I used to be a rock hunter as a kid, and I learned how to identify minerals using the Mohs hardness test, which was invented by a mineralogist. You scrape an unknown specimen with a known specimen, such as quartz. If the mystery specimen scratches the quartz, you know it’s softer than quartz. Calcite or…
What does Harvard theoretical physicist Avi Loeb have to do with co-founding a $1.755 million scholarly initiative to seek UFOs? Loeb announced the Galileo Project yesterday. It intends to create a network of telescopes powered by artificial intelligence that can look for evidence of technological alien civilizations on or near Earth. Outside scholars have mixed…
Experts said China had grabbed the lead in quantum communications after a team of Chinese scientists used entangled photons from the country’s Micius satellite to make the world’s first quantum-secured video chat in 2017. According to a new study, lead has also been extended to quantum computing. Physicists from the University of Science and Technology…
Imperial astronomers of the Song Dynasty in China noticed an unusual star lighting up the eastern sky shortly before daybreak on July 4, A.D. 1054. They wrote in notes to the emperor, “It’s as brilliant as Venus, with pointed beams in all four directions and a reddish-white hue.” The glow was created by an explosion…