stage—called Super Heavy—came at 9:40 am local…
In Search of the Last Wild Axolotls
axolotls are critically endangered. According to the IUCN Red List of Threatened Species, these aquatic monsters—a national symbol that features on Mexico’s 50 peso bills, and which were once considered divine entities, the “twins” of the Aztec deity Quetzalcoatl—are at…
This Startup Says It Can Clean Your Blood of Microplastics
This is a non-exhaustive list of places microplastics have been found: Mount Everest, the Mariana Trench, Antarctic snow, clouds, plankton, turtles, whales, cattle, birds, tap water, beer, salt, human placentas, semen, breast milk, feces, testicles, livers, brains, arteries, and blood….
Doctor Behind Award-Winning Parkinson’s Research Among Scientists Purged From NIH
Several top scientists charged with overseeing research into disease prevention and cures at the National Institutes of Health (NIH) were notified that they were subject to a reduction in force on Tuesday as part of a devastating purge of federal…
Yuval Noah Harari: ‘How Do We Share the Planet With This New Superintelligence?’
Libertarians often take these mechanisms for granted and refuse to consider where they come from. For example, you have electricity and drinking water in your home. When you go to the bathroom and flush the water, the sewage goes into…
Why Adding a Full Hard Drive Can Make a Computer More Powerful
Those are pretty stringent constraints, so it wasn’t obvious that the extra memory could ever prove useful. But to their surprise, Buhrman and Cleve showed that if you tweak bits in just the right way, you really can get extra…
US Cities Seeking to Ban Natural Gas in New Buildings Just Got a Big Win in Court
This story originally appeared on Grist and is part of the Climate Desk collaboration. Cities looking to eliminate fossil fuels in buildings have notched a decisive court victory. Last week, a federal judge dismissed a lawsuit brought by plumbing and…
Sperm Stem Cells Were Used for the First Time in an Attempt to Restore Fertility
“What we expected out of this initial transplant was to demonstrate that the method was safe and that it was feasible,” Orwig says. Ultrasounds show that Hsu’s testicular tissue was unharmed by the procedure and his hormone levels are in…
Scientists Scan Mysterious Planet as It Drifts Through Space
The unevenness of the state of each cloud layer is thought to be the reason why the brightness of SIMP 0136 changes as it rotates. It’s easy to understand if you think of Jupiter, which as a gas giant planet…
Hikaru Utada Would Rather Play CERN Than Coachella
Utada: What are you most focused on pursuing at the moment? Kojima: There is a theory in particle physics called the Standard Model, but it can only explain about 5 percent of the mass and energy in the universe. In…
Beneath Greenland’s Ice Lies a Climate Solution—and a New Geopolitical Battleground
Still, wherever there’s mining activity, there’s potential for spills. There’s also potential for a lot of noise: Ships in particular fill the ocean around Greenland with a din that can stress and disorient fishes and marine mammals, like narwhals, seals,…
How a Cup of Tea Laid the Foundations for Modern Statistical Analysis
Fisher did not take Neyman and Pearson’s criticisms well. In response, he called their methods “childish” and “absurdly academic.” In particular, Fisher disagreed with the idea of deciding between two hypotheses, rather than calculating the “significance” of available evidence, as…
It’s Looking More Likely NASA Will Fly the Artemis II Mission
Late Saturday night, technicians at Kennedy Space Center in Florida moved the core stage for NASA’s second Space Launch System rocket into position between the vehicle’s two solid-fueled boosters. Working inside the iconic 52-story-tall Vehicle Assembly Building, ground teams used…
Scientists Observe Carbon Dioxide on Planets Outside the Solar System for the First Time
Carbon dioxide has been detected on a planet outside our solar system for the first time. The gas has been observed directly by the James Webb Space Telescope on four exoplanets, all belonging to the HR 8799 system, located 130…
How to Delete Your Data From 23andMe
Genetic testing company 23andMe, once a Silicon Valley darling valued at $6 billion, filed for Chapter 11 bankruptcy protection late Sunday as it prepares for a sale of the business. CEO Anne Wojcicki, who cofounded the company in 2006, has…
The Chaos of NIH Cuts Has Left Early-Career Scientists Scrambling
“If we went on business-as-usual and admitted a normal class size, then we’d have students we couldn’t support in the program,” says Kimberly Cooper, a developmental biologist at UCSD and associate director of the biology PhD program. One of her…
A Math Couple Solves a Major Group Theory Problem—After 20 Years of Work
But one of Malle’s graduate students was on the case. Britta Späth. “Our Obsession” In 2003, Späth arrived at the University of Kassel to start her doctorate with Malle. She was almost perfectly suited for working on the McKay conjecture:…
A Mysterious Startup Is Developing a New Form of Solar Geoengineering
Stardust’s prospective clients seem to be governments: As countries consider geoengineering, Stardust could be poised to sell them tools to meet those goals, several experts said. In an emailed answer to questions about its business model, Yedvab described the company’s…
The Art of the Perfect Nap
Done wisely, naps can be a valuable way to boost your focus and energy. A sleep researcher explains how to get it right.
