At this point, we knew that solar magnetism was behaving in ways we weren’t expecting. SOHO data had revealed that globally, the solar magnetic field was far more variable than we had imagined. And the particles comprising the solar wind, as measured near Earth, had peculiar compositional patterns that didn’t make sense if the wind… Continue reading How a NASA Probe Solved a Scorching Solar Mystery
The Lie of the Century: The Origin of COVID-19
Four years after the outbreak of the COVID-19 pandemic in the Chinese city of Wuhan, what do we know about the origin of the SARSCOV2 virus? We were presented at the outset with two competing theories: natural-origin spillover from animals to humans, and accidental lab leak. And at the outset, a cadre of elite scientists… Continue reading The Lie of the Century: The Origin of COVID-19
To Pack Spheres Tightly, Mathematicians Throw Them at Random
Mathematicians like to generalize concepts into higher dimensions. Sometimes this is easy. If you want to efficiently pack squares in two dimensions, you arrange them like a checkerboard. To squeeze together three-dimensional cubes, you stack them like moving boxes. Mathematicians can easily extend these arrangements, packing cubes in higher-dimensional space to perfectly fill it. Packing… Continue reading To Pack Spheres Tightly, Mathematicians Throw Them at Random
What 10 Years of U.S. Meddling in Ukraine Have Wrought (Spoiler Alert: Not Democracy)
Above, a map of Ukraine in green, with territory occupied or annexed by Russia in light green to the right — i.e., the eastern Donbas and the Crimean peninsula in the southeast. President Biden vows a fight for democracy, but recent history calls that into question. By Aaron Maté, RealClearInvestigationsApril 30, 2024 In successfully lobbying… Continue reading What 10 Years of U.S. Meddling in Ukraine Have Wrought (Spoiler Alert: Not Democracy)
Cryptography Tricks Make a Hard Problem a Little Easier
What’s the best way to solve hard problems? That’s the question at the heart of a subfield of computer science called computational complexity theory. It’s a hard question to answer, but flip it around and it becomes easier. The worst approach is almost always trial and error, which involves plugging in possible solutions until one… Continue reading Cryptography Tricks Make a Hard Problem a Little Easier
Tornadoes, Floods and Hurricanes Loom, but the Government Is Running Out of Money to Help
Tornadoes, Floods and Hurricanes Loom, but the Government Is Running Out of Money to Help The Federal Emergency Management Agency’s disaster response fund could run out this summer. It dealt with a similar situation last year, which led to a slowdown in rebuilding projects By Thomas Frank & E&E News A destroyed house is seen… Continue reading Tornadoes, Floods and Hurricanes Loom, but the Government Is Running Out of Money to Help
Biden’s Abortion Obsession Reveals Lopsided Priorities
As his list of catastrophic failures mount, including an unprecedented border crisis, growing economic disparities, soaring housing costs, debt and inflation, President Biden has chosen as his singular focus the promise to leverage the full force of the government to shove his extreme abortion goals down Americans’ throats. Actions taken in the last week provide just… Continue reading Biden’s Abortion Obsession Reveals Lopsided Priorities
Insects and Other Animals Have Consciousness, Experts Declare
The upshot, Andrews said, is that “we might not need nearly as much equipment as we thought we did” to achieve consciousness. She noted, for example, that even a cerebral cortex — the outer layer of the mammalian brain, which is believed to play a role in attention, perception, memory and other key aspects of… Continue reading Insects and Other Animals Have Consciousness, Experts Declare
Continuing a Tradition of Civics Excellence
With new institutes emerging at colleges and universities in Florida, Ohio, Utah, Tennessee, North Carolina, Texas, and elsewhere, civics education may be seeing a rebirth. “We need these civics centers at every institution of higher education in America,” says political theory professor Richard Avramenko. Avramenko, a Jack Miller Center faculty fellow, will be taking over… Continue reading Continuing a Tradition of Civics Excellence
Mathematicians Marvel at ‘Crazy’ Cuts Through Four Dimensions
Back in the 1990s, Mrowka and Kronheimer investigated what happens when you excise a two-dimensional surface from a four-dimensional manifold. If the manifold itself is simply connected, what conditions must surfaces meet to guarantee that their complements must also be simply connected? Kronheimer and Mrowka knew that some kinds of surfaces could have complements that… Continue reading Mathematicians Marvel at ‘Crazy’ Cuts Through Four Dimensions