Science

The French inventor Jacques de Vaucanson is remembered for, among other things, producing three curious automata in the 18th century. A poster from the time advertised them all side by side: a figure that played a real flute, another that banged a tambourine and a duck that gobbled up corn and seemingly turned it into pellets of… well, use your imagination. For physicist Nicole Yunger Halpern, based at the National Institute of Standards and Technology in Maryland, these antiquated automata have a resonance with some of today’s most cutting-edge technology. Vaucanson’s inventions prefigured the industrial revolution, during which mechanisation went from being a quirky curiosity to a force that reshaped the globe. We may be at an analogous turning point today when it c...

As I ran the Austin Marathon recently, I thought about how this ancient ritual of traversing 26.2 miles brings communities together, promotes volunteerism and inspires people to root for complete strangers. Marathons are a celebration of human endurance and perseverance, but as an M.S. in Sustainability Science graduate, I couldn’t help but wonder: What is the environmental cost of this massive event? Thousands of paper cups and tiny plastic gel packs littered the streets, discarded by runners hydrating and sugaring up on the go. Medals, made of metal and ribbon, were handed out to every finisher—not to mention the overstock. The sheer amount of single-use materials—from bibs and timing chips to the plastic-wrapped recovery snacks and thermal blankets—raised questions about the sustaina...

Nuke Image Circle, 2024James Stanford The kaleidoscopic patterns in this artwork draw the eye towards its glowing centre. Despite its dreamy, hypnotic effect, however, the work has its roots in the terrifying reality of a nuclear bomb. Its creator, artist James Stanford, grew up in Las Vegas, Nevada, near where more than 200 above-ground nuclear tests took place in the 1950s and 1960s. His new interpretive photography series, Atomic, draws from both the nuclear landscape of his childhood and his time as a technical illustrator for the US Atomic Energy Commission. The main image is Nuke Image Circle, 2024. Below, Stanford is shown beside Spectre Fission. James Stanford is shown beside Spectre FissionNephology LTD 2025 “With the Atomic series, I was trying to show both t...

On March 4, 2025, experts from diverse fields gathered at Columbia University to explore major questions in the rapidly evolving field of artificial intelligence at the inaugural Columbia AI Summit. Covering topics from healthcare, business and policy, to the sciences, engineering and the humanities, the summit offered a 360-degree view of AI’s transformative impact on society. Featuring Climate School researchers, the afternoon session, From Chaos to Code: How AI Can Tame the Climate Crisis, addressed how AI is emerging as a powerful tool in climate science, disaster preparedness and building resilience across interconnected systems. Read on for highlights from the session or watch the video below. Photo: Eileen Barroso/Columbia University Speakers Introduc...

Microsoft’s Majorana 1 quantum computerJohn Brecher/Microsoft Last month Microsoft announced, with fanfare, that it had created a new kind of matter and used it to make a quantum computer architecture that could lead to machines “capable of solving meaningful, industrial-scale problems in years, not decades”. But since then, the tech giant has increasingly come under fire from researchers who say it has done nothing of the sort. “My impression is that the response of the expert physics community has been overwhelmingly negative. Privately, people are just outraged,” says Sergey Frolov at the University of Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania. Microsoft’s claim rests on elusive and exotic quasiparticles called Majorana zero modes (MZMs). These can theoretically be used to crea...