Life
What makes something alive? We simply don't know, but synthetic biologists are a step closer to providing an answer thanks to SpudCell, the most sophisticated attempt at creating an artificial life form yet
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Australia’s tiger quoll – as featured in Dan Werb’s Our Wild Familiars, out this month Shutterstock/Craig Dingle
It’s a hot month in London – in oh so many ways. Life, being alive and death are big themes in the new popular science books out in July, not to mention that small thing of being a human and all the messy feelings and sensory stuff that goes with it. Then there’s also AI filling the future – in ways that worry one of the world’s leading forensic scientists, as well as ethicists who are paid to think about this sort of thing. I’m looking forward to delving into the worlds of volcanoes and pharmacology, which look positively safe and stable in comparison…
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Faced with observations of early black holes and galaxies that weren’t expected to exist, scientists have come up with a wealth of new theories to explain them. Now they just need to figure out which ones are true.
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Researchers at McGill University have developed a new quantum device that generates tiny sound-like particles called phonons at temperatures just above absolute zero. The advance could help pave the way for phonon lasers, a technology with potential uses in communications, medical diagnostics, and advanced sensing.
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A long-running debate about a mysterious crater hidden beneath the North Sea has finally been settled. Researchers have confirmed that the Silverpit Crater was created when an asteroid or comet slammed into the region roughly 43 to 46 million years ago.
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That question is at the center of a new paper published in Nature Astronomy, where researchers examine the often-overlooked problem of "false negatives" in the search for extraterrestrial life. These are cases in which life exists, or once existed, but scientists fail to detect it.
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Researchers led by the Institute of Cosmos Sciences of the University of Barcelona (ICCUB) have developed a new technique that could greatly improve how scientists study the expansion of the Universe and investigate the mysterious force known as dark energy.
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A central part of a quantum computer built by the company Infleqtion Infleqtion
The US government wants to get hold of a quantum computer good enough to contribute to scientific breakthroughs in just two years. It will use it to try to accelerate the research and development of new materials, pharmaceuticals and molecules useful in agriculture and manufacturing.
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Imagine pouring together two cups of warm water and somehow ending up with a cup of boiling water. That cannot happen in everyday life, but at the quantum level, something similar is possible. Multiple low-energy particles of light can combine their energy to create a single particle with much higher energy.
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In quantum states that theoretically last forever, particles get bounced around again and again, as if in a hall of mirrors Guy Bell/Alamy; Yayoi Kusama, Infinity Mirrored Room