We take you inside a single fireworks shell to show you how it all works. If you want to glimpse more than just the inner workings of one fireworks shell, you should check out this post by the SA Visuals team on its long, explosive history inside the pages of Scientific American. Source link
Twenty-five years ago the technology industry was at a crossroads that could have resulted in a far different world from the one we see today. The Clinton administration was pushing industry to install the “Clipper chip” in all communications devices. This “key escrow” system would have given law enforcement a backdoor to bypass encryption whenever […]
The waiting room at the Mosaic Comprehensive Care Clinic in Chapel Hill, N.C., is as generic as any doctor’s office except for a framed sign by the door. “No Wrong Way to Have a Body,” it says, above an illustration of different cacti species. The second anomaly of this primary care practice is what is […]
For more than a decade, astrophysicists have wondered why nature appears to show an odd restraint in the way it slays stars. In life, they range from pip-squeaks to behemoths. Small ones simply burn out and fade away, but something more curious happens to the jumbo-size variety. When such a star dies, its great bulk […]
The smallest, most precise measurement ever made required one of the largest scientific instruments ever constructed. Five years ago the Laser Interferometer Gravitational-Wave Observatory (LIGO) detected a ripple in spacetime that was just one ten-thousandth the width of a proton—a technical tour de force tantamount to pinpointing the distance to the nearest star to three […]
Mariana Matus has spent years studying what comes out of human bodies in order to better understand what is happening inside us. The computational biologist helped develop heavy-duty devices that are about the size of a milk crate and can be lowered into manholes to dangle over wastewater—steadily sucking up a stream of urine and […]
Climate change is altering the migration routes of animals worldwide. Here’s a look at new research on how two species have been affected. First, mule deer. Every spring in Wyoming, vegetation first appears at lower altitudes before progressing up the mountainside. Migrating mule deer follow and forage on this green wave. But as a changing […]
California last week adopted the first regulation in the world aimed at boosting sales of zero-emission trucks, marking a milestone in the history of regulating pollution from motor vehicles. The California Air Resources Board’s unanimous vote capped a marathon seven-hour Zoom meeting at which more than 130 people signed up to testify. The meeting was […]
Whenever I smell the pages of a brand new book, I am reminded of all the late night reading I did as a kid. I can even feel the soft fabric on the arms of my favorite reading chair and sense the quiet of a house where everyone else is asleep. The stresses of the […]
An outbreak of the Ebola virus in the northeastern Democratic Republic of the Congo (DRC) that has been raging since 2018 has officially ended. The World Health Organization (WHO) and the DRC government announced the end on 25 June—42 days after the last case—but it comes as a fresh Ebola outbreak spreads in the country’s […]