The launch of the Chinese satellite Micius in 2016 could have been viewed as merely a single addition to the 2,700-odd instruments already orbiting Earth. But Micius, which is solely dedicated to quantum information science, arguably represents the nation’s lead in an emerging contest among great powers at the frontiers of physics. The brainchild of […]
Long gone are the days when physicists could validate new theories by dropping objects from the Leaning Tower of Pisa. From the discovery of the Higgs boson to the detection of gravitational waves, recent findings in physics have required a staggering level of precision. In search of this precision, scientists are increasingly turning to space […]
Hi, I’m Scientific American assistant news editor Sarah Lewin Frasier. And here’s a short piece from the June 2020 issue of the magazine, in the section called Advances: Dispatches from the Frontiers of Science, Technology and Medicine. The article is titled “Quick Hits,” and it’s a rundown of some noncoronavirus stories from around the globe. […]
I’m currently getting over a cold. In fact, as I write this I have a warm drink and a box of tissues right beside my laptop. It isn’t a bad cold (or even a man cold), it’s just enough to annoy me, interrupt my sleep, and cause me to miss a few workouts. It’s my off-season […]
Around 15,000 years ago, the Earth’s climate was in turmoil. Carbon dioxide concentrations were rapidly rising in the atmosphere. Sea levels were rising across the globe. The Northern Hemisphere was heating up. At the same time, the area around Antarctica began to cool down. And as it cooled, a perplexing trend emerged: Atmospheric CO2 stopped […]
NASA’s Artemis program has been called ambitious for its goal of returning humans to Earth’s moon as early as 2024. But its most audacious aspiration is something else entirely: a plan to usher in an era of sustainable lunar operations by mining the moon’s reserves of water ice. Once tapped, this extraterrestrial reservoir could become […]
Originally published in May 1917 Credit: Scientific American Advertisement “Mr. Chalmers Mitchell’s new book, ‘Darwinism and War’ is a reply to the argument in favor of war, so often put forth in the last three years by a certain German school, that a state of constant struggle or warfare is a dominant factor in evolution. […]
On June 5, 2020, the U.S Centers for Disease Control (CDC) published the details of a recent multistate outbreak of mumps in its Morbidity and Mortality Weekly Report (MMWR). The outbreak involved 62 cases linked to a single asymptomatic wedding attendee. Even though mumps is a vaccine-preventable disease, 41 of the individuals infected in the […]
When you perform a Google Image search for “victims of climate change,” the faces you see are those of Black and brown people in the tropics. The images depict small reef islands in the Pacific Ocean, arid landscapes in East Africa and flooded villages in South Asia. At some level, this association seems to make […]
In his book Entangled Life, scientist Merlin Sheldrake introduces us to vastly underappreciated players in the story of our planet. Fungal species count in the millions—the true number is unknown. And they serve as a platform for, and partner in, almost every aspect of life. No fungi, no us. Sheldrake’s book is a poetic letter […]