Researchers Rush to Save US Government Data on Trans Youth—Before It Disappears
If you think this sounds familiar, you’re not wrong. When Trump assumed the presidency in 2017, scientists, archivists, and librarians at the University of Pennsylvania raced to save data published by the Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) and NOAA. Another group…
Evidence Grows That Dark Energy Changes Over Time
That’s what DESI was designed to do: take precise measurements of the apparent size of these bubbles (both near and far) by determining the distances to galaxies and quasars over 11 billion years. That data can then be sliced into…
Synchron’s Brain-Computer Interface Now Has Nvidia’s AI
Cosmos can also generate tokens about each avatar movement that act like time stamps, which will be used to label brain data. Labeling data enables an AI model to accurately interpret and decode brain signals and then translate those signals…
After 9 Months in Space, Stranded NASA Astronauts Return Home
Suni Williams and Butch Wilmore, the US astronauts stranded for nine months on the International Space Station, finally made it home on Tuesday, March 18. They returned to Earth with the two members of the SpaceX Crew-9 mission—NASA’s Nick Hague…
How to Protect Your Cats (and Backyard Chickens) From Bird Flu
For cats who enjoy spending time outside, Feah says that leashed walks are a good option. She also encourages cat owners to consider constructing secure catios or enclosed and covered outdoor areas, to allow the animals to still get fresh air…
DOGE’s Cuts at the USDA Could Cause US Grocery Prices to Rise and Invasive Species to Spread
Navigating the workforce cuts has “been absolute chaos,” says Armando Rosario-Lebrón, a vice president of the National Association of Agriculture Employees, which represents workers in Plant Protection and Quarantine program. “These ports were already strained in how they process cargo,…
Undergraduate Upends a 40-Year-Old Data Science Conjecture
In a 1985 paper, the computer scientist Andrew Yao, who would go on to win the A.M. Turing Award, asserted that among hash tables with a specific set of properties, the best way to find an individual element or an…
Wildfires Are One of Hurricane Helene’s Lasting Legacies
Dozens of other fires broke out in Georgia and western North Carolina, which were both hard-hit by Hurricane Helene. In some areas, the fallen trees can act as fuel and promote fire spread in the short and long term, according…
A Tanker Collision Threatens One of the UK’s Most Important Coastlines
THIS ARTICLE IS republished from The Conversation under a Creative Commons license. An oil tanker carrying jet fuel was recently hit by a cargo ship while at anchor 13 miles off the east coast of England. This set off a…
Can’t Wrap Your Head Around Pi? Here’s a Cool Visual to Help
Pi is an irrational number, and like some irrational people it just goes on and on. What is it with this crazy, crucial number?
Covid Vaccines Have Paved the Way for Cancer Vaccines
So the UK government signed two partnerships: one with BioNTech to provide 10,000 patients with access to personalized cancer treatments by 2030, and a 10-year investment with Moderna in an innovation and technology center with capacity to produce up to…
Want to Live Longer, Healthier, and Happier? Then Cultivate Your Social Connections
Social scientist Kasley Killam has always been fascinated by the science of human connection. In college, for instance, she once decided to conduct a personal experiment and perform an act of kindness everyday for 108 days. At the Harvard T.H….
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One Photographer’s Quest to Redefine the Shark
I expected to meet a dreaded “man-eater,” but when I saw it, I realized that it was a defenseless animal, more afraid of me than I was of it. That moment aroused my curiosity, and I decided to learn more…
This Is How Measles Kills
The phenomenon is known as immune amnesia, and it can leave people vulnerable to other infections for several weeks to months. Research has shown that it can take two to three years after a measles infection for protective immunity to…
What’s Really Happening With Elon Musk and Those ‘Stranded’ Astronauts?
As a result, the Crew 9 mission launched in September with just two astronauts. Wilmore and Williams joined that crew for a full six-month increment on the space station. Stich said NASA made that decision based on flight schedules to…
Mississippi Passes Bill Banning Lab-Grown Meat
The Mississippi House of Representatives just passed a bill banning cultivated meat. This makes Mississippi the third state to outlaw meat grown in vats from small samples of animal cells. The Mississippi bill will make it illegal for anyone to…
Nokia Put a 4G Cellular Network on the Moon but Couldn’t Make a Phone Call
This 4G NIB had a shorter than planned shelf life, but even if the mission had been successful, the NIB would still be short-lived. Dow says it wasn’t meant to survive the harsh lunar night, which starts in about 9…
SpaceX’s Latest Starship Explosion Marks Two Consecutive Failures
SpaceX has contracts with NASA worth approximately $4 billion to design and develop a human-rated Moon lander based on the Starship design. The Starship lander is a central piece of NASA’s architecture for the Artemis program, which aims to return…
New Proofs Expand the Limits of What Cannot Be Known
In other words, Hilbert’s 10th problem is undecidable. Mathematicians hoped to follow the same approach to prove the extended, rings-of-integers version of the problem—but they hit a snag. Gumming Up the Works The useful correspondence between Turing machines and Diophantine…
The Biggest US Banks Have All Backed Out of a Commitment to Reach Net Zero
Danielle Fugere, president and chief counsel for the shareholder advocacy nonprofit As You Sow, said disclosure is a prerequisite for holding banks to their climate goals. ”We want to understand what it is they’re doing,” she said. Laws like California’s bring…
The Extreme Weather Conditions That Drove the Carolina Wildfires
THIS ARTICLE IS republished from The Conversation under a Creative Commons license. Scores of wildfires broke out across North Carolina, South Carolina, and Georgia in early March 2025 as strong winds, abnormally dry conditions, and low humidity combined to kindle…
Elon Musk’s Neuralink Files to Trademark ‘Telepathy’
Elon Musk’s brain implant company, Neuralink, has filed applications with the United States Patent and Trademark Office (USPTO) to exclusively own the names Telepathy, Telekinesis, and others for future products. Neuralink, which Musk cofounded in 2016, is developing technology known…
Is It Electric or Magnetic? Depends on Where You Stand
