Maths & Physical Sciences

Solar-to-Jet-Fuel System Readies for Takeoff

IEEE Spectrum: As climate change edges from crisis to emergency, the aviation sector looks set to miss its 2050 goal of net-zero emissions. In the five years preceding the pandemic, the top four U.S. airlines—American, Delta, Southwest, and United—saw a 15…

At Long Last, Mathematical Proof That Black Holes Are Stable

Quanta Magazine: In 1963, the mathematician Roy Kerr found a solution to Einstein’s equations that precisely described the space-time outside what we now call a rotating black hole. (The term wouldn’t be coined for a few more years.) In the nearly…

A Minimalist Approach to the Hunt for Dark Matter

Wired: Nothing is certain in life except death, taxes, and—a physicist might add—the values of the fundamental constants. These are quantities, such as the speed of light or the mass of the electron, which physicists have determined do not change…

Unique phenomenon discovered as gel shifts to a liquid, then back to a gel and back again

Chemistry World: In a strange twist, researchers have accidentally discovered a flowing suspension of a gel, called a sol, becomes solid gel again when it’s diluted further – going against…