As NASA plans to launch four astronauts on Wednesday aboard its Artemis II mission, the race to return to the Moon is on. The current mission will see astronauts aboard the Orion spacecraft orbiting the Moon before returning to Earth in 10 days. They will be testing equipment and systems that could soon see Americans … Read more
Xia, Y. et al. Superconductivity in twisted bilayer WSe2. Nature 6372025–838 (2025). Article Google Scholar Guo, Y. et al. Superconductivity in 5.0° twisted bilayer WSe2. Nature 637839–845 (2025). Article ADS CAS PubMed Google Scholar Cao, Y. et al. Correlative behavior of half-filling magic-angle graphene superlattices. Nature 55680–84 (2018). Article ADS CAS PubMed Google Scholar Yankowitz, … Read more
April 2nd is Autism Awareness Day, and ahead of the 2026 annual recognition, a group of scientists has been praised for a breakthrough in the field of genetics and autism risk. Over the past decade, researchers have been able to identify a series of rare genetic variants associated with an increased risk of autism and … Read more
A Theory of Gravity That Could Rewrite the Universe’s First Minutes The first fraction of a second after the Big Bang has always posed a problem. Physics can explain a lot about the universe once it’s stable and expanding, but in the beginning, when heat and energy were extremes, it was still hard to pin … Read more
People around the world depend on reservoirs for drinking water, hydropower, irrigation and more. These important sources of fresh water are affected by seasonal and long-term changes; the water in the reservoirs can dip during the hot summer months or due to prolonged drought, or flood after a very strong storm. Despite their importance, there … Read more
Physicists at the Large Hadron Collider accidentally turned lead into gold while trying to recreate the Big Bang. Researchers working on the “Alice” experiment at Cern, Switzerland, have produced a rare precious metal as they try to recreate conditions from shortly after the universe began. Medieval alchemists had tried to turn lead into gold for … Read more
Summer is a busy season at Schirmacher Oasis, an ice-free rocky outcrop on Queen Maud Land, East Antarctica. It is near the base of the Nivlisen Ice Shelf and about 100 kilometers (60 miles) from the open waters of the Lazarev Sea, the country’s “oasis” in the middle of a continuous glacier is home to … Read more
In 1916, just a year after Albert Einstein published his general theory of relativity, Karl Schwarzschild used mathematical calculations to show this: If enough mass were packed into a very small volume, then this dense enough mass would create a region where the gravitational force is so strong that nothing, including light, could escape from … Read more
Spawning season has begun for Pacific herring (A group of pallas) in the waters of British Columbia, Canada. From mid-February to early May each year, thousands of small silver fish congregate in the shallows off the coast of Vancouver Island and create a spectacle that can sometimes be seen by satellites. The sheltered waters of … Read more