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Category: Science/mathematics

George Orwell called for a new way of thinking about science

George Orwell called for a new way of thinking about science

By Robert Colls, De Montfort University In October 1945, George Orwell responded to a letter from Mr J. Stewart Cook in the leftwing weekly newspaper Tribune calling for more science education. The call can hardly have come as a surprise. War had brought science and engineering to the fore – from the Spitfire fighter plane and radar to Bletchley Park’s codebreakers – and now that war was over, many thought it was time to build a brave new world. Science…

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Science is drowning in AI slop

Science is drowning in AI slop

Ross Andersen writes: On a frigid Norwegian afternoon earlier this month, Dan Quintana, a psychology professor at the University of Oslo, decided to stay in and complete a tedious task that he had been putting off for weeks. An editor from a well-known journal in his field had asked him to review a paper that they were considering for publication. It seemed like a straightforward piece of science. Nothing set off any alarm bells, until Quintana looked at the references…

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Fusion breakthrough: Energy researchers report tokamak experiments that exceed mysterious ‘plasma density limit’

Fusion breakthrough: Energy researchers report tokamak experiments that exceed mysterious ‘plasma density limit’

The Debrief reports: In a potential new milestone for fusion energy research, researchers in China report achieving a state once only theorized for fusion plasmas, enabling stable operation under conditions that significantly exceed normal limits. The achievement was made during experiments with China’s Experimental Advanced Superconducting Tokamak (EAST), which reportedly produced fusion plasmas in a “density-free regime,” overcoming a longstanding hurdle to nuclear fusion ignition. The team’s findings were featured in a new study in Science Advances, offering a fresh…

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‘This year nearly broke me as a scientist’ – U.S. researchers reflect on how 2025’s science cuts have changed their lives

‘This year nearly broke me as a scientist’ – U.S. researchers reflect on how 2025’s science cuts have changed their lives

U.S. researchers are seeking the light at the end of a rough year for science. Westend61/Getty Images By Carrie McDonough, Carnegie Mellon University; Brian G. Henning, Gonzaga University; Cara Poland, Michigan State University; Nathaniel M. Tran, University of Illinois Chicago; Rachael Sirianni, UMass Chan Medical School, and Stephanie J. Nawyn, Michigan State University From beginning to end, 2025 was a year of devastation for scientists in the United States. January saw the abrupt suspension of key operations across the National…

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Flat Earth, spirits and conspiracy theories – experience can shape even extraordinary beliefs

Flat Earth, spirits and conspiracy theories – experience can shape even extraordinary beliefs

A belief in ghosts could be a way to explain a strange experience while asleep. ‘The Nightmare’ by Johann Heinrich Füssli/Wikimedia Commons By Eli Elster, University of California, Davis On Feb. 22, 2020, “Mad” Mike Hughes towed a homemade rocket to the Mojave Desert and launched himself into the sky. His goal? To view the flatness of the Earth from space. This was his third attempt, and tragically it was fatal. Hughes crashed shortly after takeoff and died. Hughes’ nickname…

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The next scientific revolution won’t come from scientists

The next scientific revolution won’t come from scientists

Steve Fuller writes: The most influential work on the nature of science for at least the past fifty years has been The Structure of Scientific Revolutions, first published in 1962 by a young physicist-turned-historian, Thomas Kuhn. Although influential, the book has also been widely misunderstood. It is quite common to think—certainly based on the title—that Kuhn was providing a formula for producing scientific revolutions. On the contrary, he was arguing that revolutions only happen once scientists confront insurmountable obstacles in…

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The universe may be lopsided – new research

The universe may be lopsided – new research

By Subir Sarkar, University of Oxford The shape of the universe is not something we often think about. But my colleagues and I have published a new study suggests it could be asymmetric or lopsided, meaning not the same in every direction. Should we care about this? Well, today’s “standard cosmological model” – which describes the dynamics and structure of the entire cosmos – rests squarely on the assumption that it is isotropic (looks the same in all directions), and…

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Trump regime plans to break up ‘global mothership’ of climate science

Trump regime plans to break up ‘global mothership’ of climate science

Nature reports: The administration of US President Donald Trump intends to dismantle the National Center for Atmospheric Research (NCAR), a world-leading Earth-science centre in Boulder, Colorado. The centre’s modelling and Earth observations underpin a wide range of US and global research, especially on climate. “This facility is one of the largest sources of climate alarmism in the country,” wrote Russell Vought, Trump’s budget director, announcing the planned closure in a post yesterday on the social-media platform X. In a statement,…

