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The government’s new weather forecast model has a slight problem: It predicts that outside temperatures will be a few degrees colder than what nature delivers. This “cold bias” means that local meteorologists are abandoning the National Weather Service in favor of forecasts produced by British and European weather agencies. For the past few weeks, the […]

In 2015, the 12-person organizing committee of the first International Summit on Human Gene Editing—which included Crispr co-inventors Jennifer Doudna and Emmanuelle Charpentier—issued a statement on how the world should responsibly push forward the science of permanently altering the DNA of Homo sapiens. Combined with other changes that had sprung biology free from the ivory […]

This story originally appeared on Reveal and is part of the Climate Desk collaboration. William Whitt suffered violent diarrhea for days. But once he began vomiting blood, he knew it was time to rush to the hospital. His body swelled up so much that his wife thought he looked like the Michelin Man, and on […]

If you are a Spider-Man fan (like me), surely you've seen Spider-Man: Homecoming. It's great. OK, you know what comes next. Here is the part where I look at a particular scene and talk about the physics. It's just what I do, I can't help myself. But even if there is a physics problem, I […]

As a fan of science fiction and science, I have to say that The Expanse has a bunch of great science. It's not just the science in the show. The characters also seem to demonstrate an understanding of physics. One scene from the first season stands out in particular as a classic physics example. I […]

In the spring of 2017, Urmila Mahadev found herself in what most graduate students would consider a pretty sweet position. She had just solved a major problem in quantum computation, the study of computers that derive their power from the strange laws of quantum physics. Combined with her earlier papers, Mahadev’s new result, on what […]

Suppose you are getting ready to take a physics test. Everything is set—but wait! Your calculator battery died. What do you do? If you're extra crafty, you could grab an LED (light-emitting diode) and use it to get your calculator to function again. I know this seems crazy, but it's true. In fact, I did […]

Friday morning began with delays at New York’s LaGuardia Airport. That’s not unusual—New York’s airports are famously balky. But this time, the cause wasn't something prosaic, like a blizzard. It was staffing. Because of the federal government shutdown, the airport didn’t have enough Transportation Security Administration agents and air traffic controllers; things slowed to a […]