A gauge theory is any number of quantum field theories put forward to explain fundamental interactions. In these theories the interactions between particles can be explained by the exchange of particles such as gluons, photons, and W and Z bosons. A gauge theory involves a symmetry group for the fields and potentials (the gauge group) […]
The 2024 Nobel Prizes in physics and chemistry have given us a glimpse of the future of science. Artificial intelligence (AI) was central to the discoveries honoured by both awards. You have to wonder what Alfred Nobel, who founded the prizes, would think of it all. We are certain to see many more Nobel medals […]
Climate change is increasingly influencing fire behaviour worldwide and intensifying fire smoke, endangering public health from air pollution caused by fires. These are the results of two new climate change impact attribution studies, both published in Nature Climate Change, with the involvement of the Potsdam Institute for Climate Impact Research PIK. The first study finds […]
Spain, like many other countries with a large share of agriculture in the economy, faces significant challenges in managing the vast quantities of livestock manure produced every year. In 2020, Spain had more than 6.7 million cattle, each producing approximately 17 cubic meters of manure annually . Manure, particularly from large-scale livestock operations, creates environmental […]
The evolution of human starch digestion A gene that allows modern human mouths to break down starch into sugar likely mutated hundreds of thousands of years ago, say two papers that track the evolution of the salivary amylase gene AMY1 in great detail. A study in Science estimates AMY1’s first duplication was 800,000 years ago […]
Topological insulators are materials with special universal properties, which are protected against perturbations. Such properties are theoretically described by topology, a branch of mathematics concerned with the properties of geometrical objects that are unchanged by continuous deformations. Concretely, topological insulators are electronic materials that have a bulk band gap like an ordinary insulator but have […]
More than 6,500 volunteers have supported the accurate identification of approximately 1,000 prehistoric burial mounds in the Netherlands in just four months, proving the value of involving volunteers in archaeology. In 2018, the Heritage Quest project was launched to harness the power of citizen scientists, utilizing crowd-sourcing to identify archaeological features on lidar imagery of […]
One of the things the media present these days as one of the most important technological advances for the near future is what has come to be called the metaverse . The metaverse could be characterized by two fundamental properties. First, what is now offered to us through more or less large two-dimensional screens (ranging […]
Jupiter’s Great Red Spot oscillates in time-lapse images Jupiter’s Great Red Spot squeezes in and out as its movement speeds and slows, surprising scientists with its oscillating size. The paper puts together time-lapse footage of three months of observations from NASA’s Hubble Space Telescope, and the insights could provide cosmic context for Earth’s hurricanes. Full […]