Catch it live: The Men's Long Jump Final at the Paris Olympics will be held on Tuesday, August 6, at 2:20 pm ET. The Women's Final is on Thursday, August 8, at 2 pm ET. Whether an athlete wins gold or silver at the Summer Olympics can turn on the …
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At a recent rally, Donald Trump stated that electric planes would be a bad idea because you couldn't fly if it was cloudy. I guess “electric” equates to “solar energy” in the former president's mind—which, you know, is actually great. Just … not so much for air travel. Oh, solar …
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The original version of this story appeared in Quanta Magazine. A few centuries ago, the swirling polychromatic chaos of Jupiter’s atmosphere spawned the immense vortex that we call the Great Red Spot. From the frantic firing of billions of neurons in your brain comes your unique and coherent experience of …
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Is space-based solar power a costly, risky pipe dream? Or is it a viable way to combat climate change? Although beaming solar power from space to Earth could ultimately involve transmitting gigawatts, the process could be made surprisingly safe and cost-effective, according to experts from Space Solar, the European Space …
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In the future I'm sure there will be a city on the moon. We know how to get there, it's super close, and it could be great for further space exploration. However, there's a problem with living on the moon for any length of time: the weak gravitational field, which …
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Theres a famous star that I'm sure you've seen in the sky. Its name is Betelgeuse, and you can find it in the Orion constellation, where it marks Orion's right shoulder. If you want to call it “Beetlejuice,” I'm fine with that so long as you don't say it three …
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The original version of this story appeared in Quanta Magazine. About 13.8 billion years ago, the entire cosmos consisted of a tiny, hot, dense ball of energy that suddenly exploded. That’s how everything began, according to the standard scientific story of the Big Bang, a theory that first took shape …
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In 2024, fusion technology will finally make the transition from basic research to commercial application. The reason for that will be the construction and completion of the first commercial fusion demonstrators. These cutting-edge facilities are smaller than fusion power plants. For instance, a laser-based fusion demonstrator might use five to …
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Climate change. It’s bad, and it’s getting worse. The main cause is burning fossil fuels, which spews CO2 into the atmosphere. Carbon dioxide, as we all know too well by now, is a greenhouse gas, meaning it absorbs heat radiation from the Earth, preventing it from escaping out into space. …
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The original version of this story appeared in Quanta Magazine. The end is brutal for electrons hurtling at 99.9999999 percent of the speed of light through SLAC National Accelerator Laboratory’s two-mile-long beam pipe: a final slam into End Station A. In the late 1960s and early ’70s, such collisions broke …
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