If you took introductory physics, you learned about the “fundamental forces.” It goes something like this: All interactions are the result of one or more of five basic forces: strong nuclear, weak nuclear, gravity, electric, and magnetic. “Doing physics,” then,…
If Ukraine Loses Starlink, Here Are the Best Alternatives
For years, Ukrainian officials have hinted that they are working on Starlink alternatives. But the truth is, there aren’t many options on the table. The one most discussed is OneWeb, a satellite communications network owned by Eutelsat, a satellite operator…
An Overdiagnosis Epidemic Is Harming Patients’ Mental Health
However, what has happened now is that we have a massive increase in autism, and it is not having the downstream effect of making children better. We should be seeing a slightly happier population, but all we’re seeing is worse…
US State Department Kills Global Air Monitoring Program Researchers Say Paid for Itself
The State Department’s air quality program eventually became an example of a smart, efficient diplomacy that boosted American soft power while bringing about real-world changes. “I’ve never seen an initiative of the US government have such an immediate, dramatic impact…
Airplanes of the Future Could Be Fitted With Feather-Like Flaps
These findings could be hugely important for the future of the aviation industry. Climate change is making weather conditions more unpredictable and severe. Over the past four decades, the frequency of extreme turbulence events has increased by 55 percent. To…
How to See the Total Lunar Eclipse and Blood Moon This Month
Astronomy lovers in America will be treated to a great show in this month. In the early morning of March 14, a total lunar eclipse will be visible. During this phenomenon, the moon won’t disappear from view but will appear…
Scientists Just Created a ‘Woolly Mouse’ With Mammoth-Like Fur
De-extinction startup Colossal Biosciences has gene-edited mice to have mammoth-like features, creating what the company calls the Colossal Woolly Mouse. The lab mice, which have been modified to have shaggy fur and golden coats, are a demonstration of the kind…
A Lethal Mystery Illness Spread in Congo. USAID Cuts Have Slowed the Response
Consequences of the United States rapidly slashing foreign aid are reverberating across the world, including in the Democratic Republic of Congo, where an unidentified illness with Ebola-like symptoms has ravaged several villages. This sickness has killed over 60 people and…
The US Solar Power Industry Is Trying to Rebrand as MAGA-Friendly
This story originally appeared on Grist and is part of the Climate Desk collaboration. Seamus Fitzgerald hears a lot of opinions about solar power. As the associate director of real estate at OneEnergy Renewables, a solar energy developer, he approaches…
These Plants Photosynthesize Deep in the Arctic Even When There’s No Light
The original version of this story appeared in Quanta Magazine. Most of life’s engines run on sunlight. Photons filter down through the atmosphere and are eagerly absorbed by light-powered organisms such as plants and algae. Through photosynthesis, the particles of…
Texas Official Warns Against ‘Measles Parties’ Amid Growing Outbreak
A Texas health authority is warning against “measles parties” as the outbreak in West Texas grew to at least 146 cases, with 20 hospitalized and one unvaccinated school-age child dead. The outbreak continues to be mainly in unvaccinated children. In…
Appalachians Are Trapped in a Disastrous Cycle of Flooding and Rebuilding
THIS ARTICLE IS republished from The Conversation under a Creative Commons license. On Valentine’s Day 2025, heavy rains started to fall in parts of rural Appalachia. Over the course of a few days, residents in eastern Kentucky watched as river…
How Do You Test AI Voice Agent Resistance to Adversarial Attacks?
Test AI Voice Agent Resistance to Adversarial Attacks Testing AI voice agent resistance to adversarial attacks is a crucial step in ensuring the security and reliability of these systems. As AI-powered voice agents are increasingly used in customer service, banking,…
Did a Rock Hit Your Windshield, or Did Your Windshield Hit a Rock?
Now the ball behaves more like you would expect. Its horizontal velocity decreases so that it falls behind the original car. But it’s still not going to hit your windshield. With air drag and loss of energy on impact with…
USAID Was Promised Emergency Waivers for Ebola and AIDS. They’re Not Working
“Uganda’s Ebola outbreak occurred on the same day as the foreign aid freeze. Despite that, the waiver for assistance in addressing the outbreak was quickly reinstated,” the State Department told WIRED in a statement. “This is a process. If errors…
Czy Dell produkuje energooszczędne monitory?
Czy Dell produkuje Dell jest jednym z czołowych producentów monitorów komputerowych, oferując szeroką gamę modeli przeznaczonych zarówno do użytku domowego, jak i profesjonalnego. W dobie rosnącej świadomości ekologicznej i konieczności ograniczania zużycia energii coraz więcej użytkowników poszukuje energooszczędnych rozwiązań. Dell,…
The US May Start Vaccinating Chickens Against Bird Flu
In the US, poultry vaccination would likely focus on egg-laying chickens, as opposed to broiler chickens, which are raised for meat. During the current outbreak, more than 77 percent of the domestic poultry affected have been commercial egg-laying hens. In…
DOGE’s Chaos Reaches Antarctica | WIRED
Staffers have already pushed back. “People have been painting waste bins saying “Antarctica is for ALL” in rainbow, people’s email signatures [have] pride additions, [others] keep adding preferred pronouns to emails,” the source says. “There’s a sense of unease on…
A Deadly Unidentified Disease Has Emerged in the DRC
A mysterious disease with Ebola-like symptoms has emerged in the Democratic Republic of the Congo. According to the World Health Organization, the disease was first detected on January 21, and over the past five weeks hundreds have been infected and…
Costa Rica Is Saving Forest Ecosystems by Listening to Them
Monica Retamosa was in the middle of changing the batteries of a tape recorder when she heard a bellbird for the first time. Standing on a forest floor, she looked up into the trees, scanning for the source of its…
Something Unexpected Is Spewing Stars Into the Milky Way
New research from a team at the Harvard Center for Astrophysics suggests that the Large Magellanic Cloud, a dwarf galaxy neighboring the Milky Way, hosts a gravitational structure hundreds of thousands of times the mass of the sun: a potential…
Nearly 100 Measles Cases Have Been Reported in Texas
Ninety cases of measles have been reported in Texas in less than a month, marking the worst outbreak of the disease in the border state in more than 30 years. At least 16 people have been admitted to the hospital….
