Science

A quantum spin liquid is a state of matter where unpaired electrons’ spins, although entangled, do not show magnetic order even at the zero temperature. The realization of a quantum spin liquid is a long-sought goal in physics. In a paper published in the journal Nature Physics, physicists from Rice …

Apples are among the most consumed fruits worldwide. They represent a source of direct human exposure to bacterial communities. A new study, published in the journal Frontiers in Microbiology, shows that consuming the whole apple — organic or conventional — includes an approximate uptake of 100 million bacterial cells; however, …

Archaeologists believe they have found the lost Philistine city of Ziklag, where young David lived when he fled from King Saul. They said they had discovered the remains of the 3,000-year-old settlement near the modern town of Kiryat Gat in southern Israel. An aerial view of the archaeological site of …

  To get somewhere in space, you’ll need engines and fuel, but maybe that won’t be the case for much longer. The Planetary Society has just reached a critical milestone in the development of its solar sail technology. The LightSail 2 spacecraft has just deployed its mylar sail in orbit, …

Physicists in the ALICE (A Large Ion Collider Experiment) Collaboration at CERN have announced the first measurements of an elliptic-shaped flow of upsilons, bottomonium particles consisting of a bottom quark and its antiquark. One of the first collisions of lead ions recorded by the ALICE detector. Image credit: ALICE Collaboration …

A new species of carnivorous bird-like dinosaur being named Hesperornithoides miessleri has been discovered by an international team of paleontologists from the United States and the United Kingdom. Hesperornithoides miessleri. Image credit: Gabriel Ugueto. Hesperornithoides miessleri roamed our planet approximately 150 million years ago (Jurassic period). Nicknamed Lori, the ancient …

An international team of researchers has discovered a new species of the genus Biswamoyopterus living in the evergreen broad-leaved forests of Mount Gaoligong in China’s Yunnan province. The Mount Gaoligong flying squirrel (Biswamoyopterus gaoligongensis). Image credit: Kadoorie Farm Botanic Garden. Flying squirrels belong to Pteromyini, a tribe that currently includes …

  Most spaceflight firms would never hang around on Twitter and randomly tweet information on upcoming rocket designs. But most companies aren’t SpaceX, and most CEOs aren’t Elon Musk. During his daily Twitter ramblings, Musk revealed that the Starship launch platform is now up to a total of 41 Raptor …

Fossil clams found in southwestern Florida contain ancient microtektites, tiny (about 200 μm in diameter) glass beads that form when the explosive impact of an extraterrestrial object sends molten debris hurtling into the atmosphere where it cools and recrystallizes before falling back to Earth. A microtektite from the shell bed …

  If you’ve ever wondered how different marsquakes are from earthquakes, we now have the answer thanks to NASA and Swiss research university ETH Zurich. NASA delivered the first-ever seismometer to the red planet aboard the InSight lander last year, and it’s now deployed and sending back data. Researchers from …