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Science

SCIENCE: New Quantum Experiment Puts 2000 Atoms in Two Places at Once

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atoms

Giant molecules can be in two places at once, thanks to quantum physics. That’s something that scientists have long known is theoretically true based on a few facts: Every particle or group of particles in the universe is also a wave — even large particles, even bacteria, even human beings, even planets and stars. And waves occupy multiple places in space at once. So any chunk of matter can also occupy two places at once. Physicists call this phenomenon “quantum superposition,” and for decades, they have demonstrated it using small particles. But in recent years, physicists have scaled up their … Read more

SCIENCE: Worms With Three Sexes Live in Poisonous Lake in California

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Mono Lake - pixabay

Mono Lake in California contains super salty, arsenic-laced water and very few signs of life. Now, researchers have found eight worm species that thrive in the extreme ecosystem — and one of those species has three sexes, according to a new study. Mono Lake lies in the eastern Sierra Mountains and serves as habitat for brine shrimp, diving flies, bacteria and algae, but nothing else — or so scientists thought. Biologist Paul Sternberg and his colleagues at the California Institute of Technology thought that microscopic worms called nematodes might lurk in Mono Lake, partially because the wriggling creatures are considered … Read more

SCIENCE: Scientists Invent Really Black Stuff

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black coating

On the floor of the New York Stock Exchange, a team of artists and scientists have made a 16.78-carat diamond — valued at more than $2 million — disappear. Granted, denizens of the Stock Exchange are no strangers to making vast amounts of wealth vanish, but this time the scientists are doing the heavy lifting. Working with artist Diemut Strebe, a team of researchers from MIT covered the shimmering yellow diamond in a newly discovered type of carbon nanotube coating that turns 3D objects into black, almost 100% light-free voids. According to the researchers, who described the coating in a … Read more

DNA Analysis – No Monster in Loch Ness (Sad Emoji)

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loch ness - pixabay

The Loch Ness monster has haunted a deep Scottish lake for more than 1,000 years — in imagination, at least. But a scientific survey of the waters of Loch Ness found it contains no traces of “monster” DNA at all, adding weight to the already-likely prospect that “Nessie” doesn’t really exist. Geneticist Neil Gemmell of Otago University in New Zealand said an environmental DNA survey of Loch Ness saw no signs it was home to any giant reptiles or aquatic dinosaurs – a theory sometimes used to explain the mysterious monster, which has reportedly been seen several times since the … Read more

SCIENCE: Could Quantum Gravity Reverse Time?

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quantum gravity - time travel - pixabay

You’ve probably heard of Schrödinger’s cat, the unfortunate feline in a box that is simultaneously alive and dead until the box is opened to reveal its actual state. Well, now wrap your mind around Schrödinger’s time, a situation in which one event can simultaneously be the cause and effect of another event. Such a scenario may be inevitable in any theory of quantum gravity, a still-murky area of physics that seeks to combine Albert Einstein’s theory of general relativity with the workings of quantum mechanics. In a new paper, scientists create a mashup of the two by imagining starships near … Read more

SCIENCE: Building a Planetary “Life Scanner”

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Star Trek Beyond

When the crewmembers of the starship Enterprise pull into orbit around a new planet, one of the first things they do is scan for life-forms. Here in the real world, researchers have long been trying to figure out how to unambiguously detect signs of life on distant exoplanets. They are now one step closer to this goal, thanks to a new remote-sensing technique that relies on a quirk of biochemistry causing light to spiral in a particular direction and produce a fairly unmistakable signal. The method, described in a recent paper published in the journal Astrobiology, could be used aboard … Read more

SCIENCE: It Turns Out Homosexuality is Complicated

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gay couple - deposit photos

No individual gene alone makes a person gay, lesbian or bisexual; instead, thousands of genes likely influence sexual orientation, a massive new study of the genomes of nearly half a million people suggests. Across human societies and in both sexes, between 2% and 10% of people report engaging in sex with a member of the same sex, either exclusively or in addition to sex with a member of the opposite sex, the researchers said. The biological factors that contribute to sexual orientation are largely unknown, but many scientists suspect that genetics plays a role, given that same-sex sexual behavior appears … Read more

PENTAGON: Lasers Could Soon Send Voice Message to Specific Targets

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laser - pixabay

As a part of a military initiative called the Joint Non-Lethal Weapons Directorate (JNLWP), the project aims to create laser weapons that can transmit clear snippets of human speech across long distances. To accomplish this task, the weapon uses a principle called the Laser Induced Plasma Effect, which involves firing an incredibly powerful laser to create a ball of plasma, then shooting a second laser to oscillate the plasma, creating sound waves. With enough laser bursts fired at the right frequencies, the plasma vibrations can actually mimic human speech. It sounds like science fiction — but, according to the news … Read more

SCIENCE: CRISPR Gene Editing To Be Used Inside Humans For the First Time

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dna - pixabay

The first study to test the gene-editing technology CRISPR inside the human body is about to get underway in the United States, according to news reports. The study plans to use CRISPR to treat an inherited eye disorder that causes blindness, according to the Associated Press. People with this condition have a mutation in a gene that affects the function of the retina, the light-sensitive cells at the back of the eye that are essential for normal vision. The condition is a form of Leber congenital amaurosis, one of the most common causes of childhood blindness that affects about 2 … Read more

U=(N/T)M*G: Beast

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I think my favorite part of science is finding something expected that isn’t quite what we expected. This particular discovery is no different and I’m giggling over it. Astronomers have found galaxies 11 billion light years from Earth. We knew they were there, we’ve seen a sizable number but were always looking for more. Higher numbers mean more we can pull data from. No surprises. Everything’s normal. We keep looking. A cluster of 39 galaxies come to astronomers’ attention. These old behemoths are tightly pack and massive on a scale unknown for the early Universe until now. It’s hard to … Read more