Science

Science

As I write this week's edition, NASA's Space Launch System rocket is undergoing a second countdown rehearsal at Kennedy Space Center, Florida. The outcome of the test will determine whether NASA has a shot at launching the Artemis II mission around the Moon next month, or if the launch will be delayed until April or later. The finicky fueling line for the rocket's core stage is the center of attention after a hydrogen leak cut short a practice countdown earlier this month.

Complex 3D structures of cells called organoids could be used to test treatments for spinal-cord damage that can lead to paralysis.

Your consciousness can connect you with the entire universe, a groundbreaking study suggests. Experts from Wellesley College in Massachusetts claim that traditional connections in the brain cannot fully explain how we are aware of our existence. Instead, they argue that quantum physics taking place within our skull is what generates awareness. This includes the idea that particles can exist in multiple states and locations at the same time.

Star-formation will eventually end, and then the last shining stars will burn out. Galaxies will dissociate due to gravitational interactions, ejecting all masses and leaving only supermassive black holes behind. And then those black holes will decay via Hawking radiation, leaving only cold, stable, isolated bodies, from which no further energy can be extracted, all accelerating away from us within our dark energy-dominated Universe.

For example, reader David Erickson had this on his mind: If there were aliens 66 million light-years from Earth, how big a telescope would they need to see dinosaurs? Ha! I love this question. I've thought of it myself but never worked out the mathexcept to think, Probably pretty big, which turns out to dramatically underestimate the actual answer.

During Thursday's rehearsal, NASA was able to fuel the Space Launch System (SLS) rocket with more than 700,000 gallons of liquid propellant and complete two runs of terminal count - the final step of the launch countdown - at the Kennedy Space Center in Florida. While there was a hiccup due to a loss of ground communications, NASA was able to move to a backup system before the regular comms channels were back in operation.

Pierre-Louis: If you really think about it, ice skating is just controlled slipping on ice. And whenever I go skating I can't help but think about the Winter Olympics, like the ones that are happening right now in Italy.

A statement by the government's region 5 livestock office for Chiang Mai, said the animals had been infected with canine distemper virus, with veterinarians also identifying mycoplasma bacteria as a secondary infection. Earlier however, Somchuan Ratanamungklanon, director general of the department of livestock development within the Thai agricultural ministry, told the Thai outlet Matichon that the tigers had been infected with feline panleukopenia.

Researchers in China have reportedly tested a new, gravity-defying wind turbine system that they say could generate power from the airspace above cities. The turbine is called the S2000 Stratosphere Airborne Wind Energy System, or SAWES. Held up by what is essentially a helium blimp, the machine reportedly generated 385 kilowatts of electricity from 2,000 meters (more than 6,500 feet) above the city of Yibin in China's province of Sichuan, according to a recent Euronews report.

Qunnect and Cisco have unveiled what they say is the first entanglement-swapping demonstration of its kind over deployed metro-scale fibre using a commercial quantum networking system. The demonstration combined Qunnect's room-temperature quantum hardware with Cisco's quantum networking software stack. The net result of the project is regarded by the partners as being able to bring practical quantum networks closer to scalable deployment, validating a spoke-and-hub model for scaling quantum networks through commercial datacentres.

I'm always looking for books that challenge the status quo, and when I learned about Roland Ennos' new book The Powerful Primate: How Controlling Energy Enabled Us to Build Civilization, I couldn't wait to get my eyes on it, and I'm thrilled I did. In this landmark book, Ennos offers "a compelling argument that flips the traditional view of humanity on its head."

Microsoft has achieved a breakthrough with Project Silica. The technology for long-term data storage now works with borosilicate glass. This is the same material used for cookware and oven doors. The method can store data for up to 10,000 years. Long-term storage of digital information remains a challenge for data centers and archives. Magnetic tapes and hard drives degrade within a few decades, making them less suitable for storing data for future generations.

In a paper published in the journal Nature this week, Microsoft researchers now say these long-term storage qualities can be achieved using the same kind of borosilicate glass found in oven doors and Pyrex glassware. In their testing, they were able to etch 258 layers of data totaling roughly 2.02 TB onto a 2 mm thick borosilicate glass plate while achieving write speeds of between 18.4 and 65.9 Mbps depending on the number of laser beams used.

