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Category: Science/mathematics

For Sergiu Klainerman, mathematics is not a human invention

For Sergiu Klainerman, mathematics is not a human invention

Steve Nadis writes: The equations that govern black holes were true before there were black holes. That claim is hotly contested, and cuts through one of the deepest fault lines in the philosophy of mathematics. On one side are those who hold that mathematical structures, including well-established principles and basic geometric shapes like the tetrahedron, exist independently of human thought – not as a language we invented to describe reality, but rather as the substrate of reality itself. On the…

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What do Gödel’s incompleteness theorems truly mean?

What do Gödel’s incompleteness theorems truly mean?

Natalie Wolchover writes: In 1931, by turning logic on itself, Kurt Gödel proved a pair of theorems that transformed the landscape of knowledge and truth. These “incompleteness theorems” established that no formal system of mathematics — no finite set of rules, or axioms, from which everything is supposed to follow — can ever be complete. There will always be true mathematical statements that don’t logically follow from those axioms. I spent the early weeks of the Covid pandemic learning how…

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Lessons in resistance for the scientific community — a conversation with Timothy Snyder

Lessons in resistance for the scientific community — a conversation with Timothy Snyder

  H. Holden Thorp writes: Federal grant cancellations, restrictions on immigration for foreign scientists, and attempts to cut the budgets of science funding agencies by 60%—the past 18 months have been tumultuous for American science. Even after Congress restored the budgets, following the successful lobbying by leaders of the scientific community, universities are still hampered by the slow dispersal of the appropriated funds. Meanwhile, the continual attacks on science and the uncertainty brought on by the Trump administration have put…

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Thoreau the scientist – how environmental research informed ‘Walden’ and later works

Thoreau the scientist – how environmental research informed ‘Walden’ and later works

Henry David Thoreau investigated the Sudbury River as America’s first river scientist. Robert M. Thorson By Robert M. Thorson, University of Connecticut The steam locomotive chugged its way toward Cambridge, Massachusetts, on Aug. 15, 1859. On board was an impatient young scientist wanting to understand the math and science governing how river channels should behave. After disembarking at Harvard College and searching the stacks of its library, Henry David Thoreau checked out “Principes D’Hydraulique,” a three-volume tome of hydraulic engineering….

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What causes lightning? The answer keeps getting more interesting

What causes lightning? The answer keeps getting more interesting

Charlie Wood writes: Before he changed the way we understand lightning on Earth, Joseph Dwyer studied the weather in more cosmic settings. Using the sensors on NASA’s Wind satellite, orbiting a million miles away, he watched flares shoot out from the sun and analyzed the particles that stream from the sun’s surface. But when he relocated to Florida around the turn of the millennium, Dwyer felt ready for something new — something he and his students could investigate on their…

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Physicists discover the most complex forms of ice yet

Physicists discover the most complex forms of ice yet

Shalma Wegsman writes: Ice comes in more forms than what you’ll find in a freezer or a glacier. Since 1900, scientists have observed more than 20 phases of ice, many of them shaped under extreme conditions. The growing list includes hot ice and even ice that conducts electricity. Ice is the name for any phase of water that is solid and crystalline, meaning that it has a repeating molecular structure. Over the past decade, computer simulations have predicted tens of…

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Deep-Earth map reveals fragment of a lost U.S. continent

Deep-Earth map reveals fragment of a lost U.S. continent

Science reports: Along the eastern front of the Appalachian Mountains, buried just below the surface, lies a fragment of a lost continent. Running from Maine to Georgia, the 200-kilometer-thick slab of crust was probably created by volcanic eruptions during the breakup of the Pangaea supercontinent some 200 million years ago and later buried by silt from eroding mountains. Known as the Piedmont Resistor, this piece of Pangaea is one of the signature discoveries of the Magnetotelluric (MT) Array, 1800 temporary…

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How the Trump administration ended independent science at the EPA

How the Trump administration ended independent science at the EPA

The New York Times reports: For more than a half-century, a prestigious scientific arm of the federal government did groundbreaking research aimed at saving American lives. It studied fertility, asthma, wildfires, drinking water, climate change and myriad other health threats. In just one year, it has been almost completely dismantled. One scientist, a doctor and expert in lung health, has recently been reassigned to a finance office. Another, an epidemiologist, has been told she has a new job issuing permits…

