Data center opposition crossed party lines in Tuesday’s midterms.

If you partitioned the entire Earth, from just below the surface to the top of the atmosphere, into 1-kilometer-square chunks, there would be billions of them. Now run each of those cells through a series of complex physics equations, and you can see how the entire Earth system interacts and evolves in detail, one step at a time.

New evidence from gas seeping above volcanic rifts suggests Mars is not geologically dead deep inside, but merely sleeping. Fresh fissures along the Alba Mons region hint at active spots under the surface, where gases from inside the planet may be making their way up to the surface.

Brazil’s “Dirty List,” a public registry that names employers found to have violated anti-slavery laws, is a key component of the country’s efforts to combat forced labor. Major meatpackers in Brazil signed sustainable sourcing commitments promising to not purchase cattle directly from ranchers on the Dirty List. But new research shows that ranchers have found ways around these restrictions, rerouting cattle through intermediaries and allowing cattle linked to forced labor to remain in domestic and international beef and leather supply chains.

Endangered erect-crested penguins are holding steady on tiny islands while declining on a breeding ground 40 times larger, challenging assumptions about where the species’ best hope for survival lies. An endangered penguin species could receive a less severe global risk rating even as one of its only two breeding populations suffers a steep decline. A […]

University of Sydney researchers have made a breakthrough by directly observing hydrogen in the tiny spaces between the atoms in metal alloys. The world-first observation of hydrogen dissolving in these ‘metal crystal lattices’ offers fresh insights into why hydrogen can weaken metals and how more hydrogen-resistant materials might be developed.

Previous studies have shown that upon antigen stimulation, the T cell receptor (TCR) undergoes phase separation with the kinase Lck to mediate rapid T cell activation. However, the manner in which costimulating receptors regulate this process has remained unclear.

Ancient Rome famously invaded Britain in 43 CE, under the direction of the emperor Claudius. But his campaign’s success largely hinged on insider information. Just three years’ earlier, an Iron Age tribe living in present-day southeast England known as the Atrebates ousted their ruler named Verica, who subsequently fled for Rome. Once there, Verica convinced Claudius to move forward with plans to cross the English Channel, and add Britain to the empire’s ever-growing domain. In exchange for restoring his place on the Atrebates’ throne, Verica agreed to provide Roman troops with tactical support and guidance. In a new discussion published today in the journal Current Archaeology, researchers argue that historians have consistently gotten one key detail incorrect for at least 200 years. Based on their analysis of ancient artifacts and contextual information, the Iron Age ruler Verica was a woman, not a man. “Verica is assumed to have been male because of the patriarchal mindset of 19th century classical historians,” study co-author and Bournemouth University archaeologist Miles Russell said in a statement. “Verica was not only critical to the special relationship between Britain and Rome in the early first century [CE] but was indisputably female.” The consequential re-evaluation is based…

A change to just two DNA letters reduced disease in cacao by about 42% under laboratory conditions, suggesting a possible way to protect future chocolate harvests. Black pod disease is estimated to reduce cacao yields by roughly 30% worldwide, threatening the livelihoods of farmers who grow the crop used to make chocolate. Shifting weather patterns […]

After Democrats won big in Texas and other AI infrastructure hot spots on Tuesday, data center enthusiasts looked for comfort in low Earth orbit.

Archaeologists have discovered the third-largest assemblage of Ice Age cave art ever found in Mediterranean Iberia in a region thought devoid of cave art, transforming our knowledge of Paleolithic European art.

A meta-analysis of empirical studies involving more than 31,000 participants has revealed the factors that affect the level of influence of so-called social media influencers. Those factors include credibility, expertise, attractiveness and perceived similarity to their followers. They are, the work shows, positively associated with the attitude of consumers toward the brands mentioned or promoted by those influencers and, in turn, their purchasing intentions. Details of the analysis are published in the International Journal of Internet Marketing and Advertising.

Across 10 states this Election Day, voters overwhelmingly backed restrictions on data center development or rejected measures that would have eased their construction

AI industry PACs spent millions influencing the 2026 midterms, with mixed results. Political groups are already looking toward the next election cycle.

Fluorescent materials usually emit a single consistent color. They are typically made from dyes or metallic components. In contrast, researchers reporting in ACS Central Science have created carbon dots that can fluoresce in a range of colors under UV light, depending on the concentration and the liquid they’re in. The team incorporated the new carbon dots into plastic decorations and used them to create a data encryption system.

