Tech News
Scientists Watch Supernova Shockwave Shoot Through a Dying Star For First Time
science - Posted On:2025-11-13 02:15:01 Source: slashdot
For the first time, astronomers captured the shockwave of a supernova bursting through the surface of a dying red supergiant star, revealing a surprisingly symmetrical, grape-shaped explosion. Space.com reports: Seeing this moment in detail has previously been elusive because it's rare for a supernova to be spotted early enough and for telescopes to be trained on it -- and when they have been, the exploding star has been too far away. So, when supernova 2024ggi went boom on April 10, 2024 in the relatively nearby spiral galaxy NGC 3621, which is 22 million light-years away in the constellation of Hydra, the Water Snake, astronomer Yi Yang of Tsinghua University in Beijing knew he had to act. Although the supernova itself couldn't be resolved as anything put a point of light, the polarization of that light held the clues as to the geometry of the breakout. "The geometry of a supernova explosion provides fundamental information on stellar evolution and the physical processes leading to these cosmic fireworks," said Yang. "Spectropolarimetry delivers information about the geometry of the explosion that other types of observation cannot provide because the angular scales are too tiny," said another team-member, Lifan Wang of Texas A&M University. The measurement showed that the shape of the breakout explosion was flattened, like an olive or grape. Crucially, though, the explosion propagated symmetrically, and continued to do so even when it collided with a ring of circumstellar material. "These findings suggest a common physical mechanism that drives the explosion of many massive stars, which manifests a well-defined axial symmetry and acts on large scales," said Yang. The findings will allow astronomers to rule out some models and strengthen others that describe what drives the shockwave in a supernova explosion. The findings have been described in a paper on the ESO website. Read more of this story at Slashdot.
With another record broken, the world’s busiest spaceport keeps getting busier
Science - Posted On:2025-11-12 18:30:00 Source: arstechnica
CAPE CANAVERAL, Florida—Another Falcon 9 rocket fired off its launch pad here on Monday night, taking with it another 29 Starlink Internet satellites to orbit.
This was the 94th orbital launch from Florida’s Space Coast so far in 2025, breaking the previous record for the most satellite launches in a calendar year from the world’s busiest spaceport. Monday night’s launch came two days after a Chinese Long March 11 rocket lifted off from an oceangoing platform on the opposite side of the world, marking humanity’s 255th mission to reach orbit this year, a new annual record for global launch activity.
As of Wednesday, a handful of additional missions have pushed the global figure this year to 259, putting the world on pace for around 300 orbital launches by the end of 2025. This will more than double the global tally of 135 orbital launches in 2021.
An explosion 92 million miles away just grounded Jeff Bezos’ New Glenn rocket
Science - Posted On:2025-11-12 17:00:00 Source: arstechnica
CAPE CANAVERAL, Florida—The second flight of Blue Origin’s New Glenn rocket was postponed again Wednesday as a supercharged wave of magnetized plasma from the Sun enveloped the Earth, triggering colorful auroral displays and concerns over possible impacts to communications, navigation, and power grids.
Solar storms like the one this week can also affect satellite operations. That is the worry that caused NASA to hold off on launching a pair of science probes from Cape Canaveral Space Force Station, Florida, on Wednesday aboard Blue Origin’s New Glenn rocket.
In a statement, Blue Origin said NASA, its customer on the upcoming launch, decided to postpone the mission to send the agency’s two ESCAPADE spacecraft on a journey to Mars.
Quantum computing tech keeps edging forward
Science - Posted On:2025-11-12 15:00:00 Source: arstechnica
The end of the year is usually a busy time in the quantum computing arena, as companies often try to announce that they’ve reached major milestones before the year wraps up. This year has been no exception. And while not all of these announcements involve interesting new architectures like the one we looked at recently, they’re a good way to mark progress in the field, and they often involve the sort of smaller, incremental steps needed to push the field forward.
What follows is a quick look at a handful of announcements from the past few weeks that struck us as potentially interesting.
