Rodrigo Ledesma-Aguilar, Conversation
Some of the most profound predictions in theoretical physics, such as Einstein's gravitational waves or Higgs' boson, have taken decades to prove with experiments. But every now and then, a prediction can become established fact in an astonishingly short time.
Ethan Siegel, Forbes
Mars' two moons, Phobos and Deimos, are small, irregular, but orbit in the same equatorial plane as the red planet. Although they've long been thought to be captured asteroids, those orbits would be supremely unlikely. Another possibility would have been if a massive impact created a debris disk, similar to how Earth's Moon was formed.
Nick Stockton, Wired
Here's how science works: You have a question about some infinitesimal sliver of the universe. You form a hypothesis, test it, and eventually gather enough data to support or disprove what you thought was going on. That's the fun part. The next bit is less glamorous: You write a manuscript, submit it to an academic journal, and endure the gauntlet of peer review, where a small group of anonymous experts in your field scrutinize the quality of your work.
Gabriel Popkin, Science News
In a new study, two quantum computers fashioned from dramatically different technologies have competed head-to-head in an algorithm-crunching exercise. One computer was more reliable, and the other was faster. But what's most important, some scientists say, is that for the first time, two different quantum computers have been compared and tested on the same playing field.
Dennis Overbye, New York Times
There is a crisis brewing in the cosmos, or perhaps in the community of cosmologists. The universe seems to be expanding too fast, some astronomers say.Recent measurements of the distances and velocities of faraway galaxies don't agree with a hard-won standard model of the cosmos that has prevailed for the past two decades.
Brian Koberlein, Nautilus
One of the great mysteries of modern cosmology is how our universe can be so thermally uniformthe vast cosmos is filled with the lingering heat of the Big Bang. Over time, it has cooled to a few degrees above absolute zero, but it can still be seen in the faint glow of microwave radiation, known as the cosmic microwave background.
Cathal O'Connell, Cosmos
It's five theories for the price of one. One of the most ambitious physics theories in recent times claims to have solved five of the biggest head-scratchers in particle physics each of them likely worthy of a Nobel prize in their own right.Crazy as the idea sounds, the paper describing it has managed to get past peer-review at Physical Review Letters a prestigious journal that has catalogued many of the most groundbreaking moments in physics history, such as the discovery of gravitational waves last year.
John Hawks, Medium
According to the Guardian, New Scientist, and many other press outlets, the Harvard geneticist George Church announced last week that he is going to produce elephant embryos with woolly mammoth genes within two years.
Yangyang Cheng, Bulletin of the Atomic Scientists
Why are there so few scientists in Congress?It was at a workshop dinner. Between bites of delicious Chinese food, I posed this question to a senior colleague of mine, seated next to me.He put down his chopsticks, stared at me for a second, and said, Are you seriously asking me this question?
Andrew Grant, Physics Today
Seven months after a failed coup, the Turkish government has continued its relentless dismissal of civil servants, including physical scientists and other academics. More than 7300 academics have lost their jobs, according to the journalist-run website Turkey Purge. Some of those people are among the more than 90000 detained since the 15 July 2016 coup attempt.
David Marsh, Nautilus
An axion is a theoretical particle named after a laundry detergent. As particles go, it is a strange one. Its mass is tinysomewhere between one trillionth the mass of the proton and one billion-trillion-trillionth. It is so lightweight, in fact, that it doesn't even behave as a particle, but as a wave that could straddle a galaxy.
Charles Choi, Astrobiology Mag
Science fiction has long imagined alien worlds inhabited by silicon-based life, such as the rock-eating Horta from the original Star Trek series. Now, scientists have for the first time shown that nature can evolve to incorporate silicon into carbon-based molecules, the building blocks of life on Earth. - See more at: http://www.astrobio.net/news-exclusive/possibility-silicon-based-life-grows/#sthash.Az9evSBb.dpuf
Kelly Servick, Science
Becoming obese isn't like catching a cold, but a handful of research groups are now trying to model obesity in a population by treating it like a social contagion that spreads among people through their interactions. Statistician David Allison and information scientist Keisuke Ejima of the University of Alabama in Birmingham and mathematician Diana Thomas of the United States Military Academy in West Point, New York, have been working on refining such obesity models.
