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Could we put out the sun with a sun-sized orb of water?

18 July 2023

What would happen if we pushed a sun-sized ball of water into our star? The Dead Planets Society podcast dives into the possibilities

Protesters gather outside the Supreme Court on 24 June in response to the court?s decision to overturn Roe v. Wade

26 US states are likely to ban abortion to the fullest extent possible

27 June 2022

After the US Supreme Court decision to overturn Roe v Wade, abortion bans in states such as Louisiana and Tennessee won't include exceptions for cases of rape or incest

Predators may make prey get smart and grow more brain cells

11 December 2019

Predators are a problem for Trinidad’s killifish: in streams where the problem is worst the killifish grow more brain cells, perhaps to help evade the hunters

Samoan government takes drastic measures to fight measles outbreak

6 December 2019

Samoan government employees stopped work to administer measles vaccines in an attempt to halt an outbreak of the deadly disease sweeping the island nation

Amazon enters quantum computing race with cloud quantum processors

3 December 2019

Amazon has combined three types of quantum computing processors from D-Wave Systems, IonQ, and Rigetti Computing into a cloud service to test quantum algorithms

NASA has found the remnants of India’s Vikram moon lander

3 December 2019

In September, India’s attempted moon landing ended in a crash, but the debris was lost. Now NASA has pinpointed where the Vikram lander smashed down

Hospital visits go up after days with higher levels of air pollution

27 November 2019

On days when fine particulate matter in the air increases even a little bit, more people seem to end up in hospital for illnesses such as heart and lung conditions

Grand unified game theory can represent all two-player games

20 November 2019

Game theory helps calculate the probabilities of an outcome in adversarial situations, and we use several games as models – but now there’s one that can cover many situations

If you don’t notice something within 1.5 seconds, you may never see it

20 November 2019

Inattentional blindness, a kind of selective focus, is so strong that if you don’t notice new objects in your sight line quickly, you may never see them at all

Chelsea Lydell holds her son, Joseph, 4, as she joins hundreds of others waiting to get into a legislative committee to oppose a proposal to give state public health officials instead of local doctors the power to decide which children can skip their shots before attending school, at the Capitol, in Sacramento, Calif. The bill, by state Sen. Richard Pan, D-Sacramento, a pediatrician, said his legislation would give state health officials the tools they need to prevent outbreaks of vaccine-preventable diseases like measles

California's strict vaccination laws may only have a small effect

4 November 2019

In the wake of measles outbreaks, California enacted stricter laws governing vaccine exemptions – but loopholes mean many children still go without vaccinations