Sgr A* is the name we’ve given to the supermassive black hole that sits at the center of the Milky Way. We’ve known about its presence since the 1970s but only managed to image it within the past few years. In the intervening time, most of our understanding of the object was obtained by watching…

China’s solar power capacity has overtaken coal for the first time, marking a major milestone in the country’s rapid expansion of renewable energy. China had about 1,288 gigawatts (GW) of installed solar capacity at the end of July, compared with 1,285 GW of coal-fired capacity, according to figures from the country’s energy administration reported by…

Elon Musk’s talk about maintaining a million-strong AI data center satellite megaconstellation may not exactly be practical or economical, but it might be unique. It’s about the closest we’ve come to confronting a scheme that would export a considerable amount of valuable materials into space. Humans aren’t doing a great job of material sustainability, but…

This year’s El Niño is expected to be the strongest in living memory and could lead to a range of impacts of the UK – including a stormy autumn. Source link

Most of what we know about the Earth’s interior comes from observing seismic waves. These travel at somewhat different speeds depending on the details of the rock they’re moving through—whether it’s solid or semi-molten, how much water is present, whether it’s fractured or solid material, and so on. Get enough data from enough seismic events,…

Pause for a moment and listen. What do you hear? Chances are, somewhere in the background, is the ever-present hum of a road. More than 4.2 million miles of public roads crisscross the lower 48 states—enough to reach the Moon and back almost nine times. This vast network of roads spiderwebs its way across the…

Our leading hypothesis for how our memories are stored is that when you learn something, the connections among neurons involved get stronger and physically larger, and that constitutes the memory. The trouble is that these connections significantly change over time—they’re plastic. “If you compare the arrangement of these connections on day one with the same…

The first telegram arrived in Singapore on a Monday, sent from the city of Batavia in the Dutch East Indies (now Jakarta, Indonesia). “Terrific detonations from Krakatau (volcanic island),” it reported. Soon afterward: “Stones falling. Village near Anjer washed away.” The wires continued clattering out news of bridges destroyed, boats smashed, lighthouses “disappeared.” By noon…

Donald Trump is presiding over an unexpected clean energy boom, as rising electricity demand spurs investment in new capacity despite the US administration’s efforts to thwart a solar and wind rollout. Clean energy additions will rise by a record 45 gigawatts this year, according to S&P Global Energy—equivalent to the average electricity demand of Turkey….

BBC Verify has used satellite imagery to track the floating island in British Columbia, which has surprised people around the world. Source link

Mummified human and animal remains have long been in demand among collectors, and such items are sufficiently rare that their acquisition may involve unregulated, occasionally clandestine trade practices—if not outright illegal ones. According to the authors of a paper published in the International Journal of Cultural Property, the risks to would-be collectors aren’t just legal….

You might just have an easier way to manage your smart home without leaning on custom automations or becoming an expert. Anker has unveiled the MindBase, an AI hub that serves as a decision-making “brain” for security cameras and other smart home devices. Source link

Antibodies play a central role in your body’s immune defense. But they’re also nearly ubiquitous in biological research, being essential for several widely used lab techniques. While some researchers need to go through the process of producing their own antibodies, antibodies to many key proteins are commercially available and can be ordered for overnight delivery….

Fashionistas of a certain age no doubt remember the late designer Stephen Sprouse, who gave Blondie’s Debbie Harry her distinctive Bowery punk style. Sprouse’s first collections in the mid-1980s made a major splash, melding graffiti prints, a playful ’60s aesthetic, and bright Day-Glo colors that won admirers such as Andy Warhol. Several examples of Sprouse’s…

The genetic code is what life everywhere uses to convert the information contained in DNA into specific protein sequences. With minor variations, the same genetic code is used by every living thing on Earth, suggesting it was already present in the last common ancestor of all of them. It’s not an easy thing to change,…

A thousand years ago, feasts in what’s now northern Georgia state included cacao from Central America. Potsherds discarded after an 11th-century feast at Etowah—an Indigenous city just north of what’s now Atlanta—contained traces of cacao, a raw ingredient of chocolate. The chemical residue and ancient DNA reveal that not only did the Mississippian people who…

A thousand people voluntarily buried their cotton underpants for two months—not to keep the Underpants Gnomes from stealing them, but as part of a citizen science project to map out soil health in 25 countries around the world. The results of this unique experiment were reported in a new paper published in the journal Plants…