A recent study published in Nature Electronics and carried out by researchers from nanoGUNE’s Quantum Hardware research group, Quantum Motion, London Center for Nanotechnology, Imperial College London and the University of Cambridge introduces a new superinductor created within a silicon integrated circuit fabricated in a commercial complementary metal–oxide–semiconductor (CMOS) process.

Mermaids have inhabited world folklore and mythology for centuries. Ancient Babylonians worshiped Oannes, a human-fish hybrid; sirens populated Greek mythology; and fairy tales such as “The Little Mermaid” have made this figure a pop culture icon.

While it’s not yet clear what kind of product the smartphone startup is cooking up, Nothing’s CEO said the product is designed to leverage AI for productivity gains.

Wearable health-monitoring devices are becoming increasingly important for personalized health care, but conventional patches often rely on substrates that restrict airflow, trap sweat and cause skin discomfort during prolonged use. These limitations can also interfere with the reliable collection and analysis of sweat, highlighting the need for breathable materials that support both comfortable wear and accurate sensing.

During World War II, physicists on the Manhattan Project worried that the Nazi German nuclear program might achieve the first nuclear bomb before the US and its allies. That’s not what transpired, but historians have debated just how close the Germans came to achieving criticality in their last attempt at building a reactor: the B8 pile. Werner Heisenberg, who led that effort, claimed that they were close and had only needed a little more uranium. But according to a paper published in the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences Nexus, that was not the case: the project simply didn’t have sufficient uranium and heavy water to build a working bomb, given the design they were using. This particular research started in 2013, when University of Maryland physicist Timothy Koeth—a co-author on the new paper—received the gift of a mysterious heavy metal cube from a friend. He instantly recognized it as one of the uranium cubes used by German scientists in their unsuccessful attempt to build a working nuclear reactor. Only 14 such cubes are known to exist today. In 2019, we reported on Koeth’s quest to track down the cube’s origins, as well as several other similar cubes that…

During its busiest week last quarter, Uber said only 4 people booked a ride using an AI agent.

The milestone comes a year after Snapchat announced a controversial limit on free storage for its Memories feature and informed users it would start requiring users to pay $1.99 per month for additional storage or subscribe to Snapchat+ to retain their Memories.

Atypical weather conditions caused the Antarctic ozone hole to grow to an unusually large size in 2026, NOAA and NASA scientists reported today, though they said the protective ozone layer is still on track to recover by later this century.

The p97 protein plays a central role in cellular quality control by preparing defective or no-longer-needed proteins for degradation and recycling. Researchers at the University of Münster, in collaboration with the University of Duisburg-Essen, have investigated how p97 and its auxiliary proteins interact in this process. The study has now been published in the journal Nature Communications.

The so-called “bluenami” that swept across the US on Tuesday is already hitting the breakwater. With Democrats seizing a firm majority in the House along with the Senate, longtime party loyalist Hakeem Jeffries is poised to take up the mantle as speaker. But for all the progressive excitement around the bruising beatdown delivered to Donald Trump and the Republican party, Jeffries’ own backers include some of the most notorious power players in the tech industry, setting up immediate tension with voters who rallied around an anti-Silicon Valley message to push the Democrats back into power. As collated by the investigative publication Sludge, Jeffries has a lengthy history of groveling to some of the most divisive tech and weapons corporations on the planet. His donor list includes controversial figures like Anduril CEO Brian Schimpf and his COO Matthew Grimm, who together spent nearly $150,000 boosting Jeffries’ fundraising committees. Some might recognize Anduril as the AI weapons tech corporation co-founded by Palmer Luckey, a tech billionaire whose recent projects include a company working on genetically enhanced dogs for military purposes. Another controversial donor includes Mehdi Allhassani, current head of government affairs at the AI surveillance company Palantir, from whom Jeffries received $44,300…

OpenAI’s Chris Lehane wants AI to define the 2028 election, proposing a new social contract that could benefit Americans while also advancing the AI giant’s own business interests.

Researchers have developed a multifunctional fire-protective coating that not only shields materials from extreme heat but also provides an early warning of fire and can be recycled into new flame-retardant materials at the end of its life. The work, published in Polymer Degradation and Stability, demonstrates a strategy for combining fire safety, sustainability and circularity within a single material system.

