Science X Dialog

Finding Earth-like planets orbiting sun-like stars and identifying signs of life such as oxygen or water is a major goal in astronomy and a key interest for the public. Addressing this challenge speaks directly to one of ...

For riverside communities along the Amazon, fish is not a menu choice—it is a lifeline. Millions of people in the Brazilian Amazon depend on fish as their primary source of protein, consuming it daily in quantities far ...

When most people hear "polymer," they think of plastics. In our group, polymerization is a way to line up identical molecules like beads on a string and let quantum mechanics take over. Put magnetic building blocks in a one-dimensional ...

Coordinating groups of underwater robots is difficult because communication below the surface is slow and unreliable. GPS signals do not work underwater, and radio waves fade rapidly in seawater. Most underwater communication ...

For years, the Prairie Pothole Region has bothered me in a very specific way. On a map, it looks like a normal landscape: fields, gentle slopes, small streams. But hydrologically, it behaves like something else entirely. ...

I have always been interested in how people make decisions under uncertainty—especially decisions about safety. But it was not until I began studying housing conditions and disaster risk that I realized how deeply our built ...

Imagine trying to design a key for a lock that is constantly changing its shape. That is the exact challenge we face in modern drug discovery when dealing with intrinsically disordered proteins.

When most people think about natural selection, they imagine individuals competing with one another: The fastest animal escapes predators, the strongest plant produces more seeds, and the most resistant bacteria better survive ...

We like to think that animals follow the crowd. If most of the group does something, surely the individual will copy. But what if the story is more complicated? What if the deciding factor isn't just what the majority is ...

Current global climate models (GCMs) support with high confidence the view that rising greenhouse gases and other anthropogenic forcings account for nearly all observed global surface warming—slightly above 1 °C—since ...

If you've ever watched a glass blower at work, you've seen a material behaving in a very special way. As it cools, the viscosity of molten glass increases steadily but gradually, allowing it to be shaped without a mold. Physicists ...

Neural crest cells are a population of stem cells that invade the embryo in early development. They play a big role in what you look like: the pigments of your eyes, of your skin, and the bone structure of your face are all ...