DOGE Is Inside the National Institutes of Health’s Finance System
Four representatives of Elon Musk’s so-called Department of Government Efficiency (DOGE) task force have been installed at the National Institutes of Health, according to multiple sources. WIRED reporting shows not only which DOGE members are at the NIH but also…
A Jumping Lunar Robot Is About to Explore a Pitch-Black Moon Crater for the First Time
A new age of commercial moon exploration is upon us, and one of the most exciting missions yet is about to launch—one laden with rovers, a drill, and even a hopper spacecraft that will try to “jump” into a permanently…
The Ozempic Shortage Is Over
The US Food and Drug Administration has determined that semaglutide is no longer in shortage, a move that will have implications for patients taking cheaper, compounded versions of the drug. Semaglutide, the active ingredient in Novo Nordisk’s blockbuster diabetes and…
The Saw-Toothed Function That Broke Calculus
The original version of this story appeared in Quanta Magazine. Calculus is a powerful mathematical tool. But for hundreds of years after its invention in the 17th century, it stood on a shaky foundation. Its core concepts were rooted in…
Why Is Chocolate So Expensive Right Now?
This story originally appeared on Grist and is part of the Climate Desk collaboration. Just four West African countries are the foundation of an industry worth more than $100 billion. In the tropical nations of Côte d’Ivoire, Ghana, Cameroon, and…
Microsoft’s New Majorana 1 Processor Could Transform Quantum Computing
THIS ARTICLE IS republished from The Conversation under a Creative Commons license. Researchers at Microsoft have announced the creation of the first “topological qubits” in a device that stores information in an exotic state of matter, in what may be…
This New Drug Could Help End the HIV Epidemic—but US Funding Cuts Are Killing Its Rollout
“It requires a nice healthy demand to ensure that for each of the generic companies, it’s going to be worth their while,” says Bekker. “We are all hoping that governments [across sub-Saharan Africa] are writing the generic product into their…
The Lunar Economy Is Coming
The lunar economy, complete with its own supply chain, may seem like a distant concept, but its foundations are already here. It will center around using the moon’s natural resources to construct scientific infrastructure on its surface, as well as…
USDA Layoffs Derail Projects Benefiting American Farmers
The widespread layoff of Department of Agriculture scientists has thrown vital research into disarray, according to former and current employees of the agency. Scientists hit by the layoffs were working on projects to improve crops, defend against pests and disease,…
Czy mogę zainstalować nowy system operacyjny na komputerze Dell?
nowy system operacyjny na komputerze Dell Możliwość instalacji nowego systemu operacyjnego na komputerze Dell zależy od kilku czynników, takich jak model urządzenia, kompatybilność sprzętowa oraz dostępność odpowiednich sterowników. W większości przypadków użytkownik może bez problemu zainstalować nowy system, zarówno w…
Your Next Pet Could Be a Glowing Rabbit
Humans have been selectively breeding cats and dogs for thousands of years to make more desirable pets. A new startup called the Los Angeles Project aims to speed up that process with genetic engineering to make glow-in-the-dark rabbits, hypoallergenic cats…
National Science Foundation Fires 168 Workers as Federal Purge Continues
The National Science Foundation fired nearly 170 workers in a Zoom call on Tuesday morning as part of the Trump administration’s agenda to reduce the federal workforce. The terminated workers, who were told their employment would end at 5 pm…
Mobulas, a Wonder of the Gulf of California, Are Disappearing
Years ago, on the Gulf of California, Palacios began implanting small acoustic devices in rays that transform them into data messengers. Fishermen, hired for the task, capture the animals and then return them to the water. This strategy is known…
Jaka jest dokładność kolorów monitora Dell?
dokładność kolorów monitora Dell Jeśli jesteś profesjonalistą w branży kreatywnej, połączenie przejrzystości i dokładności kolorów w monitorze Dell U2723QE sprawia, że jest to solidna opcja do pracy lub zabawy. To dość niedrogi monitor z doskonałym panelem, przyzwoitym zestawem funkcji i…
A ‘Teleportation’ Breakthrough for Quantum Computing Is Here
Quantum computing has enormous potential, but it faces a scalability problem. For such a machine to be useful in real terms, multiple quantum processors need to be assembled in a single location. This increases a processor’s power but also its…
This New Algorithm for Sorting Books or Files Is Close to Perfection
The original version of this story appeared in Quanta Magazine. Computer scientists often deal with abstract problems that are hard to comprehend, but an exciting new algorithm matters to anyone who owns books and at least one shelf. The algorithm…
For-Profit Companies Can’t Easily Replace NOAA’s Weather-Forecasting Prowess
Could a private company create forecasts on its own without NOAA data? It would be difficult for one company to provide comprehensive weather data in a reliable way that is also accessible to the entire public. Some companies might be…
Metals Crucial to Clean Energy Are Getting Caught Up in the US–China Trade War
This story originally appeared on Grist and is part of the Climate Desk collaboration. In the summer of 2023, Vasileios Tsianos, the vice president of corporate development at Neo Performance Materials, started getting calls from government officials on both sides…
Your Love Life on Ozempic
When it comes to erectile dysfunction, sleep is often an overlooked factor, says Petar Bajic, director of men’s health at the Cleveland Clinic’s Glickman Urological Institute. Testosterone is made during deep sleep, and low testosterone is sometimes the culprit for…
California’s Problem Now Isn’t Fire—It’s Rain
California’s weather whiplash has been a problem dating back centuries, or more. Fire is a natural and necessary part of California’s diverse ecosystems, but the so-called “expanding bull’s-eye” of urban areas spreading into prime wildfire zones has complicated things. Before…
A Nose-Computer Interface Could Turn Dogs Into Super Detectors
So far the array has been tested in rats, with a version for dogs coming later, Lavella says. In a demo video viewed exclusively by WIRED, a Canaery scientist uses a wand to capture an air sample from four different…
This Is Where Asteroid 2024 YR4 Could Strike
Asteroid 2024 YR4, measuring approximately 40 to 100 meters wide, will pass very close to Earth in December 2032—and might even strike the planet. Because of its size, speed, and the possibility of it making impact, the internet has given…
Revenge of the Covid Conspiracy Theorists
A week after the inauguration, US senator Rand Paul of Kentucky issued a flurry of congressional subpoenas to 14 agencies, including the NIH and HHS. The senator said the continuing investigation was being conducted in order to “critique the process…
How to Get PFAS Out of Drinking Water—and Keep It Out
Stoiber and her colleagues at EWG keep an eye on the consumer-grade water filtration systems available in the US. The organization’s tests have found that common pitcher filters from brands such as Brita and Berkey do not all remove PFAS…
It’s Spring on Mars—and That Means Violently Explosive Geysers and Avalanches
When the frozen carbon dioxide has all melted in the summer, distinctive marks are revealed on the Martian landscape. These are known as “araneidoform terrain,” because they look like spiders when seen from space. Some of these spider-like landforms are…
NIH Funding Cuts Appear to Draw on Heritage Foundation Report That Blasts ‘DEI Staff’
The 2022 report includes an analysis of 82 universities, the indirect cost rate they receive from federal grants, and the indirect cost rate they receive from private funders such as the Sloan Foundation, Gates Foundation, and the Chan Zuckerberg Initiative….
