Into the Vortex: Megacomputers and the Quest to Understand Superstorms
A monster was coming to central Oklahoma. Early in the evening of May 30, 2013, Cathy Finley and her partner, Bruce Lee, were driving along a back road near the small town of Guthrie, Oklahoma, 30 miles north of the state’s capital, when they spotted Tim Samaras and two members of his crew leaning against a white…
Cutting Carbs Won't Save You From Cancer
Half-eaten doughnuts hit the bottom of waste bins around the world this week, as news feeds spread word of a new dietary danger. Yes, headlines declared, a new study shows that sugar is the favorite food of cancer. Cancer. “This link between sugar and cancer has sweeping consequences,” wrote Johan Thevelein, a Belgian biologist and…
Museums Are Ready for the Next Natural Disaster. Are You?
This story originally appeared on Slate and is part of the Climate Desk collaboration. When Superstorm Sandy ripped through New York City in October 2012, it did not discriminate. At the construction site of the new Whitney Museum of American Art, chief operating officer John Stanley recalls “mechanical equipment bobbing like corks” in the floodwaters. And at the Rubin…
Want to Really Teach a Robot? Command It With VR
Do me a favor and grab and object near you. Anything will do. Even if it’s something you’ve never handled before, odds are your brain automatically worked out how you should grasp the thing and with what force. It’s the kind of clever dexterity that makes you human. (You are human, I hope?) Ask a…
Why the US Solar Industry Doesn't Want Government Protection
Update: On January 22, 2018, President Trump approved a 30 percent tariff on imported solar panels, which will eventually decrease to 15 percent. Suniva was once among the top solar panel manufacturers in America. Then, in April, the Georgia company declared bankruptcy. A few days after, it revealed why: Foreign governments, like China, had subsidized…
A Malaria Breathalyzer? It's Closer Than You Think
Seated before a table covered in a knit blue cloth, a researcher hands a young girl a peculiar device. Attached to one end is a small cardboard tube; to the other, a large clear bag. The child grasps the rig with her left hand, places her lips around the cardboard, and lets out a long,…
The Physics Behind the Magical Parallax Effect Running Your AR Apps
There's something sort of cool in the next version of Apple's iOS. It's called ARKit—basically, it's a part of Apple's developer package to help programmers create awesome augmented reality apps. Like, maybe a program that adds dancing hotdogs to your screen so that they look like they are there in real life. Or better yet,…
New Kepler Exoplanet Discovery Fueled by AI
Saturn's rings sure are pretty, and Matt Damon’s been to Mars, but our eight-planet solar system may not be that special after all. Today, scientists using data from NASA’s Kepler spacecraft announced they’d discovered an eighth planet orbiting a star 2,500 light years away. They’ve named the planet Kepler-90i after the star it orbits, Kepler-90,…
Don’t Blame Pigs for Swine Flu—Species Hopping Is How Viruses Evolve
When new species evolve, where do their viruses come from? As little more than free-ranging bundles of genetic material, viruses desperately need to hijack their hosts’ cellular machinery and resources to replicate, over and over again. Without its host, a virus is nothing. Because of that dependence, some viruses have stuck with their hosts throughout…
Buried in a Gold Mine, a Particle Accelerator Searches for Stellar Secrets
In August 2015, scientists from the University of Notre Dame went west, the disassembled pieces of a particle accelerator secured in the back of their U-haul. Over 1,000 miles later and nearly a mile down, they started installing the machine in a new home: deep within an old mine in the town of Lead, South…