At the Winter Olympics, skiers, bobsledders, speedskaters, and many other athletes all have to master one critical moment: when to start. That split second is paramount during competition because when everyone is strong and skilled, a moment of hesitation can separate gold from silver. A competitor who hesitates too much will be left behind -but moving too early will get them disqualified.

'ask chris about my trumpet plants at nursery [SIC]?,' a line that may indicate he had Angel's Trumpet plants. Also known as 'Devil's Breath,' the flowering shrub contains scopolamine, a potent psychoactive compound that can cause serious effects on the nervous system. Scopolamine interferes with the brain's memory system by blocking key receptors in the central nervous system. In high doses, it can leave a person highly suggestible and almost catatonic.

This corn-based construction material was made by Manufactura, a Mexican sustainable materials company, and it imagines a second life for waste from the most widely produced grain in the world. The project started as an invitation by chef Jorge Armando, the founder of catering brand Taco Kween Berlin, to find ways he could reintegrate waste generated by his taqueria into architecture. A team led by designer Dinorah Schulte created corncretl during a residency last year in Massa Lombarda, Italy.

Shark attacks returned to near-average levels in 2025 after a dip the previous year, according to the latest report from the Florida Museum of Natural History's International Shark Attack File, published Wednesday. Researchers recorded 65 unprovoked shark bites worldwide last year, slightly below the 10-year average of 72, but an increase from 2024. Nine of those bites were fatal, higher than the 10-year average of six fatalities.

Gut bacteria are crucial to ensuring healthy digestion and defecation. But two species of bacteria may also be the cause of constipation: according to a new study, Bacteroides thetaiotaomicron and Akkermansia muciniphila appear to work in concert to break down colonic mucin, the slimy coating in our colons that keeps our poo moving along. Too little mucin means a drier and more constipation-prone colon.

After proving this concept across multiple studies, the team developed therapeutic cancer vaccines to tackle one of the most challenging targets yet - HPV-driven tumors. In a new study published in Science Advances, the scientists discovered that systematically changing the orientation and placement of a single cancer-targeting peptide can lead to formulations that supercharge the immune system's ability to attack tumors.

In an effort to transform this portfolio, the agency is launching a challenge to gather ideas from industry on how to move these old systems to cloud-native architectures and reduce its technical debt. According to a Tuesday notice on Sam.gov, the agency is forgoing a traditional acquisition in favor of a challenge-based approach. The multi-phase competition will allow the FAA to watch vendors perform, not just pitch.

The barriers to reading, writing, and editing DNA are falling fast. A scientist can now order synthetic gene sequences from manufacturers and have them within days - soon, it could be common to produce them right in the lab using a benchtop DNA synthesizer. High school students are learning CRISPR gene-editing techniques. Artificial intelligence (AI) platforms trained on biological data are accelerating experimentation and generating sequences that don't exist in nature.

There's a feeling I love almost more than anything: the feeling of sinking into a good book while the world around me fades away. My breathing slows, my shoulders drop, and the mental chatter in the back of my mind goes quiet. What's happening in those moments goes far deeper than entertainment or education, and we seem to sense this instinctively.

When horse racing fans rhapsodize about Secretariat's enormous heart, they're not speaking metaphorically - a postmortem exam in 1989 found that it weighed between 21 and 22 pounds, two-and-a-half times more than the average thoroughbred's heart. The legendary horse also had a perfectly proportioned bone structure, flawless biomechanics, and a seemingly innate hunger for the finish line.

Scientists report that a type of giant virus multiplies furiously by hijacking its host's protein-making machinery - long-sought experimental evidence that viruses can co-opt a system typically associated with cellular life. The researchers found that the virus makes a complex of three proteins that takes over its host's protein-production system, which then churns out viral proteins instead of the host's own. Virologists had already suspected that viruses could perform such a feat, says Frederik Schulz, a computational biologist at the Lawrence Berkeley National Laboratory in California, who was not involved with the work.