On December 7, 1877, Thomas Edison walked into the offices of Scientific American in New York City and placed a metal device on a desk. With a turn of a crank, Edison astonished the dozen or so staffers who had gathered around the contraption. The machine spoke. “Good morning,” it said in Edison’s voice. “How…
President Donald Trump’s executive order aimed at fast-tracking research into the medical use of psychedelics will almost certainly open the door to experimenting with psychedelic therapies for children and eventually prescribing them, experts say. Flanked by podcaster Joe Rogan and Secretary of Health and Human Services Robert F. Kennedy, Jr., Trump signed the order on…
Ötzi the Iceman may have been murdered by an arrow some 5,300 years ago, but his body is still buzzing with microbial activity, researchers reveal. Yeast strains that may have lain dormant in the mummy for millennia, some of which were specially adapted to extreme cold, may still be metabolically active, a new study published…
This article is from Proof Positive, our friendly math newsletter that’s delivered to your inbox every Tuesday afternoon. Sign up today and read it first. Last week I explained how a then 25-year-old logician, Kurt Gödel, overturned a basic assumption of many mathematicians in the early 20th century. Even as experts were building a seemingly…
The Trump administration is targeting one of the world’s most trusted sources of climate and oceanic data—the Ocean Observatories Initiative (OOI). According to the New York Times, ships will be dispatched this month to remove the more than 900 deep-sea instruments that comprise the network, which, for the past decade, has collected crucial data on…
An exploration of how biological cooperation underpins all life – and why we’ve overlooked its power until now – makes thrilling reading, finds Penny Sarchet
From late May into early June 2026, a broad, slow-spinning storm churned north-northwest over the Philippine Sea toward southern Japan. Typhoon Jangmi’s rainbands unleashed torrential rainfall across a vast swath of the region, triggering flooding concerns in several areas. The VIIRS (Visible Infrared Imaging Radiometer Suite) on the Suomi NPP satellite captured this nighttime image (above) of the…
Scientists at Monash University have created a tiny new circuit that can generate, direct, and read information carried by light, all within a single chip. The advance marks a significant milestone for a growing area of research known as “valleytronics,” which could help drive future breakthroughs in faster computing, lower energy consumption, and quantum technologies….
On Tuesday President Donald Trump issued an executive order that seeks to give the U.S. government more oversight of “frontier” artificial intelligence models—signaling a fundamental shift from the administration’s previous hands-off approach to the technology. The order asks technology companies to voluntarily share new AI models with the government for up to 30 days before…
The mummy is preserved in a refrigeration chamber at a constant temperature of -6°C South Tyrol Museum of Archaeology/Eurac Research/Marion Lafogler Some of the microbes lingering on the 5300-year-old remains of “Ötzi the Iceman” may still be metabolically active, despite being kept in icy conservation conditions. Ötzi’s mummified body was discovered in 1991 thawing out of…
