Microplastics—those invisible granules of plastic that remain after a plastic container has degraded—cover the Earth from the ocean floor to the tops of Himalayan mountains.
Tag: Science
FULL POWER, SCOTTY! FUSION ENGINE FOR SPACE FLIGHT READY FOR LAUNCH
RocketStar, a development-stage company, says it has successfully tested a novel ion-drive rocket engine that gives 50 percent more thrust than conventional fuels, in part by incorporating a form of nuclear fusion.
ENZYME MAY BE KEY TO ALZHEIMER’S
Clots of amyloid and tau proteins gumming up spaces between brain cells are signs of Alzheimer’s Disease but are no longer thought to be its cause.
PATCH LETS PEOPLE SPEAK WITHOUT VOCAL CORDS
A small, self-energizing patch worn on the front of the throat can translate the movement of neck muscles into spoken words.
FLATLAND: SCIENTISTS ARE BUILDING A CATALOG OF TWO-DIMENSIONAL MATERIALS
Graphene, a sheet of carbon atoms a few atoms thick, is seen as a miracle material: it’s 200 times tougher than steel per unit of weight, is an excellent electrical conductor, and weighs only a fifth as much as aluminum.
TOP TREND 2024, EV GO FU: CENTURY-OLD BATTERY DESIGN STALLS EVs
Owners of some electric vehicles (EVs) are finding their new cars have an Achilles heel: a battery design more than a century old.
NEW OPTICAL DISC HOLDS MORE INFORMATION THAN 5,000 DVDs
Scientists have made an optical disc from a new material called "dye-doped photoresist with aggregation-induced emission luminogens" (AIE-DDPR) that can store a “petabit” of data, equivalent to the capacity of more than 5,000 DVDs.
U.K. SHOWS OFF NEW “DRAGONFIRE” LASER WEAPON
The wars around the world are getting expensive. Using a million-dollar missile to shoot down a million-dollar drone a few dozen times a day in Israel, Ukraine, or the Red Sea begins to add up.
RESEARCHERS TAKE ANOTHER STEP TOWARD ARTIFICIAL LIFE FORMS
Everything that lives is made of DNA. DNA is made up of the sugar deoxyribose that forms its helical backbone and just four nucleotides—adenine, cytosine, guanine, and thymine.
NEW MATERIAL DOUBLES HYDROGEN STORAGE CAPACITY
Hydrogen is making headlines as a potentially limitless clean fuel that holds more energy in a given space than lithium-ion batteries. (See “A Gold Rush for Gold Hydrogen” 5 Mar 2024.) However, as hydrogen’s benefits draw more interest, so does a key problem: the gas is hard to store.