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The truth that physics can no longer ignore

The truth that physics can no longer ignore

Adam Frank writes: On October 8, 2024, the field of physics was plunged into controversy. That day, the Nobel Prize in Physics was awarded for discoveries not involving black holes, cosmology, or strange new subatomic particles, but about AI. How could the discipline’s highest award go to research about machines designed to mimic human brains? Where was the physics in that? For most of the 20th century, physicists largely ignored living systems. They understood living things as machines, albeit ones…

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China’s JUNO observatory shows promise in solving neutrino mysteries

China’s JUNO observatory shows promise in solving neutrino mysteries

Scientific American reports: Trillions of neutrinos whiz through our bodies every day, pulsing from the sun, outer space and deep beneath Earth. Yet these elusive subatomic particles have proven difficult to study. That could soon change, however. Buried 700 meters beneath the rolling hills of southern China, an enormous neutrino observatory called JUNO has released its first results after a mere 59 days of operation. And so far, they are very promising, physicists say. “The physics result is already world-leading…

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What is time? Rather than something that ‘flows,’ a philosopher suggests time is a psychological projection

What is time? Rather than something that ‘flows,’ a philosopher suggests time is a psychological projection

Time isn’t an illusion, unlike optical illusions that trick your eyes. There’s nothing to ‘trick’ because it has no physical basis. BSIP/UIG Via Getty Image By Adrian Bardon, Wake Forest University “Time flies,” “time waits for no one,” “as time goes on”: The way we speak about time tends to strongly imply that the passage of time is some sort of real process that happens out there in the world. We inhabit the present moment and move through time, even…

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James Watson: Titan of science with tragic flaws

James Watson: Titan of science with tragic flaws

Jon Cohen writes: “It has not escaped our notice that the specific pairing we have postulated immediately suggests a possible copying mechanism for the genetic material.” That famous understatement concludes the 1953 Nature article in which James Watson, then just 25, and Francis Crick announced their discovery of the double helical structure of DNA. In his later life, Watson, who died on 6 November at 97, was anything but understated. The son of a Chicago bill collector, Watson shared a…

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Northern Hemisphere absorbing more sunlight than Southern, and clouds can no longer keep the balance

Northern Hemisphere absorbing more sunlight than Southern, and clouds can no longer keep the balance

Live Science reports: Years ago, scientists noted something odd: Earth’s Northern and Southern Hemispheres reflect nearly the same amount of sunlight back into space. The reason why this symmetry is odd is because the Northern Hemisphere has more land, cities, pollution, and industrial aerosols. All those things should lead to a higher albedo — more sunlight reflected than absorbed. The Southern Hemisphere is mostly ocean, which is darker and absorbs more sunlight. New satellite data, however, suggest that symmetry is…

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Scientists uncover first evidence of the 4.5-billion-year-old ‘proto Earth’

Scientists uncover first evidence of the 4.5-billion-year-old ‘proto Earth’

Space.com reports: Scientists have identified what may be the first direct evidence of material left over from the “proto-Earth,” a primordial version of our planet that existed before a colossal moon-forming impact reshaped it forever. The study, published Tuesday (Oct. 14) in the journal Nature Geoscience, suggests that tiny chemical clues of this proto-Earth have survived deep within Earth’s rocks, essentially unaltered, for billions of years. The findings provide a rare window into the planet’s original building blocks and could…

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The war on science being led by the Republican Party

The war on science being led by the Republican Party

Ars Technica reports: We’re about a quarter of the way through the 21st century. Summers across the global north are now defined by flash floods, droughts, heat waves, uncontainable wildfires, and intensifying named storms, exactly as predicted by Exxon scientists back in the 1970s. The United States secretary of health and human services advocates against using the most effective tool we have to fight the infectious diseases that have ravaged humanity for millennia. People are eagerly lapping up the misinformation…

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The math of climate change tipping points

The math of climate change tipping points

Gregory Barber writes: In the 1960s, the Soviet climatologist and mathematician Mikhail Budyko set out to investigate the potential future of a planet on the brink of nuclear Armageddon. He started by looking some 600 million years into the past. Back then, some scientists claimed, the ancient planet was an iced-over snowball. Most researchers considered that a crackpot theory. Ice over the equator? Please. But Budkyo developed a mathematical model to back it up. If sea ice had been able…

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