On Wednesday, the US Nuclear Regulatory Commission announced that it had issued its first construction approval in nearly a decade. The approval will allow work to begin on a site in Kemmerer, Wyoming, by a company called TerraPower. That company is most widely recognized as being financially backed by Bill Gates, but it’s attempting to ..
Tag : Science
Judging from recent comments from Gen. Stephen Whiting, head of US Space Command, we shouldn’t expect anything like that in whatever the government might release in response to Trump’s pending order. Gen. Stephen Whiting, commander of US Space Command. Credit: US Air Force/Eric Dietrich Gen. Stephen Whiting, commander of US Space Command. Credit: US Air ..
Late in 2025, we covered the development of an AI system called Evo that was trained on massive numbers of bacterial genomes. So many that, when prompted with sequences from a cluster of related genes, it could correctly identify the next one or suggest a completely novel protein. That system worked because bacteria tend to ..
The results: The team found traces of wild grasses and legumes, fruits or berries, green vegetables, and roots and tubers native to the broader region. Shards recovered from sites in the Don River basin showed these people used the seeds of wild legumes (possibly clover) and grasses, as well as showing some evidence of bran ..
The proteomics results confirmed, among other things, the presence of many popular ingredients used in the recipes, such as beech, watercress, and rosemary traces found next to hair loss remedies—commonly attributed to an “overheated brain—along with cabbage and radish oil, chicory, lizards, and, um, human feces. (Just how badly do you want to grow back ..
Small, 2026. DOI: 10.1002/smll.202507934 (About DOIs). Vanishing star became a black hole In 2014, NASA’s NEOWISE project picked up a gradual brightening of infrared light coming from a massive star in the Andromeda galaxy, an observation that was confirmed by several other ground- and space-based telescopes. Astronomers kept monitoring the star, so they also noticed ..
Similarly, in response to an accidental flooding event in the lab, researchers observed a highly unusual period of multiday torpor in a golden spiny mouse, its temperature reaching a low of about 75°F (24°C). This more flexible use of torpor can help heterotherms wait out a catastrophe, Geiser says. In contrast, homeothermic species can’t just ..
Despite the headline, this isn’t really a story about superconductivity—at least not the superconductivity that people care about, the stuff that doesn’t require exotic refrigeration to work. Instead, it’s a story about how superconductivity can be used as a test of some of the weirder consequences of quantum mechanics, one that involves non-existent particles of ..
By now, it’s firmly established that modern humans and their Neanderthal relatives met and mated as our ancestors expanded out of Africa, resulting in a substantial amount of Neanderthal DNA scattered throughout our genome. Less widely recognized is that some of the Neanderthal genomes we’ve seen have pieces of modern human DNA as well. Not ..
We’re all familiar with the high-pitched squeak of basketball shoes on the court during games, or tires squealing on pavement. Scientists conducted several experiments and discovered that the geometry of the sneakers’ tread patterns determines the squeak’s frequency, enabling the team to make rubber blocks set to specific frequencies and slide them across glass surfaces ..
