Technology

By Mark Peplow Chemists are dreamers. Every day, they imagine molecules floating in space, with atoms moving about in a stately dance. They spin the structures mentally to examine them from all angles, perhaps twisting each molecule until a bond pops open and another snaps into place. Such movies play inside the minds of most chemists …

By Nancy Atkinson For decades, scientists have tracked hints of a thread-like structure that ties together galaxies across the universe. Theories, computer models, and indirect observations have indicated that there is a cosmic web of dark matter that connects galaxies and constitutes the large-scale structure of the cosmos. But while the filaments that make up …

By Adrian Cho For decades, particle physicists have yearned for physics beyond their tried-and-true standard model. Now, they are finding signs of something unexpected at the Large Hadron Collider (LHC), the world’s biggest atom smasher at CERN, the European particle physics laboratory near Geneva, Switzerland. The hints come not from the LHC’s two large detectors, …

By Sara Reardon The US Food and Drug Administration (FDA) has started testing whether livers-on-a-chip — miniature models of human organs engineered to mimic biological functions — can reliably model human reactions to food and food-borne illnesses. The experiments will help the agency to determine whether companies can substitute chip data for animal data when applying …

By Matthew Hutson Doctors have lots of tools for predicting a patient’s health. But—as even they will tell you—they’re no match for the complexity of the human body. Heart attacks in particular are hard to anticipate. Now, scientists have shown that computers capable of teaching themselves can perform even better than standard medical guidelines, significantly …

By Larry Greenemeier The idea of dropping an air-blast bomb—even if it’s the largest nonnuclear ordnance ever used by the U.S. in combat—to target fighters holed up in tunnels deep underground might at first seem counterintuitive. The GBU-43/B Massive Ordnance Air Blast Bomb, or “Mother of All Bombs” (MOAB), which the Air Force unleashed on …

By Alexandra Witze After 13 years exploring Saturn and its moons, NASA’s Cassini spacecraft has just 5 months left to live. But it will go out with a scientific bang. On 22 April, Cassini will slingshot past Titan, Saturn’s largest moon, for the last time. Four days later, the probe will hurtle into the unexplored region …

By Sarah Kaplan By its very nature, the black hole at the heart of our galaxy is impossible to spot. Its overwhelming gravity allows nothing to escape, not even light. Massive enough to send shivers through space-time itself, yet perfectly invisible, it lurks in the darkness like a monster from a child’s nightmare — felt …

By Debora MacKenzie Nerve gas is back. Images of the victims and reports from doctors on the scene of yesterday’s Syrian government air strike on the rebel-held northern town of Khan Sheikhoun suggest the weapon used was the nerve agent, sarin. At least 70 men, women and children died and hundreds were injured. The timing …

By Heidi Ledford Databases worldwide are rapidly swelling with the sequences of thousands of cancer genomes. Now, some scientists are advocating that researchers shift their focus back in time: to study the DNA of tumours in their adolescence, before they commit to being cancerous. At the American Association for Cancer Research (AACR) annual meeting in Washington …

By Amy Thompson Even Elon Musk was speechless – well, for a moment. Last night SpaceX launched and successfully landed an orbital rocket that had already flown once before: a first in space history. I was one of the few hundred people who had travelled by bus to the Saturn V Center, part of Kennedy …

By Jonathan Amos Engineers are getting ready to box up the James Webb Space Telescope and send it to Houston, Texas. The successor to Hubble, due for launch in 2018, is going to be put inside the giant thermal vacuum chamber where they tested the Apollo spaceships. For 90 days, JWST will get a thorough …