Gutting USAID Will Have a Monumental Effect on Combating Climate Change
This story originally appeared on Grist and is part of the Climate Desk collaboration. As part of a broad effort to bypass Congress and unilaterally cut government spending, Donald Trump’s administration has all but shut down operations at the US…
Life on Earth Depends on Networks of Ocean Bacteria
The original version of this story appeared in Quanta Magazine. Prochlorococcus bacteria are so small that you’d have to line up around a thousand of them to match the thickness of a human thumbnail. The ocean seethes with them: The…
The USAID Shutdown Puts Millions of African Lives at Risk
Last year alone, the US contributed $3.7 billion in humanitarian aid to sub-Saharan Africa. At least 73 percent of this was allocated to health programs, including HIV treatment and prevention. For those living with HIV, much of the benefit of…
Why People Act So Weirdly at Airports
THIS ARTICLE IS republished from The Conversation under a Creative Commons license. Many of us have witnessed unusual and even antisocial behavior at an airport or on a flight. These may range from benign acts such as sleeping on the…
How Morocco Became the Meteorite Hunting Capital of the World
At the world’s most renowned meteorite show, in Ensisheim in France, I noticed there were many dealers from Morocco. Unlike most of the Europeans and Americans—who had display cases and labels and books—the Moroccan stalls were minimalistic. Perhaps a white…
Early Detection Tools Help but They Can’t Stop Every Wildfire
A little after 6:25 am on November 8, 2018, a 911 dispatcher received the first report of a fire near the Poe Dam in northern California. Nineteen minutes later firefighters caught sight of what would become known as the Camp…
Donald Trump’s NIH Pick Just Launched a Controversial Scientific Journal
Carl Bergstrom, a theoretical and evolutionary biologist, believes the journal is part of an ongoing effort to cast doubt around established scientific consensus. “If you can create the illusion that there is not a predominance of opinion that says, vaccines…
‘Dengue Boy’ Is the Weird, Fleshy Novel You Need Right Now
Evolution, ethnography, epidemics—this is the soup from which Dengue Boy, a brilliantly strange new novel by the Argentine author Michel Nieva, emerges. The eponymous Dengue Boy is a mosquito–human hybrid who might be an experiment, a genetic mutant, or the…
NOAA Employees Told to Pause Work With ‘Foreign Nationals’
A number of federal employees at the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration (NOAA), the US federal agency that monitors and models the oceans and atmosphere for the purpose of predicting changes in climate and weather, have received orders to temporarily…
This DOGE Engineer Has Access to the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration
An engineer named Nikhil Rajpal is representing Elon Musk’s so-called Department of Government Efficiency (DOGE) task force at the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration (NOAA), according to multiple sources. Government records reviewed by WIRED show that Rajpal has working email…
These Robots Are Recovering Dumped Explosives From the Baltic Sea
When I spoke with Guldin in December, after the first stage of the pilot had finished, he sketched a rough vision of what this work could look like in the not-too-distant future. Robotic crawlers equipped with cameras, powerful lights, sonar,…
Why Computer Scientists Need Magic 8 Ball-Like Oracles
The original version of this story appeared in Quanta Magazine. Pose a question to a Magic 8 Ball, and it’ll answer yes, no, or something annoyingly indecisive. We think of it as a kid’s toy, but theoretical computer scientists employ…
The Federal Funding Freeze Will Cause Lasting Damage to Medical Research
Science is, in its very nature, collaborative. Many consortiums and alliances within scientific fields cross borders and language barriers. Some labs may be able to find additional funding from alternative sources such as the European Union. But it is unlikely…
Moon or Mars? The US Might Face a Tough Choice for Future Missions
The optimal fuel route for Mars involves arriving when the two planets are roughly on opposite sides of the sun. This launch window repeats every 18 months, and the journey time of nine months means any problems onboard will need…
RFK Jr.’s Organic Crusade Has Sparked a Weird Political Realignment
It also puts him on a collision course with people who worry that a switch to organic crops would make it much harder for the US to achieve its climate goals. Organic crops tend to produce less yield per acre,…
RFK Jr.’s Senate Testimony Is Haunted by His Track Record
But Kennedy’s prior record of discrediting vaccines and his connection to the anti-vaccine movement was a major sticking point for Democrats and a handful of Republicans. Democratic Senator Elizabeth Warren of Massachusetts suggested Wednesday that Kennedy could undercut vaccines by…
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This Blood Vessel Was Grown in a Lab With Real Human Cells
Each year, about 185,000 people in the United States undergo amputation. Nearly half of those are due to injured blood vessels cutting off circulation to a limb. Surgeons can transplant an intact vein from somewhere else in a patient’s body…
Washington, DC, Plane Crash: Everything We Know So Far
Investigators are scrambling to figure out why a military helicopter and a passenger airplane collided and plunged into the Potomac River in Washington, DC, late Wednesday, the first major US air crash in 16 years. From the little that’s known,…
Trump’s Plan for Elon Musk to Bring the ‘Stranded’ Astronauts Home ASAP Is a Headache for NASA
For reasons that were not immediately clear, SpaceX founder Elon Musk took to his social media site X on Tuesday evening to make a perplexing space-based pronouncement. “The @POTUS has asked @SpaceX to bring home the 2 astronauts stranded on…
