Frame-dragging may explain an odd pattern seen in the brightest supernovae. Some of the most extreme explosions in the universe are Type I superluminous supernovae. “They are one of the brightest explosions in the Universe,” says Joseph Farah, an astrophysicist at the University of California, Santa Barbara. For years,…
The Inca Empire’s system of roads were built on centuries-old trade routes. Centuries before the rise of the Inca Empire, a much smaller kingdom on the central coast of Peru already had a sophisticated trade network—one it used to import live parrots across the Andes from the Amazon rainforest.…
The US eliminated measles in 2000, but the disease is once again circulating. In the three decades between 1993 and 2024, measles in the US was relatively rare—a few hundred cases each year, at most. But suddenly, the disease has become so entrenched in American life that it sometimes…
“We are focused on protecting space, assuring access to space, ensuring custody of space.” Anduril Industries announced on Wednesday that it is acquiring ExoAnalytic Solutions, a space intelligence firm that operates a vast network of sensors monitoring the veiled movements of satellites thousands of miles above Earth. “For nearly…
First speaker minimizes climate change, COVID risks—and is a lab leak proponent. On Tuesday, word spread that the National Institutes of Health was launching a series of what it’s calling “Scientific Freedom Lectures,” with the first scheduled for March 20. The “freedom” theme echoes one of the major concerns…
Highest risk of part of tongue being torn off is with temps between -5° and -15° C (23° to 5 °F). We all remember that infamous scene in the 1983 classic, A Christmas Story, where a boy licks a cold metal post on the playground and ends up getting…
A complex structure with multiple electrons is within reach of today’s hardware. Last week, IBM trumpeted its contributions to a rather unusual paper: the production of a molecule with a half-Möbius topology, assisted by an algorithm run in part on a quantum computer. There was, to put it mildly,…
Marc Abraham: “During the past year, it has become unsafe for our guests to visit the country.” Every year, we have a blast covering a fresh crop of winners of the Ig Nobel prizes. After 35 years in Boston, the annual prize ceremony will take place in Zurich, Switzerland,…
Shang Dynasty oracle bones and modern weather models feature in the same study. Warmer waters in the Pacific Ocean may have brought devastating floods to the cradle of ancient Chinese civilization, according to a recent study in which its authors link three wildly different lines of evidence to tell…
Falling cats in the study also seemed to show a marked preference for turning to the right. Why do falling cats always seem to land on their feet? Scientists have been arguing about the precise mechanism for a very long time—since at least 1700, in fact—conducting all manner of…
