Your Daily Science News Source from Around the Globe
A tiny vibrating crystal weighing little more than a grain of sand has become the heaviest object ever to be recorded in a superposition of locations. Physicists at the Swiss…
I was part of a team that recently discovered human-made pollutants in one of the deepest and most remote places on Earth – the Atacama Trench, which goes down to…
By teaching a machine to learn a few quantum tricks, physicists have uncovered a strange new phase of hydrogen in solid form. While it’s purely theoretical for now, the discovery…
Sourcing human tissue samples for biological investigations isn’t always easy. While they are ethically obtained through organ donation or from tissue that’s removed during surgical procedures, scientists are finding them…
SpaceX just launched the most powerful rocket the world has ever seen – so powerful that it’s a problem. The 40-story Starship mega-rocket flew toward space for the first time…
If you think your morning commute is a logjam, you should see the Mackenzie River Delta in Nunavut, Canada. Unlike logjams of idling trucks, sedans, and SUVs, this literal logjam…
Slowly and unsurely, humanity is weaning itself off coal. That’s good because coal is the most carbon-intensive fossil fuel and a major driver of human-induced climate change. But it’s not…
Over the past year or so, generative AI models such as ChatGPT and DALL-E have made it possible to produce vast quantities of apparently human-like, high-quality creative content from a…
Making solar cells more efficient is an obvious win for green energy. It means more electricity from the same number of panels and the same amount of sunlight – and…
Ambitious targets intended to slam the brakes on our current mass extinction may already be slipping out of reach barely a year after they were established, new research suggests. Data…
Artificial intelligence has changed form in recent years. What started in the public eye as a burgeoning field with promising (yet largely benign) applications, has snowballed into a more than…
Predicted over a century ago as monstrous concentrations of mass that torture the fabric of the Universe into traps of light and information, black holes are now established as objects…
Researchers have just calculated the value society gets from a common but hidden underwater resource, and found it’s way higher than we ever expected. Kelp forests have long done so…
The sense of how to shift our position on a playground swing tends to come naturally as part of growing up – a bit like learning how to ride a…
Scientists are continuing to make advances in electronics that can safely monitor and treat our health from inside the body. Unfortunately, powering these miniature medical gadgets isn’t always straightforward. There’s…
Almost a third of the world’s plastic waste is polypropylene, a hardy plastic used to make bottle caps and food containers that can take hundreds of years to degrade. But…
Coastal critters thought to be strangers to the open ocean have been found amongst the seething mass of plastic waste that is the Great Pacific Garbage Patch. “The issues of…
Testing the possibility of models of gravity different from general relativity may be closer to home than we think. A team of researchers has proposed that we might be able…
Graphene is a special material. Among its many talents, it can act as a superconductor, generate a super-rare form of magnetism, and unlock entirely new quantum states. Now graphene has…
A well-known bacterium could transform carbon dioxide from the air into a useful bioplastic, tackling two global problems in one swift move, using a prototype system designed by a team…
Buried under kilometers of rock in Ontario, Canada, a tank of the purest water flashed as barely detectable particle slammed through its molecules. It’s the first time that water has…
Our Sun regularly erupts in tongues of heat and fury so large, our own planet would be dwarfed by their size many times over. To better understand how they work,…
Scientists are still getting to grips with the ins and outs of strange materials known as time crystals; structures that buzz with movement for eternity. Now a new variety might…
Home runs are exhilarating – those lofting moments when everyone looks skyward, baseball players and fans alike, anxiously awaiting the outcome: run or out, win or loss, elation or despair.…
Quantum computing promises to be a revolutionary tool, making short work of equations that classical computers would struggle to ever complete. Yet the workhorse of the quantum device, known as…
Last year a new finding in particle physics stunned scientists: a fundamental particle responsible for one of the Universe’s four fundamental forces was heavier than predicted. The discovery of a…
Off the coast of Antarctica, trillions of tons of cold salty water sink to great depths. As the water sinks, it drives the deepest flows of the “overturning” circulation –…
The latest bit of brilliance from the field of robotics is a tiny micro-motor that can identify, trap, and transport individual cells. It’s a serious feat of engineering that could…
A synthetic analog of a black hole could tell us a thing or two about an elusive radiation theoretically emitted by the real thing. Using a chain of atoms in…
In 1801, British scientist Thomas Young carried out a ‘double slit’ experiment that has gone down in physics history: By shining light through two slits in a material, he showed…
It probably comes as no surprise to people living in low-lying coastal regions, but sea waters are rising by large, measurable amounts. That assessment comes from NASA, which has analyzed…
A cross between a domestic pig and wild boar was bred in Canada decades ago. After escaping captivity, the “super pigs” spread throughout the country, wreaking havoc on native species…
The threat of rising seas is often framed in terms of inundation risk, with a focus on what ends up underwater. But in areas where the coastal landscape isn’t entirely…
Despite a global ban in place since 2010, atmospheric concentrations of five ozone-depleting chemicals have reached a record high. Chlorofluorocarbons, or CFCs, are entirely man-made gasses used in a variety…
Scientists are increasingly worried about climate tipping points, where certain thresholds are reached that drive further warming. It’s almost like a runaway train heading off a cliff – we’re getting…
Right down on a molecular level, water ice can form out of a rich variety of structures. Though they’re all fairly similar in general appearance, differences in their properties means…
Pick a card, any card. Like a devious magician, the Universe already knows your selection as the laws of physics guide everything from your neurological wiring to the contractions of…
Researchers have developed a new energy-saving paint that repels heat, comes in any color, and should last centuries. It’s also the lightest paint created to date. Inspired by butterfly wings,…
Imagine you’re thinking of a goldfish. Now, what if artificial intelligence could interpret what you’re thinking and turn that into an AI-generated image of a goldfish – or at least…
Billionaire mogul Elon Musk and a range of experts called on Wednesday for a pause in the development of powerful artificial intelligence (AI) systems to allow time to make sure…
A group of mathematicians has unveiled a brand new 13-sided shape they’ve simply called ‘the hat’. Don’t let the rather mundane description fool you though. This hat (which looks a…
The humble proton is a lynchpin of the material Universe. Its characteristics define chemistry, governing teams of electrons that build atoms into molecules, and molecules into dazzling complexity. For all…
Food scientists on Tuesday unveiled a giant meatball made from lab-grown flesh of an extinct woolly mammoth, saying the protein from the past showed the way for future foods. The…
The world is direly addicted to plastics. Try as we might to recycle them, plastics are cheaper to make anew, so unthinkable amounts of plastic waste are dumped into landfill…
The AI chatbot known as ChatGPT, developed by the company OpenAI, has caught the public’s attention and imagination. Some applications of the technology are truly impressive, such as its ability…
Nearly a century has passed since scientists broke the Universe. Through a complex mix of experiment and theory, physicists discovered an engine built on the mathematics of probability ticks away…
For the first time, an international team of physicists has successfully manipulated small numbers of light particles – known as photons – that have a strong relationship with each other.…
The ghost, at long last, is actually in the machine: For the first time, scientists have created neutrinos in a particle collider. Those abundant yet enigmatic subatomic particles are so…