Science X Dialog

A drop of coffee on a tabletop often leaves a dark ring behind. This everyday mark is a reminder that a drying droplet is not passive: As water evaporates, it can transport the particles suspended inside it toward the edge. ...

Photonic integrated circuits route information with optical signals instead of relying only on electrical currents. Silicon (Si) and silicon nitride (SiNx) are excellent photonic platforms for waveguides, but they cannot ...

Cancer is most dangerous not when it starts but when it spreads. Metastasis—the process by which cancer cells travel to and colonize distant organs—is responsible for the vast majority of cancer deaths. The problem is that ...

Have you ever wondered what Earth observation satellites see when they look down at the deep ocean or a dense tropical forest during the dead of night? The answer, for the most part, is nothing. Standard optical sensors require ...

How can we predict the way a real material, such as a polymer, responds mechanically over timescales ranging from the ultrafast motion of atoms to the slow deformations measured in a laboratory? This is a deceptively difficult ...

For years, I have been interested in disorders in which patients experience very real symptoms even though conventional brain imaging may look normal. Molecular imaging has taught me a simple lesson: what is invisible anatomically ...

We usually think of auroras as beautiful lights in the night sky. I see them as visible traces of a connection between the sun, Earth's magnetic field and the atmosphere. This led me to an origin-of-life question: Could the ...

A few years ago, I drove with an old friend from Togo, West Africa, towards the country's last remaining large protected area, Fazao-Malfakassa National Park. Our destination was the Hotel Fazao, where his uncle had once ...

In 1974, Stephen Hawking made a prediction that transformed our understanding of black holes. Black holes, he showed, are not truly black: They slowly lose energy through a quantum process now known as Hawking radiation. ...

Steel pipelines used for oil and gas transportation remain the backbone of energy infrastructure. Hence, there is heavy focus on their integrity and resistance to degradation in corrosive conditions. Sour corrosion, a dangerous ...

When we think about metabolism, we usually ask, "What did I eat? How much sugar, fat or protein was in the meal?" But through our research, we have become interested in another question: "When did I eat it?" This matters ...

What happens when a superconductor becomes so thin that electrons can no longer behave as if they were moving through an ordinary three-dimensional piece of metal? This question has been at the center of my recent work on ...