Science
Scientific discoveries and research
Flexible force fields can protect our return to the moon
Lunar dust remains one of the biggest challenges for a long-term human presence on the moon. Its jagged, clingy nature makes it naturally stick to everything fr...
How massive lava fields formed in the Pacific Northwest
Volcanic eruptions are significant geologic hazards. Underwater volcanoes are challenging to study, yet they play an integral role in marine geology and may cau...
A new way to judge how the economy performs in booms and busts
When the economy grows or shrinks, we often focus on how long the phase lasts or how deep it goes. A new paper asks a sharper question: How does actual growth c...
Robot clean-up crews tackle litter on Europe's seabed
EU researchers are developing AI-guided robot fleets to take over the dangerous, dirty work of finding and removing marine litter from the sea floor. A ship wit...
Can a chatbot be a co-author? AI helps crack a long-stalled gluon amplitude proof
Like many scientists, theoretical physicist Andrew Strominger was unimpressed with early attempts at probing ChatGPT, receiving clever-sounding answers that did...
How early farming unintentionally bred highly competitive 'warrior' wheat
An evolutionary "arms race" for light and space led to the early domestication of wheat, according to new research that could offer fresh insights into crop des...
Americium, curium and californium—crystallizing the rarest elements
Actinides are a group of heavy, radioactive elements that include uranium, plutonium, americium, curium, berkelium and californium. Understanding how these elem...
Quantum trembling: Why there are no truly flat molecules
Traditional chemistry textbooks present a tidy picture: Atoms in molecules occupy fixed positions, connected by rigid rods. A molecule such as formic acid (meth...
Why hikers need a backup for the maps on their phones
Four of five Norwegians use digital maps when they are in the outdoors. In just a few years, our mobile phones have gone from being a practical navigation aid t...
Pregnancy complications may have helped wipe out Neanderthals
Neanderthals disappeared from the fossil record approximately 40,000 years ago. Their extinction was a gradual process over thousands of years, and theories as...
New book explores links between disasters and development
Disasters arise from the convergence of natural and social forces. Earthquakes, cyclones, floods, droughts, and other catastrophic events disproportionately aff...
Atom-thin electronics withstand space radiation, potentially surviving for centuries in orbit
Atom-thick layers of molybdenum disulfide are ideally suited for radiation-resistant spacecraft electronics, researchers in China have confirmed. In a study pub...