New climate evidence adds context to these long voyages. The same question drives both the plot of Moana and decades of archaeological research: Why, after centuries of relative stability, did Polynesian voyagers suddenly begin settling islands thousands of kilometers away across the Pacific? The latest Moana movie is a…
It’s unclear how the planet avoided its star’s bloated red giant stage. WD 1856 b is the only confirmed case of a planet that survived the death of a Sun-like star. It’s a Jupiter-size world orbiting a white dwarf—the burned-out remnant of a Sun-like star. Now, a team of…
For the first time since 1995, the Bureau of Land Management is rewriting its grazing regulations. The federal government is rewriting its rules governing ranching on public lands to increase the number of cattle, sheep, and other livestock grazing on 155 million acres in the West, an area twice…
Reinforcement learning uses error information to adjust control algorithms. There are some obvious big picture issues that stand between us and useful quantum computing. Issues like whether we can make enough high-quality hardware qubits to connect into the error-corrected logical qubits we need, and how we generate the states…
The Quest shipwreck is in worse shape than expected, but it has turned into a thriving marine ecosystem. Back in 2024, we reported on the discovery of the Quest shipwreck, the polar exploration vessel that served Arctic explorer Sir Ernest Shackleton on his last voyage. Shackleton died before reaching…
The Earth may not be that massive, but it still distorts space-time. Albert Einstein’s general theory of relativity predicts that a rotating mass like the Earth pulls the fabric of space and time around with it in a perpetual swirl. This phenomenon is known as frame dragging or the…
The AC culture wars may be solved by advances in environmentally friendly technology. If you’re reading this while the blinds are drawn against yet another heat wave and wondering whether it’s finally time to buy an air conditioner, you’re far from alone. At the end of June, as temperatures…
If Homo floresiensis wasn’t a fire-using hunter, its origins could be different than we thought. Until about 60,000 years ago, diminutive hominin cousins, Homo floresiensis (affectionately nicknamed Hobbits for obvious reasons), shared the island of Flores with Komodo dragons, pygmy elephants, and giant rats. Based on the presence of…
“The Starship Pez dispenser demonstrates very smart industrial design and scale.” It wasn’t easy to find anyone outside of SpaceX clamoring for a rocket like Starship just 10 years ago. Today, the space industry can’t wait for Starship to finally deliver. With a payload capacity of more than 100…
“The BOHR mission serves as a pathfinder for future nuclear-powered spacecraft.” The proliferation of nuclear power in space got a little more real Tuesday with the launch of a small satellite developed by a Florida-based company specializing in nuclear micro-power technology. It’s a long way from launching a bona…
