Just 0.3 per cent of the world’s land area would need to be covered in solar panels to meet all energy needs VCG via Getty Images Solar power has been on the rise for years, and for good reason. It has become one of the cheapest ways to generate energy almost everywhere, and it is…
If you are in your 70s, you didn’t fight in the second world war. Such a statement should be uncontroversial, given that even the oldest septuagenarian today was born after the war ended. But there remains a cultural association between this age group and the era of Vera Lynn and the Blitz. A similar category…
An ion trap used to corral two beryllium ions above a gold microchip Y. Colombe/NATIONAL INSTITUTE OF STANDARDS AND TECHNOLOGY/SCIENCE PHOTO LIBRARY To make some quantum computers larger, and therefore more powerful, we may have to 3D-print them. Currently, there is no consensus on the single best design for quantum computers, but researchers agree that…
September 2, 2025 3 min read Should You Spend $2 to Win $1.3 Billion? Inside Powerball Math Winning more than $1 billion in Powerball is an exciting possibility, but keeping a cool math mind can help you decide whether that opportunity is worth your $2 bet By Mark Fischetti edited by Dean Visser No one…
“You can journey to the ends of the earth in search of success,” 19th-century Baptist preacher Russell Conwell is said to have proclaimed, “but if you’re lucky, you will discover happiness in your own backyard.” Modern cosmology has stepped far beyond our cosmic backyard. We peer into the light from the earliest moments of the…
Scientists have gotten their closest-ever view of the denizens that inhabit a frigid underworld. An analysis of the genetic blueprints of nearly 1,400 microbes sampled from one buried Antarctic lake reveals that these single-celled creatures have surprisingly flexible metabolisms and are evolutionarily distant from any other known microbes, researchers report August 18 in Nature Communications. Dotted with…
Rachel Feltman: For Scientific American’s Science Quickly, I’m Rachel Feltman. While scientists have gotten much better at predicting where hurricanes will go, there’s still a lot of confusion about what forecast maps can actually tell us. That “cone of uncertainty,” for instance? It probably doesn’t mean what you think it means. Here to break down…
Place a finger on the back of your skull, at a point roughly level with the tops of your ears. Here, deep beneath the hair, skin and bone, near a fluid-filled cavity in the root of your brain, lies a small bundle of pigmented cells the colour of lapis lazuli. This is the locus coeruleus…
South_agency/Getty Images If you have swiped through fitness-related content on Instagram, Facebook or TikTok lately, chances are that an influencer on your feed has taken steroids. A recent global meta-study estimates that steroid use in gym-goers ranges from 6 per cent in some countries to a staggering 29 per cent in others. You might find…
Immunisation against hepatitis B is routinely offered across much of the world Mehmet Salih Guler / Getty Images The hepatitis B vaccine seems to reduce the risk of developing diabetes, and not just by preventing the infection. The vaccine is routinely offered to infants in most countries, usually via three doses. In the US, this…
