Category Science

Delivering “some felons to a labour camp on a remote planet” … Alien Clay Shutterstock / Space creator They say never start a story with a waking, but when you’ve been hard asleep for thirty years it’s difficult to know…

One of my favorite anecdotes about prime numbers concerns Alexander Grothendieck, who was among the most brilliant mathematicians of the 20th century. According to one account, he was once asked to name a prime number during a conversation. These numbers,…

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…

An ion trap can control atoms for quantum experiments Y. Colombe/NATIONAL INSTITUTE OF STANDARDS AND TECHNOLOGY/SCIENCE PHOTO LIBRARY After decades of looking, researchers have seen a string of atoms go through a 1D phase change so elusive that it could…

Maarten Wouters/Getty Images The Shape of Things UnseenAdam Zeman (Bloomsbury Circus) Just imagine! No, seriously, just imagine: an apple, perhaps, or a cartful of apples, or even a kingdom in which monstrous apples are fought by oranges on horseback. Our…

Play your cards right Readers in the northern hemisphere are facing many more weeks of long, dark nights and cold weather, so what could be better than a fun card game? If you’re too cash-strapped for poker and have exhausted…

Climate change can increase the frequency and severity of droughts Zhang Yu/VCG via Getty Images Severe droughts that persist for years have grown hotter, drier and larger since the 1980s. These long-lasting droughts – some of which are extreme enough…

The Mauna Loa Observatory in Hawaii has been recording atmospheric carbon dioxide levels since 1958 FRED ESPENAK/SCIENCE PHOTO LIBRARY The level of carbon dioxide in the atmosphere measured by a weather station at the Mauna Loa Observatory in Hawaii increased…

Earlier this week the U.S. Food and Drug Administration revoked the authorization of the dye Red No. 3, which is used in a variety of foods and medications. This artificial dye, which is made from petroleum and had been found…

A satellite orbits the planet Shutterstock / Andrei Armiagov Over the past couple years, undersea cables from the Baltic Sea to the Pacific Ocean have been severed in apparent acts of sabotage. Now a NATO-backed project has shown how to…