Tag Archives: science

The world relies on electromagnetic waves for communications: Wi-Fi, Bluetooth, 5G, even radio waves. But suppose you want to prevent a device from communicating—or interfering—with the rest of the world. You can't block EM waves, but you can cancel them by surrounding the device with an electrically conducting material. We …

One of the most consequential places on earth is also one of its least accessible: Antarctica’s icy underbelly. The grounding line is where the terrestrial ice sheet reaches the sea and begins floating, becoming the ice shelf. As global temperatures rise, seawater is eating away at that belly, forcing the …

Clinical depression is considered one of the most treatable mood disorders, but neither the condition nor the drugs used against it are fully understood. First-line SSRI treatments (selective serotonin reuptake inhibitors) likely free up more of the neurotransmitter serotonin to improve communication between neurons. But the question of how SSRIs …

Rare, fleeting radio flashes in the sky have bewildered astronomers for more than a decade. These “fast radio bursts,” blips that flare and then disappear in a couple seconds or less, flit in and out of existence so quickly that astronomers struggle to study them, let alone pinpoint their cosmic …

“We saw houses vanish in front of our eyes,” says Aadesh, an engineer living in the northern Indian state of Sikkim. One of them was his own. In the early hours of October 4, Lhonak Lake—a Himalayan glacial lake—burst its banks, releasing huge amounts of water into the river valleys …

In mid-September, the New York Times Opinion section ran a piece with a shocking headline. “In Poland, Testing Women for Abortion Drugs Is a Reality. It Could Happen Here,” the paper breathlessly declared. As I read the piece, I felt a shudder of panic go down my spine. For years, …

In the last hard days of World War I, just two weeks before world powers agreed to an armistice, a doctor wrote a letter to a friend. The doctor was stationed at the US Army’s Camp Devens west of Boston, a base packed with 45,000 soldiers preparing to ship out …

It’s no surprise that as the planet warms, we’re losing snow. What is surprising is that this loss isn’t just a consequence of more greenhouse gases heating the atmosphere, but of more particulate pollution from fossil fuels. When tiny bits of black carbon fall on snow, they darken it. The …

The original version of this story appeared in Quanta Magazine. Science routinely puts forward theories, then batters them with data till only one is left standing. In the fledgling science of consciousness, a dominant theory has yet to emerge. More than 20 are still taken seriously. It’s not for want …

This story originally appeared on Grist and is part of the Climate Desk collaboration. The Roman Empire fell more than 1,500 years ago, but its grip on the popular imagination is still strong, as evidenced by a recent trend on TikTok. Women started filming the men in their lives to …