Isotopic analysis revealed the most likely source to be Brimham Rocks, not the nearby Plumpton Rocks. Stonehenge is the most famous example of megalithic architecture across Britain and Ireland, but there are plenty of others, including Calanais, Newgrange, and Avebury, as well as the Devil’s Arrows. The latter is…
“Dedicated launch is pretty essential for us for most of our missions.” If you ask most satellite companies aside from SpaceX, they will tell you the world doesn’t have enough capacity for launching payloads into orbit. This is despite the blistering launch cadence we’ve seen around the world in recent…
Simple games gain rich strategies in the face of noise. Games may be life with all the hard bits removed, but they provide a way to study why people make the choices they make. Traditional games are usually played against a static background: the rewards per outcome are constant.…
The Department of Energy declared an “emergency” when none existed. The use of coal to generate electricity on the US grid has been plunging for nearly two decades, and the first Trump administration was unable to affect the trend. So his second administration has attempted more aggressive interventions to…
Analysis revealed seed proteins from sesame and moringa, which held religious and symbolic significance. Credit: Museum of Mediterranean and Near Eastern Antiquities, Stockholm Credit: Museum of Mediterranean and Near Eastern Antiquities, Stockholm The precise composition of ancient Egyptian paints, binders, adhesives, and similar materials used to make artifacts is…
Experiment put atoms in a superposition of trajectories to find out. Almost a hundred years ago, physicists theorized out what free fall should do to a quantum wave. If the solution they came up with is wrong, quantum mechanics and Einstein’s theory of gravity flatly contradict each other. But…
The trick from Next Generation would be even more effective in real life. It turns out Jean-Luc Picard was an even better starship helmsman than the writers knew. A physicist has gone through the details of a warp-speed trick from the first season of Star Trek: The Next Generation…
New study detects 3,200 references to Beatles song titles and lyrics in academic papers. Scientists have an indisputable playful side, evidenced by frequent allusions to popular culture in their research publications. That includes popular song lyrics. And the most popular musical group, in terms of how frequently their songs…
Most one-base changes to the human genome do nothing, but a few are significant. On Tuesday, Google announced AlphaGenome Atlas, a resource that attempts to predict the consequences of every possible single-base variant in the human genome. The human genome is about 3 billion bases long, so trying the…
Critics say the new agenda could weaken science-based rules and marine protections. In July, the Trump administration relegated endangered leatherback turtles, sea lions, and whales to mere collateral damage in its race to profit from the oceans. Now, fisheries science is in the government’s crosshairs. The National Oceanic and…