Fermions are among the most important particles in physics and include both everyday electrons and more exotic variants. Chiral fermions, like gloves, come in left- and right-handed versions and were proposed over a century ago. While high-energy neutrinos—the leading candidates for massless chiral fermions—proved to have mass, nearly (semi-) metallic solid-state crystals were discovered 15 years ago to host electronic versions of massless chiral fermions.

The startup allows software engineers to deploy teams of agents to work on various aspects of a project simultaneously.

Kat Abughazaleh and CJ Pearson spoke at WIRED World Fair on Wednesday about the influence of social media on politics following Tuesday’s midterm elections.

People tend to think more highly of companies that give to charity on a monthly or weekly basis rather than donating an annual lump sum worth the same amount.

When astronomers looked at photos of the early universe taken by the James Webb Space Telescope, they found something odd: an overabundance of bright galaxies. Based on what they knew about the early universe, such galaxies should have been far less common in the few hundred million years following the Big Bang.

Update 11/4/26 3:55 p.m. EST: The United State Space Force announced the Swift Observatory re-entered Earth’s atmosphere at 7:39 a.m. EST over Indonesia’s North Sumatra region—roughly 3.4 degrees north latitude and 98.6 degrees east longitude. NASA is confident that most of the telescope burned up upon re-entry, although some parts may have survived the descent.A revolutionary NASA telescope is making its way back to Earth—but will not survive the journey. The United States Space Force has honed its estimate for the Neil Gehreis Swift Observatory’s fiery atmospheric reentry. According to the latest calculations, the 2,500-pound orbital telescope will largely burn-up during its descent on or around Wednesday, November 4. “We’ve known this day would come since before Swift was launched,” Pennsylvania State University astronomer and Swift control lead John Nousek told AP News. “At least in low-Earth orbit, what goes up must come down. And that end is catastrophic.” Launched in 2004 on what was expected to be a two-year mission, the orbital space telescope ultimately spent nearly 22 years gazing deep into the cosmos. Swift’s contributions to astronomy, particularly the study of gamma-ray bursts (GRBs), cannot be overstated. After more than two decades in space, the observatory examined over…

Laboratory experiments suggest that rocky planets could generate their own water as they form, potentially giving distant worlds an essential ingredient for life. Rocks, hydrogen gas, and intense heat might sound like an unlikely recipe for an ocean. Yet experiments suggest that these ingredients could have produced much of Earth’s water while the planet was […]

Scientists searching for extraterrestrial intelligence are testing a new possibility: alien civilizations might transmit signals at specific moments when Earth is most likely to be listening. A pioneering radio telescope survey now combines astronomy with game theory to investigate whether the universe itself could provide a shared schedule for first contact. A Cosmic Meeting Point That Both Civilizations Could Recognize For decades, the SETI Institute has searched the skies for radio transmissions that might reveal the existence of technological civilizations beyond Earth. Yet even the most sensitive instruments face a fundamental problem: how can two civilizations coordinate communication when neither knows the other exists? Researchers now believe that an astronomical alignment could offer a possible answer. A new paper, published in The Astronomical Journal, describes a multiyear observing campaign centered on the anti-solar point, the direction in the sky directly opposite the Sun. The strategy draws on a concept from game theory known as a Schelling point: a location or moment that two independent parties might select without prior communication. If an extraterrestrial civilization observed Earth crossing the face of the Sun, it could determine our planet’s orbital position and choose the midpoint of that transit to transmit a signal.…

Leading the Future, backed by Silicon Valley’s biggest billionaires, had a war chest of $100 million and an aggressive stance against AI regulation. All of it didn’t add up to much on Tuesday night.

Light pollution is one of the fastest-growing and least-regulated environmental changes worldwide. It disrupts biological processes at all levels—from genes to entire ecosystems—and contributes significantly to global biodiversity loss. A recent review article, in which the Leibniz Institute of Freshwater Ecology and Inland Fisheries (IGB) participated, addresses the ecological consequences of artificial nighttime lighting. Based on a comprehensive assessment of the impacts on organisms on land and in water, the authors identify priorities for research and management. The Review Article was published in Nature Reviews Biodiversity.

One of NASA’s premier space telescopes plunged to Earth on Wednesday, ending its 22-year investigation of the universe’s biggest explosions.

The web host said hackers exploited a vulnerability to access customer emails and files during a “deliberate attack.”

