Fob Blog
Over the last 485 million years, Earth has been both a lot colder and a lot hotter than once thought. A new temperature timeline that combines geologic data with computational simulations reveals a rich, detailed and dramatic picture of the ebb and flow of icehouse and greenhouse conditions on Earth throughout this span of time, […]
TV stars and terrorists may appear to have little in common. But after watching YouTube videos by members of a violent terrorist organization, Yotam Ophir realized the two groups deploy similar tactics to connect with remote audiences. The terrorists dressed casually, stared straight at the camera when talking and narrated their pasts in gripping, plot-driven […]
Extreme Climate Survey Science News is collecting reader questions about how to navigate our planet’s changing climate. What do you want to know about extreme heat and how it can lead to extreme weather events? The masses of neutrinos are less than a millionth that of the next lightest particle, the electron, but no one […]
Electric vehicles promise to help wean us off of fossil fuels, but they introduce a new problem: how to get enough of the lithium that EV batteries require (SN: 5/7/19). Materials scientist Chong Liu of the University of Chicago has some ideas. Existing technology can extract lithium only from sources with highly concentrated ions, like […]
The ocean’s circulatory system may not be doing as poorly as previously thought. A vital ocean artery known as the Florida Current, a bellwether for the ocean’s ability to regulate Earth’s climate, has seemingly been weakening for decades. But that recent decline might not be quite as severe as suspected. The current has actually remained […]
At age 12, Tracy Slatyer felt sorry for a book. She read a newspaper article about how lots of people were buying A Brief History of Time by Stephen Hawking. “But then … nobody was actually reading it,” she says. “People were just leaving it on their coffee tables.” Determined to rectify this wrong, Slatyer […]
Heat-related deaths in the United States are on the rise. But how bad will it be 20, 30 or 40 years from now? Scientists now have a clue. Currently, an estimated 8,000-plus deaths in the United States every year are associated with extreme temperatures, both hot and cold. Within the next few decades, that number […]
It was as a Ph.D. student that Dionna Williams realized the fundamental flaws in how medical science treats people who have HIV and also use illicit drugs or misuse prescription drugs. People in this group often have worse outcomes than people with HIV who don’t use these drugs. Drug use and addiction have been linked […]
An asteroid hurtling toward Earth could be deflected without a spacecraft ever touching it. The trick is using X-rays to divert the space rock, researchers report September 23 in Nature Physics. In lab experiments, scientists heated the surfaces of free-falling faux asteroids with X-ray radiation, producing vapor plumes that pushed the objects away. Subsequent computer simulations demonstrated […]
It’s the rarest particle decay ever discovered. Scientists have clinched the case for a special type of decay of subatomic particles called kaons. Further study of the rare decay could reveal a potential flaw in the standard model, physicists’ stalwart theory of subatomic particles. The decay is known as a “golden channel” because its rate […]