Tag: Quantum Stuff

Rachel Feltman: For Scientific American’s Science Quickly, I’m Rachel Feltman. The World Health Organization estimates that infertility impacts one in six adults globally. But when it comes to addressing infertility, male partners are often left out of the equation. Some studies suggest that in 18 to 27 percent of cases where a heterosexual couple seeks… Continue reading Testing Sperm Health with a Mechanical Engineering Twist

New Mexico’s Plains of San Agustin are otherworldly: Silence, sand and sharp plants reign on the valley floor. Knobbly volcanic rock rises above. Pronghorns’ legs and jackrabbits’ ears break up the landscape. And so, too, does one of the world’s largest telescopes. The plains house the aptly named Very Large Array (VLA)—a radio telescope made… Continue reading Futuristic Radio Telescope Will Spot Baby Solar Systems—If It’s Funded

CLIMATEWIRE | It was a simple enough question. Is climate change an urgent threat to the planet? To most climate scientists, the answer is straightforward: Yes, rapid warming from fossil fuel burning is pushing Earth toward dangerous tipping points. On supporting science journalism If you’re enjoying this article, consider supporting our award-winning journalism by subscribing.… Continue reading Elon Musk’s Grok Chatbot Has Started Reciting Climate Denial Talking Points

The Chinese AI company DeepSeek released a chatbot earlier this year called R1, which drew a huge amount of attention. Most of it focused on the fact that a relatively small and unknown company said it had built a chatbot that rivaled the performance of those from the world’s most famous AI companies, but using… Continue reading How Distillation Makes AI Models Smaller and Cheaper

As the creator of Veritasium, a science education YouTube channel with 18 million subscribers, Derek Muller has spent the past 15 years exploring a counterintuitive vision for learning: Clarity numbs the mind, but confusion can crack it open. His audience has grown because of how he challenges common misconceptions about the laws of nature, and… Continue reading YouTube Science Star Derek Muller Confronts PFAS “Forever Chemicals”—In His Own Blood

SpaceX’s Ninth Starship Test Flight Delivers Mixed Results The largest, most powerful launch vehicle ever built is meant to be a key part of SpaceX’s plans to send humans to Mars—and NASA’s plans to return astronauts to the moon, too By Gayoung Lee edited by Lee Billings The SpaceX Starship rocket launches from Starbase, Tex.,… Continue reading Latest Starship Test Flight Suggests SpaceX Is Short on Time

If the AI’s insights had been available when LIGO was being built, “we would have had something like 10 or 15% better LIGO sensitivity all along,” he said. In a world of sub-proton precision, 10 to 15% is enormous. “LIGO is this huge thing that thousands of people have been thinking about deeply for 40… Continue reading AI Comes Up with Bizarre Physics Experiments. But They Work.

Astronomers Discover Mysterious Object Bursting with X-Rays A celestial object some 15,000 light-years away is emitting bright flashes of radio and X-rays that scientists are struggling to explain By Robert Lea & SPACE.com An X-ray, infrared and radio view of the sky surrounding ASKAP J1832−0911 (circled) using combined light from multiple telescopes. X-ray: NASA/CXC/ICRAR, Curtin Univ.,… Continue reading Astronomers Discover Mysterious Object Bursting with X-Rays

In the early 1980s, then real estate developer Donald Trump famously tried to evict a group of New York City residents from a rent-controlled building that he wanted to replace with a luxury high-rise. The tenants eventually beat back the plan. Today President Trump is having more luck with NASA’s Goddard Institute for Space Studies… Continue reading Trump Administration Shutters New York City–Based NASA Institute

The advantage of Rogers’ method was that you didn’t have to start with a particularly efficient lattice to get an efficient sphere packing. You just had to choose the right ellipsoid. But this introduced a new complication. Unlike a sphere, which is completely defined by a single number — its radius — an ellipsoid is… Continue reading New Sphere-Packing Record Stems From an Unexpected Source