A strange blood-feeding fly appears to reduce its visual sensitivity after locating a host and giving up flight for good, according to new research. Known as deer keds, these biting flies are found throughout Europe, Asia, Africa, and the Americas. As adults, they use both flight and vision to search for a suitable host, most…
Microsoft claimed today that it has improved its quantum technology by an extraordinary factor. Outside experts say it doesn’t even work and never has. The company has named its latest quantum chip Majorana 2, for the theoretical quasiparticle it aims to use as the basis for a new “topological” approach to quantum computing. Chilled to…
Telescopes at the Square Kilometre Array SKAO The following is an extract from our Lost in Space-Time newsletter. Each month, we dive into fascinating ideas from around the universe. You can sign up for Lost in Space-Time here. My first encounter with invisible light came in my early years, and I thought it was magic. Radios filled every room of…
Every year, millions of people visiting Grand Canyon National Park stop at one of the park’s water stations. Some are standing on the rim, seeing the canyon for the first time and topping off a water bottle before continuing their trip. Others are far below, hiking through extreme heat, refilling reservoirs and pouring water over…
Swapping materials in its Majorana 2 chip boosted the effectiveness of quantum bits that rely on the math of topology to reduce errors, Microsoft says.
A 53-year-old clinically dead man has become the first person to receive two kidneys and a whole liver from a genetically modified pig. The man’s organ function was sustained for almost five days with consent from his family, and there were no signs that the organs were being rejected in the first 24 hours, according…
To chart how our brains change over the course of our lives, neuroscientists have focused largely on beginnings and endings: the rapid development and pruning of neural connections in childhood and adolescence, and the degeneration associated with old age. “We kind of skipped over middle age,” says Sebastian Dohm-Hansen, a bioinformatician at University College Cork in Ireland. There are…
In the mid-20th century, astronomers discovered strange “clumpy” galaxies filled with mysterious bright blobs – massive stellar nurseries where stars are born at an explosive rate. Curiously, these clumpy galaxies were much more common in the early universe than they are today. We still don’t know why they vanished. The Euclid space telescope, an ESA…
For centuries, forests have followed a remarkably consistent rhythm. Beneath the trees, roots and microscopic organisms steadily release carbon dioxide into the atmosphere as they break down organic material and fuel plant growth. Scientists call this process soil respiration, and it represents one of the largest carbon flows on Earth. New research suggests that this…
CARL COURT/AFP via Getty Images I’m sitting in a soundproof booth at an audiologist’s office, wearing headphones and straining to hear some faint electronic noises. When I think I’ve heard one, I press a button. It’s really hard. Was that real or did I imagine it? Oh god, I’m going to fail… I’m here because my…