Federal Spending Freeze Threatens Ecosystems and Public Safety
Environmental advocates warned that the order could have immediate and dire consequences for Americans if it takes effect. “From the White House, this is the reckless stroke of a pen,” said Manish Bapna, president of the Natural Resources Defense Council,…
Science Has Spun Spider-Man’s Web-Slinging Into Reality
Slowly but surely, we are making good on the gadgets we imagined, as kids, that the future would hold. Penny Brown’s video watch from Inspector Gadget? Check. The Starfleet tricoder from Star Trek? Almost there. But web-shooting? Web-slinging? That wasn’t…
The Cause of the LA Fires Might Never Be Known—but AI Is Hunting for Clues
Karen Short, a research ecologist with the Forest Service who contributed to the study and maintains a historical database of national wildfire reports, says understanding why they start is essential for preventing them and educating the public. Strategic prevention appears…
Scientists Recreate the Conditions That Sparked Complex Life
The original version of this story appeared in Quanta Magazine. Far from being solo operators, most single-celled microbes are in complex relationships. In the ocean, the soil, and your gut, they might battle and eat each other, exchange DNA, compete…
The Less People Know About AI, the More They Like It
THIS ARTICLE IS republished from The Conversation under a Creative Commons license. The rapid spread of artificial intelligence has people wondering: Who’s most likely to embrace AI in their daily lives? Many assume it’s the tech-savvy—those who understand how AI…
5 Physics Equations Everyone Should Know
All the tech we rely on, from cars to smartphones, was engineered using physics. You don’t need to know the science to use these things. But a well-rounded human should understand at least some of the key concepts—along with some…
This Man Eats So Much Butter, Cheese, and Beef That Cholesterol Oozes From His Skin
What could go wrong with eating an extremely high-fat diet of beef, cheese, and sticks of butter? Well, for one thing, your cholesterol levels could reach such stratospheric levels that lipids start oozing from your blood vessels, forming yellowish nodules…
How Invasive Plants Are Fueling California’s Wildfire Crisis
Fire has always shaped the landscape in California. But today it burns hotter, more frequently, and spreads farther than ever before—a shift driven by human development, climate change, and the prevalence of invasive species, which are non-native plants that have…
This Company Wants to Build a Space Station That Has Artificial Gravity
California-based Vast Space has big ambitions. The company is aiming to launch a commercial space station, the Haven-2, into low Earth orbit by 2028, which would allow astronauts to stay in space after the decommissioning of the International Space Station…
The US Has Bird Flu Vaccines. Here’s Why You Can’t Get One
As avian influenza rages through birds and dairy cattle across the United States, Georgia has become the latest state to detect the virus in a commercial poultry flock, and on Friday, it halted all poultry sales to mitigate further spread…
Trump’s Plan to Leave the WHO Is a Health Disaster
In the summer of 2020, 15 recognized leaders in US public health gathered to author an article in The Lancet—one of the world’s most eminent medical journals—decrying Donald Trump’s intention to withdraw the US from the World Health Organization, a…
Trump’s Day One Executive Orders Will Worsen Climate Crisis
On his first day in office, President Trump has signed a slew of executive orders that will set the United States on a radically different environmental path from the Biden administration. The executive orders and memoranda take the first steps…
Why It’s So Confusing to Determine Air Quality in Los Angeles Right Now
AirNow’s fire map includes data from PurpleAir sensors (represented by small circles on the map), and Watch Duty, a nonprofit app for tracking fires, also displays PurpleAir data. But likely due to different calculations and processing delays, the air quality…
There’s a New Way to Count Prime Numbers
But that wasn’t obvious. They’d have to analyze a special set of functions, called Type I and Type II sums, for each version of their problem, then show that the sums were equivalent no matter which constraint they used. Only…
Influencers Are Hawking Wellness Products in Response to the LA Fires
This story originally appeared on Mother Jones and is part of the Climate Desk collaboration. As wildfires continue to burn all around Los Angeles, influencers have emerged to promote sales of their own, highly specific solutions to the crisis. With…
Why Dumping Seawater on Blazes Isn’t the Answer to California’s Wildfire Problem
Our coastal forest showed little effect from the first 10-hour exposure to salty water in June 2022 and grew normally for the rest of the year. We increased the exposure to 20 hours in June 2023, and the forest still…
Are Buried Via Holes Used in High-Speed PCB Designs?
Buried Via Holes Used in High-Speed PCB Designs Vias are barrel-shaped conductive holes on a printed circuit board (PCB). They connect the inner layers of the PCB and act as transmission lines for electrical signals. However, at high frequencies, vias…
See 6 Planets Align on January 21
Observing the planets is one of the most awe-inspiring ways to witness the magic of the night sky—and there’s no better way to view them than in a planetary alignment. This is where multiple planets line up next to each…
Panasonic Megtron 6 Compares to Traditional FR4 Materials
Panasonic Megtron 6 Compares to Traditional When designing high-speed PCBs, it’s important to choose the right laminate material. The wrong choice can significantly impact performance and efficiency, making it important to know your options. Two of the most popular choices…
Can You Get Rich Using a Raspberry Pi to Mine Cryptocurrency?
