[ad_1] Our fascination with end times might be partly down to one of our many cognitive biases Colin Temple/Alamy Everything Must GoDorian Lynskey (Picador, UK; Pantheon, US, November 2024) To the surprise of almost no one, the big winner at the Academy Awards last month was Oppenheimer, Christopher Nolan’s biopic of the father of the atomic […]
[ad_1] “A flash of light and heat so tremendous it is impossible for the human mind to comprehend…” Shutterstock / mwreck A 1-megaton thermonuclear weapon detonation begins with a flash of light and heat so tremendous it is impossible for the human mind to comprehend. One hundred and eighty million degrees Fahrenheit is four or […]
[ad_1] The Titan nuclear missile in the silo in Arizona, US Michael Dunning/Getty Images Not long after the last world war, the historian William L. Shirer had this to say about the next world war. It “will be launched by suicidal little madmen pressing an electronic button. Such a war will not last long and […]
[ad_1] A mouse embryo that has paused its development due to nutrient depletion Jiajia Ye The embryos of many species can stop developing when starved of nutrients, only to restart the process once these are restored – and scientists may have figured out how they do it. In the early stages of pregnancy, a fertilised […]
[ad_1] Supersolids, created using lasers, have some unusual properties Chris Rogers/Getty Images Some solids can be stirred. Researchers have shown that a bizarre quantum state of matter that is both a solid and a frictionless fluid at the same time can be agitated, apparently creating a series of tiny vortices inside the material. The experiment […]
[ad_1] AI can spot the parasites in stool samples Antti Suutala/ Lundin et al, 2024, PLOS NTDs, CC-BY 4.0 Artificial intelligence can spot parasitic worm eggs in human faecal samples – including those from parasite species missed when lab technologists use a microscope to study the same samples. The discovery suggests AI could help us […]
[ad_1] A Braarudosphaera bigelowii cell, with a black arrow showing its nitrogen-fixing organelle Tyler Coale, University of California, Santa Cruz In the 3.5 billion years since life first evolved on Earth, it was thought that once-free-living bacteria had merged with other organisms on just three occasions, making this an exceedingly rare evolutionary event. Now, a […]
[ad_1] Planes at Las Vegas airport Frank Nowikowski/Alamy I recently had to replace the hot water system in my house. It cost a small fortune. I’m fortunate enough to be able to afford it, but I couldn’t go to the next level, a heat pump. My carbon footprint will be lowered by my new boiler, […]
[ad_1] Peter Higgs at the Science Museum in London in 2013 Photo by Andy Rain/EPA/Shutterstock Peter Higgs lived a singular life. He developed a physics theory that stood a chance of radically advancing our understanding of the universe, and lived to see generations of experimentalists chase after and eventually triumphantly corroborate his work in the […]
[ad_1] March was National Nutrition Month in the US, the latest in a decades-long campaign to improve eating habits. This year’s theme was “Beyond the Table“, highlighting how food gets from farms to markets to our plates, how we might store and treat food safely at home and how we can reduce food waste. Though […]