IBM is one of the companies announcing a brand-new architecture this year. That’s not at all a surprise, given that the company promised to do so back in June; this week sees the company confirming that it has built the two processors it said it would earlier in the year. These include one called Loon, which is focused on the architecture that IBM will use to host error-corrected logical qubits. Loon represents two major changes for the company: a shift to nearest-neighbor connections and the addition of long-distance connections.
Corals survived past climate changes by retreating to the deeps
Science - Posted On:2025-11-12 12:45:00 Source: arstechnica
Scientists have found that the 2023 marine heat wave caused “functional extinction” of two Acropora reef-building coral species living in the Florida Reef, which stretches from the Dry Tortugas National Park to Miami.
“At this point, we do not think there’s much of a chance for natural recovery—their numbers are so low that successful reproduction is incredibly unlikely,” said Ross Cunning, a coral biologist at the John G. Shedd Aquarium.
This isn’t the first time corals have faced the borderline of extinction over the last 460 million years, and they have always managed to bounce back and recolonize habitats lost during severe climate changes. The problem is that we won’t live long enough to see them doing that again.
UK Signs Scaled-Back Scientific Collaboration With China
science - Posted On:2025-11-11 09:15:00 Source: slashdot
The UK and China today signed a new bilateral agreement on scientific collaboration [non-paywalled source], narrowing the scope of their partnership to exclude sensitive technologies. Lord Patrick Vallance, Britain's science and technology minister, met his Chinese counterpart Chen Jiachang in Beijing and agreed to focus cooperation on health, climate, planetary sciences, and agriculture. The previous agreement from 2017 had included satellites, remote sensing technology and robotics. Those fields are absent from the new accord. The countries announced no new funding for joint research. Vallance said the UK had "deliberately gone for areas which we think are not carrying such a security risk." Read more of this story at Slashdot.
Runaway black hole mergers may have built supermassive black holes
Science - Posted On:2025-11-10 13:30:00 Source: arstechnica
A new simulation could help solve one of astronomy’s longstanding mysteries—how supermassive black holes formed so rapidly—along with a new one: What are the James Webb Space Telescope’s (JWST) “little red dots?”
Invisible leviathans lurk at the cores of nearly all of the 2 trillion or so galaxies strewn throughout space-time. Monster black holes entered the cosmic scene soon after the Universe’s birth and grew rapidly, reaching millions or even billions of times the Sun’s mass in less than a billion years. Astronomers have long wondered how these supermassive black holes could have grown so hefty in such little time.
The monster black hole mystery became even more perplexing in 2022 when “little red dots” were spotted at the far edges of space. When these tiny scarlet orbs began unexpectedly popping up in JWST images of the distant Universe, their nature was hotly debated. Now that scientists have amassed a sample of hundreds of them, many think the dots are growing supermassive black holes.
Africa Finally Has Its Own Drug-Regulation Agency
science - Posted On:2025-11-10 13:15:00 Source: slashdot
After more than a decade of planning, the launch of the African Medicines Agency (AMA) is being celebrated in Mombasa, Kenya, this week at the Seventh Biennial Scientific Conference on Medical Products Regulation in Africa. From a report: The agency's establishment marks a pivotal moment in Africa's public health, at a time when the need for biomedical research conducted in Africa, focused on African health problems, has never been greater. Africa holds higher levels of human genetic diversity than anywhere else on Earth, but this diversity has not been adequately studied. And many globally approved treatments and vaccines for diseases such as HIV/AIDS, malaria and tuberculosis are less effective, and can even be harmful in some people of African ancestry. This year, cuts of billions of US dollars in international funding for biomedical research and health services in Africa have left millions of people without access to life-saving treatments or, in the case of researchers and health-care workers, unemployed. This demonstrates the immense vulnerability that comes with relying on funding from external donors. What's more, Africa's phenomenal population growth and pace of urbanization is bringing fresh challenges -- as well as opportunities -- around health and disease. In Africa's cities today, the inhabitants of increasingly affluent neighbourhoods are demanding high-quality medicines and health care. But in low-income areas, high population density, inadequate housing and poor sanitation are facilitating the spread of respiratory and diarrhoeal infections. And everywhere, inadequate diets, air pollution, smoking and physical inactivity are driving increased rates of cardiovascular disease, diabetes and cancer. By 2100, Africa is expected to host 13 of the world's 20 largest cities, and such inequalities are likely to worsen. Read more of this story at Slashdot.
