As COVID-19 forced many workers across the U.S. to move from downtown office towers to spare rooms and kitchen tables, their commutes shrank from an average of almost 30 minutes (often in bumper-to-bumper traffic) to a few steps down the hall. A May survey of 2,500 Americans found that 42 percent were teleworking full-time—one of […]
In the face of any new and infectious disease outbreak, our first reaction and natural hope is that we will be spared from the suffering. Despite the hard logic of increasing numbers of new infections and rising forecasts of total deaths, our tendency is to deny the reality around us. So many bad things already […]
Although it would not get you past a brick wall and onto Platform 9¾ to catch the Hogwarts Express, quantum tunneling—in which a particle “tunnels” through a seemingly insurmountable barrier—remains a confounding, intuition-defying phenomenon. Now Toronto-based experimental physicists using rubidium atoms to study this effect have measured, for the first time, just how long these […]
Scientists have pondered a mystery about life for at least a century: Many biological molecules come in two mirror-image versions, just like human hands; in fact, they’re known as “right-handed” and “left-handed.” Natural chemical reactions produce approximately equal numbers of both types of molecule. But the sugars and amino acids that serve as the building […]
As COVID-19 forced many workers across the U.S. to move from downtown office towers to spare rooms and kitchen tables, their commutes shrank from an average of almost 30 minutes (often in bumper-to-bumper traffic) to a few steps down the hall. A May survey of 2,500 Americans found that 42 percent were teleworking full-time—one of […]
Restaurants, schools, dentist offices are all keeping more windows open, to increase ventilation—and hopefully, to decrease the chances of encountering the coronavirus. But letting in fresh air also lets in more noise. Now, researchers have come up with a device that’s like noise-cancelling headphones—but for a building. “It works on the same principle, so it […]
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Hey, Google, what’s the weather? We have become comfortable with the idea that we can make decisions based on accurate weather forecasts for the next three, five or seven days. Families plan cookouts for the upcoming weekend. Citrus farmers protect orange trees if a freeze is coming. Emergency managers evacuate towns that will be downwind […]
Philosopher Susan Schneider weighs the pros and cons of radical technological enhancement — Read more on ScientificAmerican.com Source link
A new map of the early Universe has reinforced a long-running conundrum in astronomy over how fast the cosmos is expanding. The data—collected using a telescope in Chile’s Atacama Desert—back up previous estimates of the Universe’s age, geometry and evolution. But the findings clash with measurements of how fast galaxies are flying apart from each […]