Science

Montreal Protocol Is Delaying First Ice-Free Arctic Summer by Holly Evarts |May 25, 2023 This story was originally published by Columbia Engineering. When scientists discovered a hole over Antarctica in 1985, countries across the globe got together and wrote a treaty designed to protect the ozone layer, which shields the Earth—and us—from harmful levels of ultraviolet radiation. The resulting Montreal Protocol, the only United Nations treaty ratified by every country in the world, was signed in 1987 and entered into effect in 1989, when little was known about its impact on the global climate. Its purpose was to reduce atm...

E-skin is soft and stretchy enough to wrap around a fingerJiancheng Lai and Weichen Wang/Bao Research Group/Stanford University A patch of artificial skin can convert signals from pressure or heat sensors into brain signals – touching this electronic skin after it was connected to a rat’s brain spurred the rat to kick its leg. This could be used to improve prosthetics for people who have skin damage. Weichen Wang at Stanford University in California and his colleagues created a device called e-skin out of an electronic circuit and pressure and temperature sensors, all crafted out of a thin and stretchy rubbery material. The team merged these components into one patch that easily conforms to uneven surfaces, such as a human finger. E-skin works by imitating biological s...

THE first thing you need to know is that virtual particles, which are impossible to avoid if you want to understand how the fundamental forces of nature animate matter, aren’t really particles at all. “The language makes people misunderstand,” says Matt Strassler, a theoretical physicist at Harvard University. The second is that they might not be proper physical constituents of the universe. Let’s start with some basics. According to quantum theory, our best description of the subatomic realm, particles aren’t the infinitesimal snooker balls we tend to imagine, but excitations in underlying quantum fields. The Higgs boson is a spike in the underlying Higgs field, for instance, and electrons are spikes in the electromagnetic field. These fields permeate the entire univ...

New Tool Helps Communities Prepare for Natural Hazards by Emily Halnon |May 19, 2023 From wildfires across the West, to hurricanes in the Southeast, to floods in Texas, natural disasters are taking a toll on regions across the country. And climate change is increasing the frequency of devastating climate and weather events. A newly revamped tool from the National Center for Disaster Preparedness (NCDP) at Columbia University’s Climate School aims to help communities better prepare for natural hazards by providing data-driven information about the specific risks that different geographic areas face. The Natural Hazards Ind...