After the first 20 minutes, the water temperature seemed to increase at a fairly constant rate of 0.0006 degrees Celsius per second. This increase in temperature means there is an increase in thermal energy, which we can calculate as: Here…
An Entire Book Was Written in DNA—and You Can Buy It for $60
As the rate of humanity’s data creation increases exponentially with the rise of AI, scientists have been interested in DNA as a way to store digital information. After all, DNA is nature’s way of storing data. It encodes genetic information…
Check Out These Extraordinary New Images of Mercury
At 06:59 Central European time time on January 8, the BepiColombo spacecraft successfully performed its sixth flyby of Mercury, the innermost planet in the solar system. This was a “gravity assist maneuver,” a move that used Mercury’s gravitational pull to…
The Brightest Comet of 2025 Is Coming. Here’s How You Can See It Shine
Hot on the tail of the Quadrantids meteor shower, another spectacle in the sky is about to arrive: comet Atlas C/2024 G3, which will reach perihelion—the point of its orbit closest to the sun—on January 13. On the same day,…
Los Angeles Needs to Fireproof Communities, Not Just Houses
The planners and residents working to rebuild Los Angeles won’t be starting from a blank slate, however. Existing roads, infrastructure, and plots of lands will all shape how the city is rebuilt. Some residents may want to immediately rebuild on…
GPS Is Vulnerable to Attack. Magnetic Navigation Can Help
Far above your head, constellations of satellites are working constantly to provide the positioning, navigation, and timing systems that quietly run modern life. Known as the global navigation satellite system, or GNSS, signals from these satellites provide the foundation for…
You Have NASA to Thank for Wireless Headphones and Vacuum Cleaners
Many people see space exploration as a waste of resources. Of course, there is the counterargument that scientific discoveries have intrinsic cultural value, that space-related initiatives often boost international cooperation, or that the space sector has crucial technological and economic…
The King of Ozempic Is Scared as Hell
Now that Novo Nordisk is the world’s weight-loss juggernaut, will it have to betray its first patients—type 1 diabetics?
The Los Angeles Wildfires Have Created Another Problem—Unsafe Drinking Water
Depressurization, the other big contributor to contamination, occurs when firefighting efforts draw massive amounts of water from the system in a short period. “A water line that connects to a house can generally put out about 9 gallons per minute,”…
Los Angeles Will Remain at High Risk of Fire Into Next Week
Devastating wildfires continued to burn throughout the Los Angeles metro area on Friday, extending mandatory evacuations and school closures across the region. Next week promises little chance of relief; conditions will remain favorable for both the growth of existing wildfires…
These Maps Show Just How Dry Southern California Is Right Now
THIS ARTICLE IS republished from The Conversation under a Creative Commons license. Dry conditions across Southern California in early January 2025 set the stage for a series of deadly wind-driven wildfires that burned thousands of homes and other structures in…
New Superconductive Materials Have Just Been Discovered
The original version of this story appeared in Quanta Magazine. In 2024, superconductivity—the flow of electric current with zero resistance—was discovered in three distinct materials. Two instances stretch the textbook understanding of the phenomenon. The third shreds it completely. “It’s…
A Glowing Metal Ring Crashed to Earth. No One Knows Where It Came From
It has been more than a week since reports first emerged about a “glowing ring of metal” that fell from the sky and crashed near a remote village in Kenya. According to the Kenya Space Agency, the object weighed 1,100…
How Wildfire Smoke Affects Your Health—and How You Can Protect Yourself
As a series of massive fires continues to blaze through the Los Angeles area, blanketing neighborhoods with smoke and forcing thousands of people to evacuate their homes, air quality remains unhealthy throughout many parts of the county. Wildfire smoke is…
Even Trump Can’t Stop America’s Green Transition, Says Biden’s Top Climate Adviser
The second is whether we’re continuing to deal more and more people into the transformation. We’ve got over 100,000 farmers and ranchers that are now taking on climate-smart agricultural practices. Will that climate action, that distributed climate action, continue to…
The Tide Could Finally Be Turning Against the LA Fires
“With those winds being very calm this morning, I believe we can actually make some progress, turn a corner, and start to build some containment on these fires,” Brent Pascua, a Cal Fire battalion chief, told The Today Show on…
The Los Angeles Fires Will Put California’s New Insurance Rules to the Test
Lloyd and his wife later bought another home in Hidden Valley Lake, a town that has taken ambitious steps to reduce flammable vegetation, but their insurance premium is still more than $4,500 a year, more than triple what it was…
California’s Wildfires Show No Signs of Slowing Down
On Tuesday, Santa Ana winds swept seaward through Southern California, scattering embers and then fanning flames of a growing wildfire. By nighttime, residents received urgent text alerts warning of potential 100 mph gusts—a terrifying escalation that transformed a precarious situation…
چگونه از طریق واتس اپ وب به یک گروه بپیوندیم؟
چگونه از طریق واتس اپ برنامه واتس اپ وب به شما امکان می دهد از اتصال اینترنت تلفن خود برای ارسال پیام با مخاطبین روی دسکتاپ استفاده کنید. این برای همه گوشیهای هوشمندی که از آخرین نسخه واتساپ پشتیبانی میکنند،…
How to Ensure Proper Component Placement in Custom PCBs
Ensure Proper Component Placement in Custom PCBs During the PCB design process, good component placement is key to ensuring a successful project. This is because it helps to minimize manufacturing issues down the road, saving you time and money. The…
NASA Wants to Explore the Icy Moons of Jupiter and Saturn With Autonomous Robots
Europa’s orbit is an ellipse, and the satellite’s shape is affected by Jupiter’s gravity, becoming deformed when it passes closer to Jupiter. This change in shape creates friction inside Europa, generating enormous amounts of heat in a mechanism known as…
The First US Bird Flu Death Is a Stark Warning
Nuzzo says it’s very possible that the Louisiana patient’s preexisting health conditions contributed to the severity of their illness, but also points to the case of a teenager in Canada who was hospitalized with bird flu in November. The 13-year-old…
Human Metapneumovirus Is Finally Being Taken Seriously
Like many other respiratory viruses, Williams says that hMPV tends to impact those with chronic lung diseases or existing conditions such as asthma and cancer. But despite this, he has found that many doctors are unaware that it’s a threat,…
Wildfire Smoke Is Even More Dangerous Than Anyone Knew
This story originally appeared on High Country News and is part of the Climate Desk collaboration. The more researchers learn about wildfire smoke, the more worrisome the picture gets. Smoke contains microscopic particles known as PM 2.5 because the PM (particulate matter)…
Take Part in Veganuary and You Might See Yourself Differently
THIS ARTICLE IS republished from The Conversation under a Creative Commons license. Humans have long wrestled with their conscience about killing and eating animals. The “meat paradox” (the conflict between people’s preference for meat and their concern for animals) may…
The Role of Automated Tools in Producing Quick Turn Printed Circuit Boards
Automated Tools in Producing Quick Turn Printed Circuit Boards In a world where technology moves at a breakneck pace, quick turn printed circuit board (PCB) manufacturing is a game-changer. Unlike traditional production methods, quick turn fabrication can shorten PCB turnaround…
Could Humans Have a Brain Microbiome?
