Is The Earth's Mantle Full of Diamonds?
Parts of the Earth’s mantle might be loaded with diamonds, if a new model turns out to be correct. But no, you can’t mine them—they’d be almost a hundred miles below the surface.
How Many Nukes Would It Take to Send the Earth Spiraling Off Into the Sun?
The modern age has brought one of the most nightmarish inventions in all of human history—the atomic bomb. These weapons harness the power of physics, releasing an immense amount of energy from a relatively small amount of mass to generate unfathomable fire, disease, and death. They have the power to end the world as…
Can We Measure Our Own Galaxy Speeding Through Space?
You’re probably sitting still, right? Wrong, absolutely wrong. Not only are you on a spinning orb, but you’re also traveling around 70,000 miles per hour around a star, in a galaxy that, observations imply, is sailing through space at over a million miles per hour.
New Quantum Computer Milestone Would Make Richard Feynman Very Happy
A commercially available “quantum computer” has been on the market since 2011, but it’s controversial. The D-Wave machine is nothing like other quantum computers, and until recently, scientists have doubted that it was even truly quantum at all. But the company has released an important new result, one that in part…
See the South Pole Message That Alerted Astronomers to the Cosmic-Ray-Spewing Blazar
Today, scientists made a huge announcement: Telescopes around the world recorded a source of mysterious, ultra-high-energy cosmic rays, the highest-energy particles that hit the Earth. It all started with a text message.
Cosmic Ray Mystery Finally Cracked Thanks to Supermassive Black Hole Beaming Energy Straight at Earth
Every so often, protons and even entire atomic nuclei strike the Earth with extremely high energies—much higher than what scientists can produce in their most powerful physics experiments. Since the discovery of “cosmic rays” a hundred years ago, no one knew for sure where the most energetic of these particles came…
New Analysis of Potentially Habitable Exoplanet Makes Us Hungry for Better TelescopesÂ
Eleven light-years from Earth, orbiting a dim red star, there’s an exoplanet called Ross 128b that, as we recently reported, has some the best prospects for life of any known distant world. New results may help astronomers figure out what the planet is made of—and they offer more evidence that it might be inside its…
We Asked Celeb Physicist Brian Cox About Flat Earth Conspiracies, the Multiverse, and Ghosts
There’s a growing, bewildering movement of folks who reject the most basic learnings of science in favor of conspiracy theories and hocus pocus—as a science journalist, I regularly get emails from people who firmly believe the Earth is flat, as shocking as that may seem. I recently chatted with Brian Cox, host of BBC…
Listen to the Sound of Saturn's Electromagnetic Energy
Sound and light have way more in common than you think, which is why it’s easy to turn light data, like radio waves, into sound. This can make for some pretty incredible science communicating tools—just look up Jupiter’s whistlers, falling bomb sounds caused by the planet’s lightning; or the chirp of LIGO’s…
Scientists Harvest Hydrogen from Water in Microgravity, a Nifty Trick for Deep-Space Travel
A team of scientists announced they have harvested hydrogen from water in microgravity—a proof-of-principle test that may one day lead to a way to acquire fuel or other resources during a long-distance, crewed space mission.
Meteorite Hunters Find Remains of Last Month's Botswana Fireball
Last month, a fireball lit up the skies over Botswana just hours after scientists first spotted the space rock hurtling toward Earth. Researchers from Botswana, South Africa, Finland, and the United States have now found pieces of the meteorite.
New Higgs Boson Discovery Could Help Solve Cosmic Puzzle
Scientists can’t take pictures of the Higgs boson. But they can find proof of its existence by watching “E=mc2” play out in hundreds of millions of particle collisions per second and detecting how it decays into other particles they do know how to spot. Now, six years after officially discovering the Higgs boson,…
Weird New Quantum Diamonds Offer Hope for a Quantum Internet
“Diamonds are forever” is a cliche that fails to fully encapsulate the many strange properties of diamonds. But a new kind of diamond, one loaded with impurities, relies on a sort of foreverness that could be useful in future quantum technology—maybe even a quantum internet.
How Will Future Civilizations Survive the Accelerating Expansion of the Universe?
If you think we have problems now, just wait a few billion years, when the accelerating expansion of the Universe triggers an energy crisis of cosmological proportions. Sounds grim, but as a new paper points out, an advanced civilization faced with doom won’t have to go gently into that good night—there may very well…
Jupiter's Moons Leave Signature Spots in Its Aurorae
Despite being wildly different from Earth in almost every way, Jupiter does feature some familiar phenomena—including aurorae, what we call the Northern and Southern lights. But Jupiter’s aurorae have something Earth’s don’t: strange features caused by the Jovian moons.
My 15 Favorite Science and Tech Books for Smart Beach Reading
Summer is finally upon us, which means it’s time to put together a reading list, whether it’s for the beach, your cottage, or the hammock in your backyard. Here are 15 science and technology books that will keep your nerdy brains engaged and titillated.
Einstein's Theory of Gravity Holds Up on Test of a Three-Star System
Scientists understand gravity pretty well when it comes to two objects, but add a third, and you’ve got chaos—a system that’s impossible to explain with our simplest equations. But you also have a way to test the limits of Einstein’s theory of gravity.
Why Particle Physicists Are Excited About This Mysterious Inconsistency
Scientists haven’t conclusively spotted any new particles since the Higgs boson, and that’s got some people worried—there are a ton of other physics puzzles remaining, many of which would require the presence of a new particle to resolve. But recently, there have been some tantalizing clues of new physics, perhaps a…
Astronomers Have Captured First Direct Evidence of an Exoplanet Being Born
At this point, we’ve spotted several thousand exoplanets—there’s nothing super exciting anymore about finding a distant star with several worlds orbiting it. But today, scientists are announcing that they have seen an exoplanet in the middle of forming.
