Twenty years ago today a tiny neutron star reached across the Milky Way to land a blow on Earth, ringing our planet like a bell. Despite being half the galaxy away, an explosion on that dead star’s surface was able...
December 27, 20245 min readHow to Tactfully Ask Your Child’s Friend’s Parents if They Have Guns at HomeA gun safety check of where your child is going for a playdate or sleepover may save lives By Sara Novak edited by...
“Entry number 123!” The resonant words of Larry Mellinger, a senior attorney at the U.S. Department of the Interior, were followed by murmurs from the assembled crowd. An official from the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service (FWS) moved slowly across...
Michael Hambrey and Jürg Alean A giant, impossible icicle. Starkly exposed mountain slopes. Billion-year-old rocks behind a lone iceberg. And the view from within a glacial tunnel. These four beautiful and moving images come from a new book, Our Frozen...
The weather outside may be frightful but the new books inside are delighfulLechatnoir/Getty Images An Increasingly divisive politics. Media technologies that reinforce and radicalise every fleeting opinion. An absolute tsunami of conspiracy theories. Out of the noise and anxiety of...
Boom Supersonic’s XB-1 taking off for a test flightBoom Supersonic Commercial supersonic aircraft may soon return for the first time since Concorde was retired in 2003. Several companies are working on designs and NASA is investing millions in developing technology...
Rubin Observatory’s commissioning camera (ComCam)Rubin Observatory/NSF/AURA/H. Stockebrand Sometime in May or June, as the southern hemisphere winter sets in beneath the skies of the Chilean Atacama desert, the Vera C. Rubin Observatory will open its dome and the largest digital...
Happy now? Assuming you are reading this issue promptly, it’s the post-Christmas lull: the weird interregnum between Christmas and the New Year when nobody is quite sure what to do with themselves (unless they are keen shoppers, in which case...
Oops! Try that againTetra Images/Alamy An error in a proof underlying a widely used branch of modern mathematics was accidentally discovered by mathematicians while translating old proofs to a computer language. The mistake was swiftly fixed, but mathematicians say that...
December 26, 20242 min readWWII Sugar Rationing Gave Kids a Lifelong Health BoostInfants who experienced rationing had a meaningfully lower risk of diabetes and hypertension decades laterBy Saima S. Iqbal edited by Sarah Lewin Frasier Lydia Whitmore/Getty ImagesFor several years...