What's the Best Ways for Humans to Explore Space?
science - Posted On:2025-11-10 07:45:00 Source: slashdot
Should we leave space exploration to robots — or prioritize human spaceflight, making us a multiplanetary species? Harvard professor Robin Wordsworth, who's researched the evolution and habitability of terrestrial-type planets, shares his thoughts: In space, as on Earth, industrial structures degrade with time, and a truly sustainable life support system must have the capability to rebuild and recycle them. We've only partially solved this problem on Earth, which is why industrial civilization is currently causing serious environmental damage. There are no inherent physical limitations to life in the solar system beyond Earth — both elemental building blocks and energy from the sun are abundant — but technological society, which developed as an outgrowth of the biosphere, cannot yet exist independently of it. The challenge of building and maintaining robust life-support systems for humans beyond Earth is a key reason why a machine-dominated approach to space exploration is so appealing... However, it's notable that machines in space have not yet accomplished a basic task that biology performs continuously on Earth: acquiring raw materials and utilizing them for self-repair and growth. To many, this critical distinction is what separates living from non-living systems... The most advanced designs for self-assembling robots today begin with small subcomponents that must be manufactured separately beforehand. Overall, industrial technology remains Earth-centric in many important ways. Supply chains for electronic components are long and complex, and many raw materials are hard to source off-world... If we view the future expansion of life into space in a similar way as the emergence of complex life on land in the Paleozoic era, we can predict that new forms will emerge, shaped by their changed environment, while many historical characteristics will be preserved. For machine technology in the near term, evolution in a more life-like direction seems likely, with greater focus on regenerative parts and recycling, as well as increasingly sophisticated self-assembly capabilities. The inherent cost of transporting material out of Earth's gravity well will provide a particularly strong incentive for this to happen. If building space habitats is hard and machine technology is gradually developing more life-like capabilities, does this mean we humans might as well remain Earth-bound forever? This feels hard to accept because exploration is an intrinsic part of the human spirit... To me, the eventual extension of the entire biosphere beyond Earth, rather than either just robots or humans surrounded by mechanical life-support systems, seems like the most interesting and inspiring future possibility. Initially, this could take the form of enclosed habitats capable of supporting closed-loop ecosystems, on the moon, Mars or water-rich asteroids, in the mold of Biosphere 2. Habitats would be manufactured industrially or grown organically from locally available materials. Over time, technological advances and adaptation, whether natural or guided, would allow the spread of life to an increasingly wide range of locations in the solar system. The article ponders the benefits (and the history) of both approaches — with some fasincating insights along the way. "If genuine alien life is out there somewhere, we'll have a much better chance of comprehending it once we have direct experience of sustaining life beyond our home planet." Read more of this story at Slashdot.
