Category Science

December 18, 2024 3 min read Will the World’s First Nuclear Fusion Power Plant Be Built in Virginia? Here’s Why We’re Skeptical The fusion power plant would go live in the next decade and produce 400 megawatts of electricity, says…

NASA has again postponed the return to Earth of Barry Wilmore and Sunita Williams, the astronauts stranded on the International Space Station after Boeing’s Starliner capsule malfunctioned in the middle of this year. The crew of the spacecraft arrived at…

Quantum hardware is advancing fast. Can quantum software keep up? Bartlomiej Wroblewski/Getty Images A quantum computing start-up is developing its own operating system to run quantum machines, akin to Microsoft Windows or macOS on a standard computer. The hardware for…

Humans have been speaking some form of language for tens, if not hundreds, of thousands of years. Yet linguists, psychologists and historians are constantly making new discoveries about the ways we communicate with one another. Linguists are tracking the new…

This thin wafer of diamond is also very flexible Nature, DOI: 10.1038/s41586-024-08218-x A new way to make ultra-thin diamond wafers using sticky tape could help produce diamond-based electronics, which might one day be a useful alternative to silicon-based designs. Diamond…

Should you throw out your black plastic spatula? A recent study that reported alarming levels of several flame retardants in common black-colored plastic items (including cooking utensils, toys and hair products) had many people suddenly taking stock of their inky…

The United States has now seen dozens of human bird flu cases this year, all of them mild—until now. The Centers for Disease Control and Prevention confirmed Wednesday that a patient in Louisiana has been hospitalized with a severe case…

The sand-grain-sized robots work cooperatively, similar to ants Jeong Jae Wie et al. Swarms of tiny robots guided by magnetic fields can coordinate to act like ants, from packing together to form a floating raft to lifting objects hundreds of…

Should I tell my friend their boyfriend is cheating on them? Should I intervene when I hear an off-color joke? When faced with moral questions—situations where the course of action relates to our sense of right and wrong—we often seek…

December 18, 2024 5 min read The Public Distrusts Scientists’ Morals, Not Their Science Reaction to a recent Pew survey on the public’s trust in science shows that the scientific community is not ready to address the real problem By…