All Stories by Maria Temming
- Tech
‘Pipe Dreams’ flushes out hope in an unexpected place: the toilet
A new book shows how reimagined toilets will allow humans to use pee and poop as natural resources.
- Earth
A spike in Arctic lightning strikes may be linked to climate change
Global warming may be revving up summer thunderstorms in the Arctic, leading to skyrocketing numbers of lightning strikes.
- Physics
Newly made laser-cooled antimatter could test foundations of modern physics
Physicists have finally used laser cooling to tame unruly antimatter atoms. That could allow new tests of symmetry and Einstein’s theory of gravity.
- Astronomy
A new black hole image reveals the behemoth’s magnetic fields
A new analysis of Event Horizon Telescope data from 2017 brings to light the magnetic fields twisted around the black hole at the core of galaxy M87.
- Space
‘Oumuamua may be a chip knocked off an icy, Pluto-like exoplanet
If the first interstellar visitor were a shard of nitrogen ice, it would explain some of its unusual behavior when it passed through our solar system.
- Earth
Phosphorus for Earth’s earliest life may have been forged by lightning
Lightning strikes can supply one of life’s essential elements, long thought to be delivered by meteorites billions of years ago.
- Space
Most of Mars’ missing water may lurk in its crust
Computer simulations of the fate of Mars’ water may explain why the Red Planet turned into a desert, when so little of its water has escaped into space.
- Physics
A magnetic trap captures elusive ultracold plasma
Pinning plasma within a set of magnetic fields offers physicists a new way to study clean energy, space weather and the inner workings of stars.
- Earth
To understand how ‘night-shining’ clouds form, scientists made one themselves
A rocket, a bathtub’s worth of water and a high-altitude explosion reveal how water vapor cools the air to form shiny ice-crystal clouds.
- Tech
A new laser-based random number generator is the fastest of its kind
A new laser’s chaotic light beam lets the device generate multiple number sequences at once, similar to throwing multiple dice at a time.
- Astronomy
The first black hole ever discovered is more massive than previously thought
New observations of Cygnus X-1 are leading astronomers to rethink what they know about stars that turn into black holes.
- Physics
50 years ago, scientists were on a quest for quarks
In the 1970s, physicists confirmed particles called quarks existed. Fifty years later, many kinds of quarks in many combinations have been discovered.
