Science

The United States has supported the World Health Organization (WHO) since its inception, playing a central role in its 1948 creation because it ultimately served American interests, despite the entity’s well-known flaws. Heavily influenced by the post-war notion that universalism was the best corrective to yet another devastating global conflict, 20th century leaders in the U.S. understood that improving global health and containing emergencies were desirable outcomes in and of themselves and would directly reduce health threats to Americans. At the time, the U.S. also recognized that building and maintaining an effective global health infrastructure was beyond its lone capacity. Because no one could predict where new infections would emerge, the world required a truly global surveillance ...

BBC/Curious Films/Rory Langdon The chances are that you think about artificial intelligence far more today than you did five years ago. Since ChatGPT was launched in November 2022, we have become accustomed to interacting with AIs in most spheres of life, from chatbots and smart home tech to banking and healthcare. But such rapid change brings unexpected problems – as mathematician and broadcaster Hannah Fry shows in AI Confidential With Hannah Fry, a new three-part BBC documentary in which she talks to people whose lives have been transformed by the technology. She spoke to New Scientist about how we should view AI, its role in modern mathematics – and why it will upend the global economy. Bethan Ackerley: In the show, you explore what AI is doing to our relationships...

Some atoms seem to be particularly stable because of their numbers of protons and neutronsShutterstock/ktsdesign A special set of numbers has formed the backbone of nuclear physics research for decades, and now we finally know how it arises from the quantum mix of nuclear particles and forces. Nearly 80 years ago, physicist Maria Goeppert Mayer showed that when the nucleus of an atom contains certain numbers of protons and neutrons, such as 50 or 82, it becomes exceptionally stable. In the years since, researchers amassed evidence of more such “magic numbers”, which are found in the most stable, and therefore most abundant, elements in our universe. Goeppert Mayer and her contemporaries explained these numbers by proposing that protons and neutrons occupy discrete...

Gisela Winckler on board the RV Joides Resolution in the South Pacific.Credit: C. Alvarez Zarikian Gisela Winckler grew up in rural Germany, nowhere near the ocean. As an undergraduate, she chose to major in physics, which she continued to pursue as a Ph.D. at the University of Heidelberg, but she remembers feeling uncertain about how to connect her laboratory studies with something tangible in the real world. It was only when she discovered environmental physics and marine science that her interests started to cohere. Now, Winckler is a climate scientist at Lamont-Doherty Earth Observatory and professor of climate at the Columbia Climate School. She focuses on the history and causes of past, present and future climate variability, as well as the ocean’s role in the climate system an...

Oshen’s robotic sailboats are powered by the wind and the sunOshen The UK’s Royal Navy may return to the age of sail, with a new demonstration involving a flotilla of small, wind-propelled robot boats. Made by Oshen in Plymouth, UK, the vessels, known as C-Stars, are just 1.2 metres long and weigh around 40 kilos. Solar panels power navigation, communications and sensors, while a sail provides propulsion. Deployed as a constellation, the small vessels act as a wide-area sensor network. “The simplest way of describing C-Stars is as self-deploying, station-keeping ocean buoys,” says Oshen CEO Anahita Laverack. The boats can sail at about 2 knots, covering around 50 miles per day, or use the wind to remain in place rather than drifting. They don’t need to be fast. “S...