Scientists grew nearly defect-free fibers of frozen water with counterintuitive properties. Try to bend an icicle and it’ll snap in two. With its tendency to crack into shards, ice’s reputation for being stiff and brittle seems well-established. But thin, pristine threads of ice are bendy and elastic, scientists report inContinue Reading
The Deep Space Atomic Clock could help spacecraft reach distant destinations on their own An atomic clock that could transform deep-space travel has successfully completed its first test run in space. NASA’s Deep Space Atomic Clock, which launched on a satellite in June 2019, outperformed all other clocks in spaceContinue Reading
An elusive source of ripples in spacetime has finally been found Caught in a fatal inward spiral, a neutron star met its end when a black hole swallowed it whole. Gravitational ripples from that collision spread outward through the cosmos, eventually reaching Earth. The detection of those waves marks theContinue Reading
The new technology might one day help power the Internet of Things. A few years ago, Aline Eid was sitting in a restaurant sharing popcorn with Jimmy Hester. They weren’t just snacking, though. They were puzzling over a tough problem. How could they tap into the power of invisible signalsContinue Reading
Some of that savings will come from new opportunities made possible by this technology. Almost all apps and programs on wireless devices today communicate constantly with the internet. They pull the images, videos and other files you want from distant data centers. Apps and programs that use cloud computing doContinue Reading
The computing power needed can use a lot of energy and spew lots of carbon dioxide. Artificial intelligence — or AI — is the computer code that allows a machine to do something that normally requires a human brain. On TikTok, for instance, AI sorts the posts so that theContinue Reading
Scientists attached electrodes to the leaves of Venus flytraps to force them to snap shut. A new robotic grabber is ripped from the plant world. It’s made with a severed piece of a Venus flytrap. The novel device can grasp tiny, delicate objects. The Venus flytrap (Dionaea muscipula) is aContinue Reading
Materials like this could someday be used to curb airplanes’ climate footprint. Airplanes pump a lot of carbon dioxide, or CO2, into Earth’s atmosphere. That waste, a greenhouse gas, contributes to global warming. But someday, CO2 instead could be sucked from the air and used to power those planes. AirContinue Reading
Satellites, radar and fighter jets keep track of St. Nick. When Santa Claus takes off on Christmas Eve, he won’t be doing it in secret. Millions of children around the world will be waiting. And the North American Aerospace Defense Command (or NORAD) will be watching too. This military organizationContinue Reading
Research shows it’s the influencers, not the networks themselves, that amplify differences between us Every time I log onto Facebook, I brace myself. My newsfeed—like everyone else’s I know—is filled with friends, relatives and acquaintances arguing about COVID-19, masks and Trump. Facebook has become a battleground among partisan “echo chambers.”Continue Reading