Genetically Engineered Babies Are Banned in the US. But Tech Titans Are Trying to Make One Anyway
science - Posted On:2025-11-09 17:00:00 Source: slashdot
"For months, a small company in San Francisco has been pursuing a secretive project: the birth of a genetically engineered baby," reports the Wall Street Journal: Backed by OpenAI chief executive Sam Altman and his husband, along with Coinbase co-founder and CEO Brian Armstrong, the startup — called Preventive — has been quietly preparing what would amount to a biological first. They are working toward creating a child born from an embryo edited to prevent a hereditary disease.... Editing genes in embryos with the intention of creating babies from them is banned in the U.S. and many countries. Preventive has been searching for places to experiment where embryo editing is allowed, including the United Arab Emirates, according to correspondence reviewed by The Wall Street Journal... Preventive is in the vanguard of a growing number of startups, funded by some of the most powerful people in Silicon Valley, that are pushing the boundaries of fertility and working to commercialize reproductive genetic technologies. Some are working on embryo editing, while others are already selling genetic screening tools that seek to account for the influence of dozens or hundreds of genes on a trait. They say their ultimate goal is to produce babies who are free of genetic disease and resilient against illnesses. Some say they can also give parents the ability to choose embryos that will have higher IQs and preferred traits such as height and eye color. Armstrong, the cryptocurrency billionaire, is leading the charge to make embryo editing a reality. He has told people that gene-editing technology could produce children who are less prone to heart disease, with lower cholesterol and stronger bones to prevent osteoporosis. According to documents and people briefed on his plans, he is already an investor or in talks with embryo editing ventures... After the Journal approached people close to the company last month to ask about its work, Preventive announced on its website that it had raised $30 million in investment to explore embryo editing. The statement pledged not to advance to human trials "if safety cannot be established through extensive research..." Other embryo editing startups are Manhattan Genomics, co-founded by Thiel Fellow Cathy Tie, and Bootstrap Bio, which plans to conduct tests in Honduras. Both companies are in early stages. The article notes the only known instance of children born from edited embryos was in 2018, when Chinese scientist He Jiankui "shocked the world with news that he had produced three children genetically altered as embryos to be immune to HIV. He was sentenced to prison in China for three years for the illegal practice of medicine. "He hasn't publicly shared the children's identities but says they are healthy. Read more of this story at Slashdot.
Blue Origin Postpones Attempt to Launch Unique ''EscaPADE' Orbiters to Mars
science - Posted On:2025-11-09 16:30:00 Source: slashdot
UPDATE (1:16 PST) Today's launch has been scrubbed due to weather, and Blue Origin is now reviewing opportunities for new launch windows. Sunday Morning Blue Origin livestreamed the planned launch of its New Glenn rocket, which will carry a very unique mission for NASA. "Twin spacecraft are set to take off on an unprecedented, winding journey to Mars," reports CNN, "where they will investigate why the barren red planet began to lose its atmosphere billions of years ago." By observing two Mars locations simultaneously, this mission can measure how Mars responds to space weather in real time — and how the Martian magnetosphere changes... Called EscaPADE, the mission will aim for an orbital trajectory that has never been attempted before, according to aerospace company Advanced Space, which is supporting the project. If successful, it could be a crucial case study that can allow extraordinary flexibility for planetary science missions down the road. The robotic mission plans to spend a year idling in an orbital backroad before heading to its target destination... [R]ather than turning toward Mars, the two orbiters will instead aim for Lagrange Point 2, or L2 — a cosmic balance point about 1.5 million kilometers (930,000 miles) from Earth. Lagrange points are special because they act as gravitational wells in which the pull of the sun and Earth are in perfect balance. The conditions can allow spacecraft to linger without being dragged away... The spacecraft will then loop endlessly in a kidney bean-shaped orbit around L2 until next year's Mars transfer window opens. This "launch and loiter" project is part of NASA's SIMPLEx [Small, Innovative Missions for Planetary Exploration] program, which seeks high-value missions for less money, notes CNN. "EscaPADE's cost was less than $100 million, compared with the roughly $300 million to $600 million price tags of other NASA satellites orbiting Mars." "Blue Origin is also attempting to land and recover New Glenn's first-stage booster," notes another CNN article. Read more of this story at Slashdot.
Blue Origin Livestreams Attempt to Launch Unique ''EscaPADE' Mission to Mars
science - Posted On:2025-11-09 15:00:00 Source: slashdot
Blue Origin is livestreaming the launch of its New Glenn rocketreports CNN, "where they will investigate why the barren red planet began to lose its atmosphere billions of years ago." By observing two Mars locations simultaneously, this mission can measure how Mars responds to space weather in real time — and how the Martian magnetosphere changes... Called EscaPADE, the mission will aim for an orbital trajectory that has never been attempted before, according to aerospace company Advanced Space, which is supporting the project. If successful, it could be a crucial case study that can allow extraordinary flexibility for planetary science missions down the road. The robotic mission plans to spend a year idling in an orbital backroad before heading to its target destination... [R]ather than turning toward Mars, the two orbiters will instead aim for Lagrange Point 2, or L2 — a cosmic balance point about 1.5 million kilometers (930,000 miles) from Earth. Lagrange points are special because they act as gravitational wells in which the pull of the sun and Earth are in perfect balance. The conditions can allow spacecraft to linger without being dragged away... The spacecraft will then loop endlessly in a kidney bean-shaped orbit around L2 until next year's Mars transfer window opens. This "launch and loiter" project is part of NASA's SIMPLEx [Small, Innovative Missions for Planetary Exploration] program, which seeks high-value missions for less money, notes CNN. "EscaPADE's cost was less than $100 million, compared with the roughly $300 million to $600 million price tags of other NASA satellites orbiting Mars." "Blue Origin is also attempting to land and recover New Glenn's first-stage booster," notes another CNN article. Read more of this story at Slashdot.
