Eighty years ago, a massive tsunami devastated parts of Hawaii, Alaska, Washington and Oregon following an earthquake off the coast of Alaska. A Michigan State University team is launching a project to study the underwater fault system where it originated—and whether it still poses a risk today.
Within the next five years, global warming is set to breach the 1.5°C threshold at the heart of the 2015 Paris Agreement. This will have dire consequences, from rapidly melting ice sheets to ghostly white coral reefs.
When JWST's first science results started rolling in, it was a triumph for scientific vision and persistence. For years, the fate of the powerful space telescope was uncertain. It went way over budget, and for 25 years, troubling conversations accompanied its ongoing development. Several times, it seemed like it would be canceled, and in 2011, Congress came close to ending the program.
Choosing an orbit for a satellite always comes with trade-offs. Very low Earth orbit (VLEO), between 100–450 km (62–280 miles), has distinct advantages. Remote-sensing cameras can take better pictures, communications and radar require less power, and atmospheric drag automatically cleans up dead satellites.
Monitoring marine life helps scientists track ecosystem health, improve conservation and manage fisheries. A promising approach is environmental DNA (eDNA), which refers to trace genetic material naturally released into the water by organisms, such as skin cells, mucus and excreta.
A new recycling technique could help tackle a major challenge: breaking down some of the toughest plastics without generating large amounts of waste.
A team of researchers from University of Toronto Engineering has created a new type of dye-sensitized nanoparticle that can detect target chemicals at very low concentrations while also distinguishing between molecules with very similar shapes.
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 a steady stream of light to function, and in these photon-limited regions, they hit a hard physical boundary. But what if we could rewrite the rules of optical imaging? By borrowing techniques from quantum photonics, we can push beyond these classical limits and unlock a fundamentally new way to observe the darkest and most hidden environments on our planet.
Artificial intelligence is transforming how information is generated, processed and stored, but its rapid expansion is also driving unprecedented demand for computing power and electricity. Developing hardware that can process information more efficiently is therefore becoming one of the major technological challenges of the AI era.
Picture yourself in a manufactured colony that orbits between Earth and the moon. It might sound like science fiction, but it's part of a 2019 presentation made by Jeff Bezos, founder of the space technology company Blue Origin, to an audience of journalists, space industry executives and policymakers.
