Workers with ropes could make the moai “walk” in zig-zag motion along roads tailor-made for the purpose. Easter Island is famous for its giant monumental statues, called moai, built some 800 years ago and typically mounted on platforms called ahu. Scholars have puzzled over the moai on Easter Island…
“Damage is being done already. Even if funding is reinstated, we have already lost people.” NASA has thrown a lifeline to scientists working on a mission to visit an asteroid that will make an unusually close flyby of the Earth in 2029, reversing the Trump administration’s previous plan to…
Three researchers share prize for structured polymers called metal-organic frameworks. The polymers around us are basically a disordered mess, with long chains of atoms tangled around each other. But starting around 1990, chemists began developing techniques that allow us to build polymers with precisely defined structures. These polymers, called…
Yes, it’s another potential qubit. But it’s also some very cool physics. By now, a handful of technologies are leading contenders for producing a useful quantum computer. Companies have used them to build machines with dozens to hundreds of qubits, the error rates are coming down, and they’ve largely…
John Clarke, Michel H. Devoret, and John Martinis built an electrical circuit-based oscillator on a microchip. The 2025 Nobel Prize in Physics has been awarded to John Clarke, Michel H. Devoret, and John M. Martinis “for the discovery of macroscopic quantum tunneling and energy quantization in an electrical circuit.”…
New Pentagon data show climate impacts shaping reservists’ mission. This article originally appeared on Inside Climate News, a nonprofit, non-partisan news organization that covers climate, energy, and the environment. Sign up for their newsletter here. The National Guard logged more than 400,000 member service days per year over the…
A standard optical illusion triggers specific neurons in the visual system of mice. “Illusions are fun, but they are also a gateway to perception,” says Hyeyoung Shin, assistant professor of neuroscience at Seoul National University. Shin is the first author of a new study in Nature Neuroscience that has…
The ship wasn’t designed to withstand the powerful ice compression forces—and Shackleton knew it In 1915, intrepid British explorer Sir Ernest Shackleton and his crew were stranded for months in the Antarctic after their ship, Endurance, was trapped by pack ice, eventually sinking into the freezing depths of the…
A close examination of this year’s military contracts reveals some interesting things. Around this time each year, the US Space Force convenes a Mission Assignment Board to dole out contracts to launch the nation’s most critical national security satellites. The military announced this year’s launch orders Friday, and SpaceX…
Scientists may have additional tools to produce psilocybin to use for medical purposes. Magic mushrooms have been used in traditional ceremonies and for recreational purposes for thousands of years. However, a new study has found that mushrooms evolved the ability to make the same psychoactive substance twice. The discovery…