Here’s how orbital dynamics wizardry helped save NASA’s next Mars mission
Science - Posted On:2025-11-09 11:30:01 Source: arstechnica
CAPE CANAVERAL, Florida—The field of astrodynamics isn’t a magical discipline, but sometimes it seems trajectory analysts can pull a solution out of a hat.
That’s what it took to save NASA’s ESCAPADE mission from a lengthy delay, and possible cancellation, after its rocket wasn’t ready to send it toward Mars during its appointed launch window last year. ESCAPADE, short for Escape and Plasma Acceleration and Dynamics Explorers, consists of two identical spacecraft setting off for the red planet as soon as Sunday with a launch aboard Blue Origin’s massive New Glenn rocket.
Scientists Edit Gene in 15 Patients That May Permanently Reduce High Cholesterol
science - Posted On:2025-11-08 17:45:00 Source: slashdot
A CRISPR-based drug given to study participants by infusion is raising hopes for a much easier way to lower cholesterol, reports CNN: With a snip of a gene, doctors may one day permanently lower dangerously high cholesterol, possibly removing the need for medication, according to a new pilot study published Saturday in the New England Journal of Medicine. The study was extremely small — only 15 patients with severe disease — and was meant to test the safety of a new medication delivered by CRISPR-Cas9, a biological sort of scissor which cuts a targeted gene to modify or turn it on or off. Preliminary results, however, showed nearly a 50% reduction in low-density lipoprotein, or LDL, the "bad" cholesterol which plays a major role in heart disease — the No.1 killer of adults in the United States and worldwide. The study, which will be presented Saturday at the American Heart Association Scientific Sessions in New Orleans, also found an average 55% reduction in triglycerides, a different type of fat in the blood that is also linked to an increased risk of cardiovascular disease. "We hope this is a permanent solution, where younger people with severe disease can undergo a 'one and done' gene therapy and have reduced LDL and triglycerides for the rest of their lives," said senior study author Dr. Steven Nissen, chief academic officer of the Sydell and Arnold Miller Family Heart, Vascular & Thoracic Institute at Cleveland Clinic in Ohio.... Today, cardiologists want people with existing heart disease or those born with a predisposition for hard-to-control cholesterol to lower their LDL well below 100, which is the average in the US, said Dr. Pradeep Natarajan, director of preventive cardiology at Massachusetts General Hospital and associate professor of medicine at Harvard Medical School in Boston... People with a nonfunctioning ANGPTL3 gene — which Natarajan says applies to about 1 in 250 people in the US — have lifelong levels of low LDL cholesterol and triglycerides without any apparent negative consequences. They also have exceedingly low or no risk for cardiovascular disease. "It's a naturally occurring mutation that's protective against cardiovascular disease," said Nissen, who holds the Lewis and Patricia Dickey Chair in Cardiovascular Medicine at Cleveland Clinic. "And now that CRISPR is here, we have the ability to change other people's genes so they too can have this protection." "Phase 2 clinical trials will begin soon, quickly followed by Phase 3 trials, which are designed to show the effect of the drug on a larger population, Nissen said." And CNN quotes Nissen as saying "We hope to do all this by the end of next year. We're moving very fast because this is a huge unmet medical need — millions of people have these disorders and many of them are not on treatment or have stopped treatment for whatever reason." Read more of this story at Slashdot.
