While SpaceX’s Starlink satellites are enabling internet access and cell phone communications around the globe, they’re also posing a threat to radio astronomy, a new study suggests. In some wavelength bands, unintended leakage of electromagnetic radiation from the latest generation of the satellites is more than 30 times brighter than emissions from previous versions, Cees […]

Picture Victorian London, but its skies are filled with airships. Steam-powered robots crowd the streets, mingling with people in top hats and petticoats. That type of retrofuturistic mash-up is the fantasy realm of steampunk, a genre of literature, film and other creative media. Theoretical physicist Nicole Yunger Halpern sees her specialty, the field of quantum […]

Wind ownership is up for grabs. As an unpaid intern at an energy company in England, Emilia Groupp spent two years creating wind maps for renewable energy development. Colleagues told Groupp to ignore wind blowing across British borders, saying things like, “Oh we don’t want French wind,” recalls Groupp, an anthropologist of energy at Stanford […]

The word “bionic” conjures sci-fi visions of humans enhanced to superhuman levels. It’s true that engineering advances such as better motors and batteries, together with modern computing, mean that the required mechanical and electronic systems are no longer a barrier to advanced prostheses. But the field has struggled to integrate these powerful machines with the […]

Betelgeuse, Betelgeuse! The red supergiant that marks Orion’s left shoulder may have a tiny, unseen companion. Two independent studies found evidence of a star about the same mass as the sun, orbiting Betelgeuse about once every 2,100 days. “It was very surprising,” says astrophysicist Morgan MacLeod of the Harvard & Smithsonian Center for Astrophysics in […]

A perfect storm of climate, geologic and geographic conditions have combined to make Hurricane Helene one of the most devastating storms to ever hit the United States. Days after it slammed into Florida’s Big Bend region on September 26 and traveled hundreds of kilometers inland, Helene’s destructive impact has continued to grow. Fueled by warm […]