Enlarge (credit: Pramote Polyamate) Earlier this week, the Pew Research Center announced the results of polling that asked the US public its thoughts on how to address climate change. While the usual partisan split was apparent, the survey highlights an even larger challenge that policymakers will face: the US public supports contradictory things when it comes […]
Enlarge / A rat drinks water in a back alley in the Park View neighborhood near a construction site on Saturday, September 10, 2017, in Washington, D. C. (credit: Getty | The particular Washington Post ) Many people might already think of the nation’s capital as a political rat’s nest, teeming with rat-related features, like […]
Enlarge / University of Toledo physicist Scott Lee came up with the exercise to inspire undergrads in his introductory physics course. (credit: Aurich Lawson | Getty Images) The early Jurassic dinosaurs known as Dilophosaurus proved to be scene stealers in the 1993 blockbuster Jurassic Park , taking out a full-grown man who thought they were […]
Enlarge / As the space world watched Russia threaten to withhold Soyuz launches, SpaceX causally sent its ninth rocket of 2022 into orbit on Thursday, another batch of Starlink satellites. (credit: Trevor Mahlmann / Ars Technica) Welcome to Edition 4.34 of the Rocket Report! There is a famous quote said by Vladimir Lenin, of all […]
Enlarge / Artist’s representation of the merger of two neutron stars to form a black hole (hidden within bright bulge at center of image). The merger generates opposing, high-energy jets of material (blue) that heat up material around the stars, making it emit X-rays (reddish clouds). (credit: NASA/CXC/M. Weiss) Back in 2017, astronomers detected a […]
Enlarge / This chert bladelet still has a remnant of its bone haft attached. (credit: Wang et al. 2022) We know the oldest human cultures only from their most durable parts: mostly stone tools, sometimes bone. Show an experienced Pleistocene archaeologist a chert blade, and they can probably tell you which hominin species made it, […]
Enlarge / A cartoon diagram of the trapped ion system. (credit: IonQ) Back in 2020, we talked to the CEO of a quantum computing startup called IonQ that uses trapped ions for its qubits. At the time, the company had just introduced a quantum processor that could host 32 qubits that had impressive fidelity, meaning […]
Enlarge / A nurse gives a 16-year-old a COVID-19 vaccine. (credit: Getty | Sopa images) New data on the real-world effectiveness of COVID-19 vaccines in children and teens largely mirrors what we’ve seen in adults so far: Vaccine effectiveness is strong against the delta coronavirus variant but takes a significant hit when up against omicron. […]
Enlarge / The US Air Force Research Laboratory seeks to develop a satellite to patrol cislunar space. (credit: US Air Force Research Laboratory) This week, the US Air Force Research Laboratory released a video on YouTube that didn’t get much attention. But it made an announcement that is fairly significant—the US military plans to extend […]
Enlarge (credit: ESO/L. Calçada) Back in 2020, astronomers discovered an unusual star system just 1,000 light years from Earth. However, two different teams disagreed on the nature of the system, which was dubbed HR 6819. One team argued that it was looking at a trinary grouping with two stars orbiting a black hole. The other […]