By 2100, we could be heading towards a loss of life in our oceans that rivals some of the largest extinction events in Earth’s history – if we don’t continue to tackle the climate catastrophe, new modeling warns. But “it is not too late to enact the reductions in greenhouse gas emissions needed to
Month: April 2022
Tiny parasites could be hitchhiking on microplastics floating in the ocean and then hopping to ocean life. Under laboratory conditions, researchers have shown three common germs – Toxoplasma gondii, Giardia, and Cryptosporidium – are more than capable of adhering to synthetic microbeads and microfibers. This may not be happening in the real world, but
The definition of a second, the most fundamental unit of time in our current measurement system, hasn’t been updated in more than 70 years (give or take some billionths of a second). But in the next decade or so, that could change: Ultraprecise atomic optical clocks that rely on visible light are on track to set
The world of particle physics has been on shaky ground lately. For years, researchers have been scrutinizing particles to make sure that the rules we use to explain the Universe hold up – with troublingly inconsistent results. To add to the endeavor, physicists using the Large Hadron Collider (LHC) have now measured the heaviest
By exchanging a classical material for one with unique quantum properties, scientists have made a superconducting circuit that’s capable of feats long thought to be impossible. The discovery, made by researchers from Germany, the Netherlands, and the US, overturns a century of thought on the nature of superconducting circuits, and how their currents can
Europe’s Large Hadron Collider has started up its proton beams again at unprecedented energy levels after going through a three-year shutdown for maintenance and upgrades. It only took a couple of days of tweaking for the pilot streams of protons to reach a record energy level of 6.8 tera electronvolts, or TeV. That exceeds the
Have you ever made a mistake that you wish you could undo? Correcting past mistakes is one of the reasons we find the concept of time travel so fascinating. As often portrayed in science fiction, with a time machine, nothing is permanent anymore – you can always go back and change it. But is time
Does time exist? The answer to this question may seem obvious: Of course it does! Just look at a calendar or a clock. But developments in physics suggest the non-existence of time is an open possibility, and one that we should take seriously. How can that be, and what would it mean? It’ll take
The world’s largest particle collider is getting ready to smash atoms harder than ever before. Following a three-year break of scheduled maintenance, upgrades, and pandemic delays, the Large Hadron Collider (LHC) is preparing to power up for its third, and most powerful yet, experimental period. If all initial tests and checks starting this month go well,
Each year on April 22 Google’s homepage marks the occasion of Earth Day. Most of the time, these interactive logos are a celebration of our planet and its ecosystems, but this year, after a particularly devastating international climate report, the Google Doodle has taken a stark turn. In 2018, the Earth Day doodle featured
They help us put food on our tables through pollination and nutrient recycling. They break down and dispose of organic waste, and are food for many animals. As renowned ecologist E.O. Wilson put it, “insects are the little things that run the world”. At least 87 of humanity’s major crops depend on them, but it’s
Clouds that form in the frosty air above Antarctica are different in the way that water and ice interact inside them, a new study reveals – and that in turn changes how much sunlight they reflect back into space, which is important for climate change models. Through a combination of modeling, satellite imagery and
There’s never been a house call quite like this. In a first for telepresence communication, a NASA flight surgeon was ‘holoported’ to the International Space Station (ISS), appearing and conversing as a virtual presence in real time, hundreds of miles above the surface of Earth. If it sounds like Star Trek, you’re not too
Scientists are hopeful that solid-state thermophotovoltaic (TPV) cells with no moving parts can achieve higher efficiencies at higher temperatures when it comes to converting heat into electricity – and lead the way to power grids based entirely on renewables. One such TPV cell has now hit a new world record of 40 percent efficiency,
One of the ways we can fully realize the potential of quantum computers is by basing them on both light and matter – this way, information can be stored and processed, but also travel at the speed of light. Scientists have just taken a step closer to this goal, by successfully producing the largest
Despite accounting for only a small percentage of the world’s population, rich nations have a long history of over-extracting raw materials from the planet, and a new study highlights just how excessive and harmful this pattern of plunder really is. In an analysis looking back over almost 50 years of natural resource extraction across
After a decade of meticulous measurements, scientists announced Thursday that a fundamental particle – the W boson – has a significantly greater mass than theorized, shaking the foundations of our understanding of how the Universe works. Those foundations are grounded by the Standard Model of particle physics, which is the best theory scientists have
Nearly all of us have wished to be a fly on the wall during a particularly juicy conversation, or disappear into the background after an embarrassing gaffe. It’s not surprising that invisibility cloaks are a mainstay of fantasy fiction. In recent years, there have been many attempts to devise some sort of invisibility tech.
Scientists at a laboratory in England have shattered the record for the amount of energy produced during a controlled, sustained fusion reaction. The production of 59 megajoules of energy over five seconds at the Joint European Torus – or JET – experiment in England has been called “a breakthrough” by some news outlets and caused
Humanity has less than three years to halt the rise of planet-warming carbon emissions and less than a decade to slash them by nearly half, UN climate experts said Monday, warning the world faced a last-gasp race to ensure a “livable future”. That daunting task is still – only just – possible, but current policies are
Most people have heard of a flash flood. ‘Flash droughts’, on the other hand, aren’t as familiar. Sadly, that may be about to change, as anomalous, sudden drought episodes are speeding up under the warmer conditions of climate change. A new analysis of flash droughts finds that droughts coming on suddenly seem to be
We know that global warming affects ocean currents in a variety of ways, but questions remain about exactly how this relationship works. A new study attempts to answer some of those questions. Scientists pored over data stretching back 66 million years over 293 sites, looking at gaps in sedimentary layers, known as hiatuses, to
National climate plans often fail to prioritize food systems, and a new report from the Global Alliance for the Future of Food warns that’s a lost opportunity. If the world can change the way it produces, distributes, consumes, and disposes of food, estimates show we can reduce greenhouse gas emissions by at least 10.3 billion