Chan Zuckerberg Initiative Shifts Bulk of Philanthropy, 'Going All In on AI-Powered Biology'
science - Posted On:2025-11-08 15:45:00 Source: slashdot
The Associated Press reports that "For the past decade, Dr. Priscilla Chan and her husband Mark Zuckerberg have focused part of their philanthropy on a lofty goal — 'to cure, prevent or manage all disease' — if not in their lifetime, then in their children's." During that decade they also funded other initiatives (including underprivileged schools and immigration reform), according to the article. But there's a change coming: Now, the billionaire couple is shifting the bulk of their philanthropic resources to Biohub, the pair's science organization, and focusing on using artificial intelligence to accelerate scientific discovery. The idea is to develop virtual, AI-based cell models to understand how they work in the human body, study inflammation and use AI to "harness the immune system" for disease detection, prevention and treatment. "I feel like the science work that we've done, the Biohub model in particular, has been the most impactful thing that we have done. So we want to really double down on that. Biohub is going to be the main focus of our philanthropy going forward," Zuckerberg said Wednesday evening at an event at the Biohub Imaging Institute in Redwood City, California.... Chan and Zuckerberg have pledged 99% of their lifetime wealth — from shares of Meta Platforms, where Zuckerberg is CEO — toward these efforts... On Thursday, Chan and Zuckerberg also announced that Biohub has hired the team at EvolutionaryScale, an AI research lab that has created large-scale AI systems for the life sciences... Biohub's ambition for the next years and decades is to create virtual cell systems that would not have been possible without recent advances in AI. Similar to how large language models learn from vast databases of digital books, online writings and other media, its researchers and scientists are working toward building virtual systems that serve as digital representations of human physiology on all levels, such as molecular, cellular or genome. As it is open source — free and publicly available — scientists can then conduct virtual experiments on a scale not possible in physical laboratories. "We will continue the model we've pioneered of bringing together scientists and engineers in our own state-of-the-art labs to build tools that advance the field," according to Thursday's blog post. "We'll then use those tools to generate new data sets for training new biological AI models to create virtual cells and immune systems and engineer our cells to detect and treat disease.... "We have also established the first large-scale GPU cluster for biological research, as well as the largest datasets around human cell types. This collection of resources does not exist anywhere else." Read more of this story at Slashdot.
Unesco Adopts Global Standards On 'Wild West' Field of Neurotechnology
science - Posted On:2025-11-08 05:15:00 Source: slashdot
Unesco has adopted the first global ethical standards for neurotechnology, defining "neural data" and outlining more than 100 recommendations aimed at safeguarding mental privacy. "There is no control," said Unesco's chief of bioethics, Dafna Feinholz. "We have to inform the people about the risks, the potential benefits, the alternatives, so that people have the possibility to say 'I accept, or I don't accept.'" The Guardian reports: She said the new standards were driven by two recent developments in neurotechnology: artificial intelligence (AI), which offers vast possibilities in decoding brain data, and the proliferation of consumer-grade neurotech devices such as earbuds that claim to read brain activity and glasses that track eye movements. The standards define a new category of data, "neural data," and suggest guidelines governing its protection. A list of more than 100 recommendations ranges from rights-based concerns to addressing scenarios that are -- at least for now -- science fiction, such as companies using neurotechnology to subliminally market to people during their dreams. "Neurotechnology has the potential to define the next frontier of human progress, but it is not without risks," said Unesco's director general, Audrey Azoulay. The new standards would "enshrine the inviolability of the human mind," she said. Read more of this story at Slashdot.
