Science

Adapted from a press release written by Marina Naumova for Penn State University. For billions of years, Earth’s continents have remained remarkably stable, forming the foundation for mountains, ecosystems and civilizations. But the secret to their stability has mystified scientists for more than a century. Now, a new study by researchers at Penn State and Columbia University provides the clearest evidence yet for how the landforms became and remained so stable—and the key ingredient is heat. In a paper published on October 13 in the journal Nature Geoscience, the researchers—Peter Kelemen, a geologist at Lamont-Doherty Earth Observatory, which is part of the Columbia Climate School, and Andrew Smye, ​​associate professor of geosciences at Penn State—demonstrated that the formation o...

A galaxy cluster produces gravitational lensing, bending light around itNASA, ESA, Michael Gladders (University of Chicago); Acknowledgement: Judy Schmidt Quantum physics may be the secret ingredient for understanding cosmic objects that our telescopes cannot show us in detail, or at all. To understand space, we collect and analyse light that travels from objects like stars into our telescopes, but that light doesn’t always travel in straight lines. Often, as it passes by a very massive object, such as a planet or a black hole, the light’s trajectory bends and creates distorted images as if an extra lens was added somewhere along the way. But what about objects that are not cosmic heavyweights and have relatively small masses? Traditional imaging methods struggle ...

Since COP21, in Paris, nearly every nation has pledged to take part in the global climate effort. Over just the past few years, the UNFCCC negotiations have evolved through key milestones, such as COP26 (in Glasgow), where countries agreed for the first time to phase down coal and submitted their second round of NDCs; COP27 (in Sharm El-Sheikh), where parties reached a landmark decision to establish a Loss and Damage Fund for countries most affected by climate impacts; and COP28 (in Dubai), where the first Global Stocktake assessed collective progress and called for accelerated action to transition away from fossil fuels and scale up renewable energy deployment. Check out the following infographic for other major COP moments throughout history; what themes to expect each day at COP...

Google’s quantum computing Willow chipGoogle Quantum AI Researchers at Google Quantum AI have used their Willow quantum computer to help interpret data from Nuclear Magnetic Resonance (NMR) spectroscopy, a mainstay of chemistry and biology research. The work puts quantum computers on the precipice of being able to usefully augment commonplace molecular technologies. The most rigorously proven uses for quantum computers are in breaking cryptography, but today’s devices are too small and error-prone to run decryption algorithms. Another place where they could make strides, though, is in accelerating procedures used to discover new drugs and materials. Such procedures are inherently quantum in nature, so they make a good match for the capabilities of quantum computer...

A thin crystalline film of table sugar, or sucrose, captured in a polarised light micrographKARL GAFF/SCIENCE PHOTO LIBRARY Scientists have confected a new way to search for dark matter using giant crystals of sucrose, or table sugar – though, so far, they have found only the bittersweet taste of a lack of results. We believe that dark matter exists based on the strange gravitational pull it appears to exert on galaxies, but despite decades searching for possible dark matter particles, scientists have found nothing. Many of these searches looked for weakly interacting massive particles (WIMPs), which were long thought to be among the most promising dark matter candidates. But even the most sensitive searches came up empty handed. Most WIMP detectors look for flash...