Do artists and scientists see the same thing in the shape of trees? As a scientist who studies branching patterns in living things, I’m starting to think so. Piet Mondrian was an early 20th-century abstract artist and art theorist obsessed with simplicity and essence of form. Even people who have never heard of Mondrian will likely recognize his … Read more
Space is about to get more crowded for Elon Musk. The billionaire’s Starlink communications network is facing increasingly stiff challenges to its dominance of high-speed satellite internet, including from a Chinese state-backed rival and another service financed by Amazon.com founder Jeff Bezos. Shanghai-based SpaceSail in November signed an agreement to enter Brazil and announced it … Read more
An illustration shows a hypothetical picture of Mars 3.6 billion years ago when an ocean may have covered nearly half the planet, released February 24, 2025. The blue areas show the depth of the ocean filled to the shoreline level of the ancient, now-gone sea, dubbed Deuteronilus. The orange star represents the landing site of … Read more
Time measurements and calendars have often been refined over the years. | Photo Credit: Alexey Savchenko/Unsplash A: A tropical year is the time (365.242199 days) the earth takes to revolve around the sun once. By having just 365 days in a calendar year, 0.242199 days are lost each year. To correct this error, Julius Caesar … Read more
Questions: 1. This material is one of the lightest solids known, since more than 99% of its composition by volume is air. Making it involves extracting the liquid component of a particular type of semisolid by supercritical freezing. Name it. 2. In the 1970s, a British hairdresser named Maurice Ward developed a material his granddaughter … Read more
The sun sets next to a smokestack from a coal-burning power station in Beijing January 9, 2008. | Photo Credit: Reuters China aims to effectively eliminate severe air pollution by the end of 2025, a senior environment official said, as authorities ramp up efforts in pollution control and emissions reduction in the “battle for blue … Read more
General relativity and quantum mechanics are two highly successful theories. The former explains gravity and the latter teams up with special relativity to describe the other three forces of nature: electromagnetic, strong nuclear, and weak nuclear forces. However, scientists don’t know how gravity fits into quantum mechanics. In fact, they have been proposing experiments that … Read more
Astronomers are excited to be poring over the first ever detailed geological map of the moon’s south polar region, where India’s Chandrayaan-3 lunar module, Vikram, touched down on August 23, 2023. The map is expected to throw new light on the moon’s origin and evolution. Researchers from the Physical Research Laboratory (PRL) in Ahmedabad, Panjab … Read more
The human body was not built for spaceflight, with its microgravity conditions, exposure to high-energy radiation and other issues. As a result, trekking beyond the the earth’s confines causes many physiological changes that affect an astronaut’s health. Here is an explanation of some of the effects on human health caused by space travel. Why is … Read more
A view of Microsoft’s Majorana 1 chip. | Photo Credit: Microsoft In a head-turning announcement earlier this week, Microsoft unveiled a new quantum chip called Majorana 1. According to its press release, it consists of four qubits made of a “new state of matter”. Qubit is short for ‘quantum bit’, the fundamental unit of operations … Read more