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Trump fired the entire National Science Board. Here’s why that matters

Trump fired the entire National Science Board. Here’s why that matters

John Drake writes: On Friday, April 24, 2026, the White House fired all 24 members of the National Science Board. According to the National Science Foundation website, the board’s next scheduled meeting is May 5. Most people outside the research enterprise have never heard of the NSB, so it’s worth saying what it is. The National Science Foundation Act of 1950 created NSF with two heads: a director and a board. Jointly they set the strategic direction of an agency…

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Why your brain already understands complex music theory

Why your brain already understands complex music theory

ZME Science reports: The human brain operates as a tireless prediction machine. It watches a dropped glass and anticipates the shatter. It listens to a conversation and guesses the final word of a sentence. And, as it turns out, it listens to a melody and inherently knows exactly what chord should fall next. If there’s something in the world most people tend to agree is that they love music. But to feel the music, our minds must decode a hidden…

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NASA is throttling the scientific pipeline and diminishing our ability to see and understand our planet

NASA is throttling the scientific pipeline and diminishing our ability to see and understand our planet

Kate Marvel writes: Artemis II’s journey around the moon, scheduled to conclude on Friday, has delivered stunning new images of our home world taken from space. Those pictures remind us that Earth has changed immensely since the last time astronauts went near the moon in 1972. So has NASA. Budget cuts, chaos and political interference now threaten the very science that motivates and enables space exploration. President Trump’s 2027 budget request calls for a nearly 50 percent cut to NASA’s…

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The rapid rise of China as a scientific superpower

The rapid rise of China as a scientific superpower

Ross Andersen writes: If China finally eclipses the United States as the world’s preeminent scientific superpower, there won’t be an official announcement. Neither will there necessarily be a dramatic Promethean demonstration, a bomb flash in the desert, a satellite beeping overhead, a moon landing. It will be a quiet moment, observed by a small, specialized subset of scientists who have forsaken the study of the stars, animals, and plants in favor of a more navel-gazing subject: the practice of science…

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China could be the world’s biggest public funder of science within two years

China could be the world’s biggest public funder of science within two years

Nature reports: China is on the cusp of becoming the world’s biggest public funder of research, according to a forecast by US academics, as stalled growth in government investment in the United States coincides with consistent rises in spending by the Chinese authorities. The analysis — produced exclusively for Nature Index — was the work of researchers from Frontiers in Science and Innovation Policy (FSIP), a programme at the University of California, San Diego, that studies the US research and…

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Who cares about going to the moon when the world is in chaos?

Who cares about going to the moon when the world is in chaos?

Lisa Grossman writes: Since the beginning of the year, I’ve been gearing up to cover the launch of NASA’s Artemis II mission. This launch aims to bring humans back to the vicinity of the moon for the first time in more than 50 years, with an eventual eye toward landing humans on the moon and learning how to live there long-term. I expected to feel unalloyed excitement for this moment. I’ve been enraptured with space since I was 8 years…

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Climate physicists face the ghosts in their machines: clouds

Climate physicists face the ghosts in their machines: clouds

Charlie Wood writes: In October 2008, Chris Bretherton lifted off from the coast of northern Chile in a C-130 turboprop plane. It was too dark to see the sandy hills of the Atacama Desert below, but the darkness suited Bretherton just fine. The researcher wasn’t going sightseeing. Seated directly behind the pilots, he kept his focus entirely on the sky. The plane was stuffed with instruments, and its wings bristled with sensors and other devices. Bretherton’s immediate mission was to…

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In unprecedented move, giant monkey research center may become a primate sanctuary

In unprecedented move, giant monkey research center may become a primate sanctuary

The Physicians Committee for Responsible Medicine applauds the Oregon Health & Science University Board of Directors’ approval of a resolution authorizing negotiations with the National Institutes of Health to transition the Oregon National Primate Research Center (ONPRC) toward closure and potential conversion into a primate sanctuary. With passage of the resolution, OHSU is now positioned to work with the NIH to explore a pathway away from invasive primate experimentation and toward humane, human-relevant science. During a 180-day negotiation period authorized…

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