Why you should read the book Before the Lights Go Out
In the very first pages of her book, Before the Lights Go Out, Maggie Koerth-Baker blows my mind. Not in the sense of "Wow, I never knew that!" (although I certainly thought that...
NASA five-rocket mission to launch tonight, with live webcast
Last week, we reported on NASA’s ATREX mission, which will launch five rockets in about five minutes to study the high-altitude jet stream along the East Coast. These suborbital sounding rockets will...
Erasing a bit shown to boost entropy
In 1961 Rolf Landauer linked information and thermodynamic entropy by showing that erasing or combining bits of memory must be accompanied by an increase in entropy. For the first time since then,...
Feature: Chain reaction: the (slow) revival of US nuclear power
We may be at a critical point for nuclear power in the United States. The Nuclear Regulatory Commission (NRC) approved the construction of a new nuclear plant for the first time...
NASA to use Virginia site to launch five rockets in experiment visible along Eastern Seaboard
Listening to the nightly news, you'll often hear the weather forecaster mention jet streams moving weather systems around. These are located above 10 km above sea level, where they also affect...
Nature Editorial: If you want reproducible science, the software needs to be open source
Modern scientific and engineering research relies heavily on computer programs, which analyze experimental data and run simulations. In fact, you would be hard-pressed to find a scientific paper (outside of pure theory) tha...
Betting the farm: new model shows offshore wind farms at risk from hurricanes
If we want to obtain 20 percent of our electricity from wind power by 2030, the US is going to need at least 50 gigawatts from offshore wind farms, according to the US Department of...
Engineered E. coli produce biofuel from seaweed
Biofuels may hold the key to reducing our dependence on foreign oil and cutting down on our greenhouse gas emissions. Ethanol is currently the biofuel of choice, with almost all gasoline bought at the pump...
Test of 400 options shows we can save money while limiting climate change
If a group of scientists announced that reducing emissions of some pollutants would prevent global warming, it wouldn’t make headlines—we’ve been hearing that for years when the pollutant is carbon dioxide...
How cold is cold enough? Eliminating entropy picokelvins from absolute zero
When you think about the temperatures associated with “cold,” you probably imagine a cold winter day, or a block of ice (32 °F, 0 °C, or 273.15 K). This is downright balmy compared to the...
Scientists shrink a Stirling heat engine to single microscopic particle
Just how small can you make an engine? Two researchers from the University of Stuttgart and the Max Planck Institute for Intelligent Systems, Valentin Blickle and Clemens Bechinger, successfully shrank the Stirling heat eng...
Asia’s space race could turn into an arms race
Asia’s current space race could turn into an arms race akin to the Cold War, according to James Clay Moltz, a professor in the Department of National Security Affairs at the Naval Postgraduate School. He...
