Enlarge / The sun sets beyond an oil pumping unit, also known as a pumping jack, at a drilling site operated by Tatneft OAO near Almetyevsk, Russia. (credit: Andrey Rudakov/Bloomberg) Daimler Trucks, eBay and a US energy company were among the recent buyers of carbon offsets created by projects that involved injecting carbon dioxide underground […]
Enlarge / A blow fly trapped on a carnivorous sundew plant. (credit: Cathy Keifer | Getty) Toward the end of the 19th century, lurid tales of killer plants began popping up everywhere. Terrible, tentacle-waving trees snatched and swallowed unwary travelers in far-off lands. Mad professors raised monstrous sundews and pitcher plants on raw steak until […]
Enlarge / The Space Launch System rocket rolls out of the Vehicle Assembly Building in mid-March, 2022. (credit: Trevor Mahlmann) After three attempts to complete a critical fueling test of the Space Launch System rocket, NASA has decided to take a break. On Saturday night the space agency announced plans to roll the large SLS […]
Enlarge (credit: Yagi Studio | Getty Images) Since the first factories began manufacturing polyester from petroleum in the 1950s, humans have produced an estimated 9.1 billion tons of plastic. Of the waste generated from that plastic, less than a tenth of that has been recycled, researchers estimate. About 12 percent has been incinerated, releasing dioxins […]
The Wyss Center for Bio and Neoroengineering has developed communications a platform for people with complete locked-in syndrome. A 36-year-old German man in a completely locked-in state was outfitted with a novel brain-computer interface (BCI) system that relies on auditory feedback. The man learned to alter his brain activity in response to that auditory feedback […]
Enlarge (credit: Donald Jorgensen | Pacific Northwest National Laboratory ) Quantum computing has come on in leaps and bounds in the last few years. Indeed, once the big technology companies like IBM, Microsoft, and Google started showing an interest, I kind of stopped keeping track. Nevertheless, research on the basic elements of quantum computing continues […]
Enlarge / An artist’s sketch of what the 300-200 BCE temple complex at San Bartolo looked like in its heyday. (credit: Stuart et al. 2022) Amid rubble buried beneath a Maya pyramid in Northern Guatemala, archaeologists found a broken bit of plaster with a glyph painted on it. A bar-and-dot symbol for the number “7” […]
Enlarge (credit: Alexander Spatari) The trolley problem is a staple of discussions about ethics. The basic version is very simple: a trolley is barreling down a track toward a group of five people who remain blissfully unaware of their impending doom. You stand next to a switch that could redirect the trolley to another track, […]
Enlarge / A United Launch Alliance Atlas V booster is delivered to Cape Canaveral by NASA’s Pegasus barge this week. (credit: United Launch Alliance) Welcome to Edition 4.39 of the Rocket Report! As usual there is plenty to discuss in the world of launch this week, from a successful hot fire test in Spain to […]
Enlarge / Scientists have devised a new method for determining the aerodynamics of baseballs in free flight. (credit: Mike Kemp/Getty Images) Baseball has long been a popular topic of research for physicists, largely because of the complex aerodynamics of a baseball in flight. Traditionally, scientists relied upon wind tunnel experiments to measure key properties like […]