During a recent podcast appearance, OpenAI CEO Sam Altman made some baffling comments that really hit a nerve on social media. The billionaire said that it didn’t make sense for individual people to run their own AI models at home and that all of their RAM chips were far better off being used inside the industry’s widely-reviled data centers. “But from a global allocation perspective, actually, it’s quite terrible to have everybody have a bunch of the world’s limited supply of [dynamic RAM] sitting in their own computer,” he said. The bizarre missive drew a heated reaction, especially among PC enthusiasts who’ve watched in sorrow as computer parts have become unaffordable thanks to the AI industry’s unrelenting hunger for chips. But now that Big Tech, which has spent years cozying up to the Trump administration, experienced a bruising defeat, Altman is suddenly singing a different tune. In an apparent attempt to save face, Altman went on X on election night to set the record straight — by arguing he didn’t say what he said. “I actually do want the world to have tons of memory and people to put as much as they want in their computers, and it is…

Showrunner Silka Luisa and star Hunter Schafer want their series, Blade Runner 2099, to show the benefits of a post-revolution world.

The “Geolinking Service SoRa” research data infrastructure helps to close a gap in the German research landscape. Many questions—such as those regarding social inequality or environmental justice—can only be answered through interdisciplinary analyses, such as linking social science and spatial science data: Does the proportion of green space in a residential neighborhood affect health and well-being? Are people who live in single-family homes happier than residents of densely built-up urban neighborhoods? How does transportation infrastructure—such as access to buses and trains—influence people’s mobility patterns?

NASA’s Parker Solar Probe has uncovered hidden order in space turbulence, a finding that could help scientists understand magnetic storms on Earth. Smoke rising from an incense stick can begin as a thin, steady stream before curling and spreading unpredictably. The smoke makes turbulence in the air visible. Turbulence also occurs in space, where the […]

Google is tying up AI Overviews with traditional search, angering parents and educators who worry that easy, machine-generated answers are leaving kids less capable.

An international study jointly led by researchers from the Department of Geography and the Institute for Climate and Carbon Neutrality at the Faculty of Social Sciences, The University of Hong Kong (HKU), has revealed that vegetation resilience across Northern Hemisphere permafrost regions underwent a widespread reversal around 2008, declining broadly despite continued greening.

Mercury pollution from artisanal gold mining in tropical regions is finding its way into wildlife. A team from the University of Vienna and the Veterinary University of Vienna shows that mercury exposure impairs the glucocorticoid response that helps animals cope with acute stress. This weakened stress response could reduce the caimans’ chances of survival and reproduction. The findings, recently published in the journal Communications Biology, point to a previously overlooked endocrine threat to crocodylians.

Archaeologists have finally cracked the code to the famed Ann Francis shipwreck’s brass combination treasure lock. However, the 16th century relic didn’t open after hours of painstaking trial-and-error. Researchers at Cardiff University and Amgueddfa Cymru, the National Museum of Wales, relied on highly detailed CT scanning equipment to peer inside the mechanical device and learn the code without touching the lock itself. “It’s not every day you get to solve a 400-year-old mystery,” David Williams, a Cardiff University biomechanics engineer, said in a statement. The lock’s combination was lost on December 28, 1583, when the merchant ship Ann Francis sailed into a powerful storm during a return voyage from Spain. The exact crew number is unclear, but all of them (around 14 sailors) reportedly drowned after veering off-course and wrecking along the coast of southern Wales. Unfortunately, at least one other death is likely directly tied to the Ann Francis. Archival evidence suggests locals later accused a “detestable woman” named Mother Gabley of being an “execrable witch” and casting the foul weather responsible for the maritime tragedy. While Mother Gabley’s fate remains unknown, she would have almost certainly been hanged under the recently passed “Act Against Conjurations, Enchantments and Witchcrafts”…

Scientists have uncovered surprising evidence that many of Britain’s overlooked insects and spiders are becoming more abundant and emerging earlier in the year, according to a new study.

Researchers from the Hefei Institutes of Physical Science (HFIPS) of the Chinese Academy of Sciences (CAS) have developed a carbon dioxide (CO₂) sensor that combines high sensitivity with a wider measurement range.

Voyager 1 is nearing a distance from Earth that light takes a full day to cross, while NASA engineers stretch its dwindling power to keep it exploring. NASA’s Voyager 1, humanity’s most distant spacecraft, was about 16 billion miles (25.75 billion kilometers) from Earth when its radio signal disappeared in October. NASA’s Deep Space Network, […]