The human gut microbiome plays a critical role in the body, communicating with the brain and maintaining the immune system through the gut-brain axis. So it isn’t totally far-fetched to suggest that microbes could play an even larger role in…
It’s Time for Parents to Step Up in the Fight for Clean Air
In 1981, less than a month after evidence of global warming was first reported on its front page, the The New York Times asked B. F. Skinner about the fate of humanity. The famous psychologist had recently argued that a…
Elon Musk Calls Out NASA’s Moon Ambitions: ‘We’re Going Straight to Mars’
Although SpaceX founder Elon Musk is known for outspokenness and controversial comments on his social media site X, he has been relatively restrained when it comes to US space policy in recent years. For example, he has rarely criticized NASA…
Transforming the Moon Into Humanity’s First Space Hub
This year will mark a turning point in humanity’s relationship with the moon, as we begin to lay the foundations for a permanent presence on its surface, paving the way for our natural satellite to become an industrial hub—one that…
Editors at Science Journal Resign En Masse Over Bad Use of AI, High Fees
Over the holiday weekend, all but one member of the editorial board of Elsevier’s Journal of Human Evolution (JHE) resigned “with heartfelt sadness and great regret,” according to Retraction Watch, which helpfully provided an online PDF of the editors’ full…
How to Watch the Spectacular Quadrantids Meteor Shower Tonight
The Orionids typically yield about 20 to 25 meteors per hour during their peak and are known for being particularly bright—many of the Orionids are fireball meteors. Like the Eta Aquariids, the Orionids are also debris left behind by Halley’s…
24 Things That Made the World a Better Place in 2024
Paris’s Notre Dame Cathedral Reopened It’s been a tumultuous year in French politics, but there was at least some good news at the end of 2024: After being badly damaged by a fire in its roof-space in 2019, Notre Dame…
How Do You Live a Happier Life? Notice What Was There All Along
As 2024 comes to a close, people look back to assess their life and contemplate what can be done in 2025 to achieve a more fulfilling existence. In doing so, you may notice a conundrum: Why is it that you…
Viewers of Quantum Events Are Also Subject to Uncertainty
It gets better. What if B is also anchored to a quantum object that’s in a superposition of two locations? Then A’s quantum state is now smeared out in two different ways, depending on the possible locations of B. Because…
Healthier Cities Will Require a Strong Dose of Nature
If current global trends are correct, in 2025, around 41 million people will die from noncommunicable diseases (NCDs)—which include cancer, heart disease, diabetes, chronic respiratory illness, and severe mental illness—representing around 74 percent of all deaths globally. Despite major advances…
There’s Still Time to Get Ahead of the Next Global Pandemic
Public health is under pressure. Across health care systems around the world, funding is declining, exhausted professionals are leaving the field, and in the US state legislatures are pulling back needed legal authorities. At the same time, outbreaks of diseases…
How Does a Movie Projector Show the Color Black?
Courtesy of Rhett Allain But what about the colors from a video projector? It essentially does the same thing. However, instead of a bunch of tiny RGB lights, it projects RGB colors to different locations on the screen. Projecting the…
Beyond Meat Says Being Attacked Has Just Made It Stronger
Do you think they’re still doing a good job? I do. I think they’ve changed the narrative. I think they’ve taken something that was a threat to them and they’ve characterized it in a way that’s negative. And I think…
Why Can’t You Switch Seats in an Empty Airplane?
It’s the last flight of the day and the plane is pretty empty. So you’re thinking, maaaybe you’ll just move up a few rows, where there’s a nice window seat with a view that’s not obstructed by the wing. Not…
Give Your Social Health a Decent Workout
Next year will mark a turning point when people worldwide finally recognize that their health is not only physical and mental, but also social. Social health focuses on relationships; it is the dimension of your overall health and wellbeing that…
How NASA Might Change Under Donald Trump
Although the details remain in flux, the transition team reviewing NASA and its activities has begun to draft potential executive orders for changes to space policy under the Trump Administration. Sources familiar with the five people on the team, who…
To Improve Your Gut Microbiome, Spend More Time in Nature
Microbes in our gut can have a profound impact on our health, but research is showing that those surrounding us in our environment—what’s known as the natural environmental microbiome—can have a big impact too. This suggests that we should all…