Science stories that explain how and why. We cover new findings and natural disasters, test bold claims, and explain the technology and the planet behind them.
Two German biophysicists found a light-switched channel in a single-celled alga, and a Stanford psychiatrist used it to fire brain cells with light. Optogenetics has now won the Nobel Prize in Physiology or Medicine.
A glacier collapse on August 26th killed more than 1,400 people in Nepal. The country's warning system was built to watch glacial lakes, and this flood had no lake, wiped out the upstream sensors, and began across a border where data sharing had been agreed but never switched on.
A quantum computer was supposed to be the only machine on Earth that could solve it. Then a physicist ran the numbers on his laptop — and got a better answer. The result is quietly reshaping one of tech's loudest debates.
Between inflation, war, and global supply issues, the energy shortage persists. Hydrogen — the most abundant element in the universe — could be the clean fuel that changes everything.