The First New Subsea Habitat In 40 Years Is About To Launch
science - Posted On:2025-11-07 22:45:00 Source: slashdot
An anonymous reader quotes a report from MIT Technology Review: Vanguard feels and smells like a new RV. It has long, gray banquettes that convert into bunks, a microwave cleverly hidden under a counter, a functional steel sink with a French press and crockery above. A weird little toilet hides behind a curtain. But some clues hint that you can't just fire up Vanguard's engine and roll off the lot. The least subtle is its door, a massive disc of steel complete with a wheel that spins to lock. Once it is sealed and moved to its permanent home beneath the waves of the Florida Keys National Marine Sanctuary early next year, Vanguard will be the world's first new subsea habitat in nearly four decades. Teams of four scientists will live and work on the seabed for a week at a time, entering and leaving the habitat as scuba divers. Their missions could include reef restoration, species surveys, underwater archaeology, or even astronaut training. One of Vanguard's modules, unappetizingly named the "wet porch," has a permanent opening in the floor (a.k.a. a "moon pool") that doesn't flood because Vanguard's air pressure is matched to the water around it.It is this pressurization that makes the habitat so useful. Scuba divers working at its maximum operational depth of 50 meters would typically need to make a lengthy stop on their way back to the surface to avoid decompression sickness. This painful and potentially fatal condition, better known as the bends, develops if divers surface too quickly. A traditional 50-meter dive gives scuba divers only a handful of minutes on the seafloor, and they can make only a couple of such dives a day. With Vanguard's atmosphere at the same pressure as the water, its aquanauts need to decompress only once, at the end of their stay. They can potentially dive for many hours every day. That could unlock all kinds of new science and exploration. Read more of this story at Slashdot.
James D. Watson, Co-Discoverer of the Structure of DNA, Is Dead At 97
science - Posted On:2025-11-07 20:45:00 Source: slashdot
ole_timer shares a report from the New York Times: James D. Watson, who entered the pantheon of science at age 25 when he joined in the discovery of the structure of DNA, one of the most momentous breakthroughs in the history of science, died on Thursday in East Northport, N.Y., on Long Island. He was 97. His death, in a hospice, was confirmed on Friday by his son Duncan, who said Dr. Watson was transferred to the hospice from a hospital this week after being treated there for an infection. Dr. Watson's role in decoding DNA, the genetic blueprint for life, would have been enough to establish him as one of the most important scientists of the 20th century. But he cemented that fame by leading the ambitious Human Genome Project and writing perhaps the most celebrated memoir in science. Read more of this story at Slashdot.
The government shutdown is starting to have cosmic consequences
Science - Posted On:2025-11-07 15:15:01 Source: arstechnica
The federal government shutdown, now in its 38th day, prompted the Federal Aviation Administration to issue a temporary emergency order Thursday prohibiting commercial rocket launches from occurring during “peak hours” of air traffic.
The FAA also directed commercial airlines to reduce domestic flights from 40 “high impact airports” across the country in a phased approach beginning Friday. The agency said the order from the FAA’s administrator, Bryan Bedford, is aimed at addressing “safety risks and delays presented by air traffic controller staffing constraints caused by the continued lapse in appropriations.”
The government considers air traffic controllers essential workers, so they remain on the job without pay until Congress passes a federal budget and President Donald Trump signs it into law. The shutdown’s effects, which affected federal workers most severely at first, are now rippling across the broader economy.
10,000 generations of hominins used the same stone tools to weather a changing world
Science - Posted On:2025-11-07 11:30:00 Source: arstechnica
At a site in Kenya, archaeologists recently unearthed layer upon layer of stone stools from deposits that span 300,000 years, and include a period of intense environmental upheaval. The oldest tools at the site date back to 2.75 million years ago. According to a recent study, the finds suggest that for hundreds of millennia, ancient hominins relied on the same stone tool technology as an anchor while the world changed around them.
George Washington University archaeologist David Braun and his colleagues recently unearthed stone tools from a 2.75 million-year-old layer of Kenyan sediment at a site called Nomorotukunan. They’re classic examples of a type of tools archaeologists call Oldowan: the earliest types of sharp-edged stone tools made by hominins. The tools unearthed at Nomorotukunan are some of the oldest Olduwan tools ever found; only three other Oldowan sites in Africa date back any farther than 2.6 million years ago.
These hand-sized chunks of river rock, with flakes chipped off one or two sides to make sharp edges, were cutting-edge technology (not sorry) from 2.9 million years ago until about 1.7 million years ago. In technical terms, that’s what’s called a long flipping time, enough to span several hominin species and more than one genus. The last hominins to use Oldowan tools looked very different, and probably lived and behaved very differently, from the first; over this huge span of time, the stone tool technology itself changed less than the beings using it.