What Is the Positive Grassmannian and Why Does It Show Up Everywhere?
What links certain mathematical models of traffic flow, shallow-water waves, and quantum particle scattering? The surprising answer lies in a corner of the algebraic combinatorics
Category: Science
Handwashing: Cool Water as Effective as Hot for Removing Germs
We all know that washing our hands can keep us from spreading germs and getting sick. But a new Rutgers-New Brunswick study found that cool
A Recipe For Concrete That Can Withstand Road Salt Deterioration
Road salt, used in copious helpings each winter to protect them from ice and preserve safe driving conditions, is slowly degrading the concrete they’re made
Ancient flowering plants may have used dinosaurs to spread their seeds
Scientists thought angiosperms didn’t use animals to spread seeds until after the Age of Dinosaurs. Fossilized fruits from these plants challenge this idea.
We’ve had fire for longer than we thought
Archaeologists have unearthed new evidence that indicates hominids used fire up to 1.79 million years ago.
Some of the last surviving Neanderthals were remarkably diverse — suggesting inbreeding didn’t doom them
Some of the last surviving Neanderthals displayed greater genetic diversity than scientists previously thought, a new study of ancient DNA reveals, challenging the idea that
‘This is the next jump in technology’: World’s first sub-1nm chip keeps Moore’s Law alive a little longer
For the first time, scientists can develop computer chips with transistors smaller than 1 nanometer. The new “NanoStack” architecture that has made this possible could
60 million stars: Euclid space telescope snaps the most detailed photo of the Milky Way ever taken
A deep-space telescope on a grand mission to make the largest-ever 3D map of the universe just peered into the star-filled heart of the Milky
Scientists find thousands of earthquakes in a perfectly straight line in Alaska, revealing a hidden ‘microplate’
Thousands of previously undetected tiny earthquakes have revealed the edge of a miniature tectonic plate slamming into Alaska near the Denali Fault. The microplate could
NASA rover finds record-breaking trove of complex organic molecules on Mars
Researchers have found a new puzzle piece in Mars’ geological history that hints that the Red Planet may have once harbored life. New data from
‘You can’t patch your way out of it’: Cheap AI worm can spread between devices without human guidance — but how did scientists create it?
Researchers have demonstrated that a computer worm powered by artificial intelligence (AI) can autonomously spread across a network by identifying and exploiting vulnerabilities on different
‘A weird result from an already weird hominin’: Archaeologists discover all Homo naledi skeletons found in South African cave are female
For the first time, archaeologists have analyzed the genetic material of Homo naledi, a mysterious 300,000-year-old relative of modern humans discovered deep in a South
‘Unequivocal evidence’ of Earth’s oldest impact crater turns out to be off by half a billion years
Earth’s oldest known impact crater formed when a meteorite slammed into what is now Australia about 3 billion years ago — 470 million years later
‘These don’t occur naturally’: Radio signals linked to alien life may be passing Earth by undetected, new study hints
Humans have been searching the stars for alien radio signals for decades — and so far, E.T. has not phoned home. But that doesn’t mean