Science X Dialog

On Jan. 3, 1117, a strong earthquake shook northern Italy. A manuscript of the 12th century, kept today in the Vatican Library, recorded what came next: "The lakes also rose so much that very few of those living in the villages ...

Imagine encountering a rattlesnake in your backyard or while on a hike. It will most likely "freeze" to avoid attracting attention, but if it feels especially threatened, it may rattle and even strike, delivering a painful ...

On May 10, 2025, a spacecraft built in the Soviet Union to land on Venus came home. Launched in 1972, Cosmos-482 was stranded by a failed upper stage of its rocket and circled Earth for 53 years. In its last days, several ...

You sit down to meditate. A conversation returns, then thoughts. You bring your attention back to the breath. Sometimes, after many such returns, the effort eases. Thoughts lose their urgency, while awareness remains clear. ...

One of the questions that stayed with me throughout my Ph.D. was surprisingly simple: Why are some tissues so much harder to break down with histotripsy than others? Histotripsy is a focused ultrasound technique that uses ...

Researchers from the National University of Singapore (NUS), in collaboration with scientists from institutions in Switzerland, the Czech Republic and Germany, have demonstrated a way to introduce magnetism into an otherwise ...

When we think about a diamond, we often think about a material whose value comes from its perfection. In my research, however, I am interested in something almost opposite: the tiny imperfections inside diamonds. These atomic-scale ...

Every black hole hides a question at its center. Einstein's theory predicts that whatever falls in is crushed into a singularity, a point of infinite density where the theory itself breaks down. Most physicists expect quantum ...

Many fascinating phases in quantum materials emerge when electrons, atoms and other microscopic components begin to act collectively. But these phases do not necessarily appear out of nowhere when a material crosses a transition ...

Pokémon, sports and other physical trading and collectible cards have been around for decades but have surged in popularity since COVID. These cards are usually obtained through gambling-like packs containing random cards. ...

My ancestral languages, Boarisch (Bavarian) and Schwäbisch (Swabian), are routinely described as German dialects. That might sound like a technical linguistic distinction. For me, a Boarisch-Schwob scholar and community member, ...

The weather over the North Atlantic affects hundreds of millions of people. From winter storms over Europe to cold spells in eastern North America, many of these impacts are shaped by large-scale atmospheric circulation patterns ...