Five peer-reviewed papers update the design and model its expected output. The scientific community has a plan for achieving fusion power. It involves getting a better understanding of how to control fusion in a tokamak-style reactor using the currently under construction ITER reactor, and then using that knowledge to…
Individual gold atoms move around to form oxidation-proof structures. Gold is weird. It’s one of the few metals that doesn’t really oxidize. Even silver and copper—from the same column of the periodic table—form weak oxides. Naively, you might expect that gold would tarnish just like silver. Gold also sits…
The waiver “serves the public interest by promoting a second large satellite broadband constellation.” The Federal Communications Commission has waived a requirement for Amazon to launch half of its satellite broadband constellation by the end of July, a key regulatory reprieve that buys the tech giant time to get…
Polystyrene can be upcycled into carbon sponge material. Humanity has littered the sky with the refuse of fossil fuel use, releasing enough CO2 to change the planet’s climate. We are also chucking incredible sums of carbon in the form of plastics into landfills and into the environment around (and…
Machine learning has its limits—how is it being used? It feels like there’s no escaping AI right now, whether you’re trying to type a sentence without being interrupted by a digital “assistant” or struggling to find a new refrigerator that doesn’t require a Wi-Fi connection for some reason. You’d…
Those ousted included ADA journal editor-in-chief Steven Kahn and former ADA president Desmond Schatz Five leading scientists were ousted from the annual meeting of the American Diabetes Association (ADA) in New Orleans on Friday. Their crime: handing out copies of an editorial, published in the journal Diabetes Care on…
What’s the difference between a person, an artifact, and an ecosystem? Ötzi the Iceman, Europe’s most famous mummy, is crawling with microbes, some long dead, some still eking out a living after thousands of years, and some very modern. After he died in the Ötztal Alps, the Copper Age…
The reactor, from a startup called Antares, isn’t ready to generate power yet. Just over a year ago, the Trump Administration issued an executive order meant to accelerate the development of nuclear power in the US. While an entire startup ecosystem has developed around the use of different—and typically…
Money would keep coal plants open, build the first new plants in over a decade. On Thursday, President Donald Trump announced his administration’s latest attempt to prop up the US coal industry during an incoherent press event that randomly oscillated between energy issues and Trump’s fixation with building and…
NASA expects to begin stacking the SLS rocket this summer for next year’s Artemis III launch. Welcome to Edition 8.44 of the Rocket Report! The news this week is decidedly weighted in favor of heavy-lift rockets, largely due to the fallout from last Thursday’s explosion of Blue Origin’s New…
