Science News

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Postings here should be science news items, as the title indicates. Generally, that means including a link to a story, and a summary of some current science event/announcement. "Hello, my name is …" posts by new users that appear here will be deleted as spam, regardless of whether they contain spam links or not, and the user will be banned as a spammer.

“China built a 40-story tower that stores wind power by stacking concrete … Surplus wind power hoists 35-ton blocks cast from recycled concrete and industrial aggregate toward the top. When the grid needs electricity again, the blocks descend and spin the generators. The tower stores 100 megawatt-hours and can deliver 25 megawatts for about four hours, at a targeted round-trip efficiency above 80 percent, with a 35-year lifespan and no chemical degradation.” https://boingboing.net/2026/07/06/post-china-built-a-40-story-tower-that-stores-wind-powe.html I did a rough calculation in my head and realized you’d need around 10k blocks to do this, and that seemed like a lot, but…

We have the occasional thread on alleged aliens but nobody ever seems willing to tackle the physics and engineering discussion of how they got here This discusses various methods of propulsion, assuming a cruising speed of 0.1c https://theconversation.com/could-aliens-ever-visit-earth-an-aerospace-scientist-unpacks-the-challenges-of-interstellar-spaceflight-280657 “Consequently, using chemical propulsion on a spacecraft with a cruise velocity of 19,000 miles per second (30,000 km/s) would require more fuel than all the mass in the observable universe” Of course you could go slower but that amplifies some other issues raised, like how equipment breaks down over time. It’d …

Chickadees might believe so. Well, specifically spatial cognition that is. https://doi.org/10.7554/eLife.110905.1.sa3 Branch et al. 2026 eLife

https://www.pbs.org/newshour/science/nasa-races-to-save-aging-swift-telescope-from-falling-back-to-earth-with-daring-rescue-mission A pretty interesting undertaking. The rocket is being launched from an airplane and the 3 armed robot that is supposed to grab the telescope and move it to higher orbit is pretty amazing. Hubble could be next.

Time we had some new chip technology. And good to see IBM backroom boys still on the job.

Scientists, educators, farmers and the broader public now have a new website for climate information in the United States. The site, Climate.us, launched this week and fills a void left when a government-run climate information website was shut down last year by the Trump administration. The new site was created by former employees of the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration (NOAA) — the government's lead scientific agency for climate, weather and ocean monitoring — who worked on Climate.gov until they were laid off last year as part of the Department of Government Efficiency (DOGE) cutbacks. Climate.gov had long been a trusted source for official government cl…

“Scientists say the Earth may not be engulfed by the expanding fireball of the dying Sun, which has long been assumed to be our planet's ultimate fate. This is not expected to happen for another five billion years, long after all life on Earth has been wiped out.” ‘"If tidal interactions predominate, Earth is engulfed by the Sun. If the Sun's mass loss predominates, Earth escapes into an orbit larger than the radius of its star," Mr Esseldeurs, an astrophysicist at Belgium's University of Leuven, said in a statement. Until now, scientists had favoured the first hypothesis.’ https://www.rte.ie/news/newslens/2026/0619/1579351-sun-earth/

Interesting study documenting plague outbreak in hunter-gatherer communities over 5000 years ago. While the sequence Yersinia pestis strain lacked certain pathogenicity factors compared to those found later in the bubonic plague. it appeared to be lethal especially to children. In the past, it was often assumed that urbanization and rats were key factors in the spread of the bubonic plague. However, lately studies challenged the relevance of rats and this one here challenges the need for urbanization for such outbreaks. Macleod, R., Seersholm, F.V., De Sanctis, B. et al. Lethal plague outbreaks in Lake Baikal hunter-gatherers 5,500 years ago. Nature 654, 697–705 (2026) DO…

https://www-cdn.anthropic.com/d00db56fa754a1b115b6dd7cb2e3c342ee809620.pdf

Turning water into a high density slurry ? Not sure how the powder get to the top of the hill as pumping it back up must obey the First Law. BBC NewsThe 'secret sauce' helping to store renewable energy in D...A 100-year-old idea for hydro electricity generation is being refashioned to help the energy crisis.

“By the end of the year, wind and solar energy combined are projected to account for about half of China’s total installed power capacity, while coal’s share falls to around one-third, according to the China Electricity Council.” Solar alone set to overtake next year. https://www.independent.co.uk/climate-change/news/china-solar-power-capacity-coal-first-time-b2912940.html This, amid other reports of places where renewables are occasionally accounting for all generated electricity. (Makes the US position all the more painful, though the courts have reinstated some renewables projects)

District heating using a sand battery as storage for peak demand https://interestingengineering.com/energy/sand-battery-polar-night-energy “The net result: Pornainen fulfilled all of its municipal climate targets with a single installation. Oil use dropped 100 percent, emissions fell 70 percent, and woodchip combustion was cut by 60 percent. According to the Mayor of the Municipality of Pornainen, Antti Kuusela, the municipality now heats all its public buildings, including a new sports arena opening in September 2026, entirely through this district heating network.”

“some of the 12,000 images are nearly identical to each other or even the same file just in a different size. Some aren’t even that impressive; blurry or overexposed. But there are also some unseen gems in there. PetaPixel has picked out some of the best ones.” https://petapixel.com/2026/05/04/nasa-releases-thousands-of-unseen-artemis-ii-photos/

“Researchers in the UK studied how European herring gulls (Larus argentatus) in the city reacted to various types of takeout boxes. The gulls were substantially less likely to approach or peck at boxes that had googly eyes attached to them, they found. Though not every bird was deterred, the simple design strategy could help ease human-gull conflict” https://gizmodo.com/this-ridiculously-simple-trick-might-stop-gulls-from-nabbing-your-lunch-2000742276 You’d think that lunch containers might have evolved this trait on their own, so it must not confer a reproductive advantage…

“The NIST team replicated the original BIPM experiment, building a torsion balance with eight metal cylinders: four on a rotating carousel and four smaller masses inside the carousel, sitting on a suspended disk held by a thin ribbon of copper-beryllium. The torsion balance and ribbon would twist when the outer masses attracted the inner ones, and physicists measured Big G by tracking the cylinder’s rotation and the resulting gravitational torque. They also performed a second set of measurements by applying a voltage to electrodes beside the inner masses. This twisted the wire in the opposite direction to the gravitational torque, and the voltage magnitude provided anothe…

In 1964 a British SciFi author Eric Frank Russell (1905-1978) wrote a novel “With A Strange Device” (aka “The Mind Warpers”) which now seems to have a certain prescient relevance to concerns raised recently in the highest circles of US government about an alarming number of American scientists working on classified projects who have inexplicably gone missing, or who have died in unexplained circumstances. https://edition.cnn.com/2026/04/21/us/deaths-disappearances-scientists-investigation A separate investigation by the Republican House Oversight Committee into the same questions was announced on Monday. In Eric Frank Russell’s novel “With A Strange Device” inexplicab…

“For a decade or so, a major threat to your laptop wasn’t a virus, malware, or hacking — it was Janet Jackson’s hit song, “Rhythm Nation.” … somehow, playing back “Rhythm Nation” over a laptop’s speakers would crash the laptop. In fact, it could crash nearby laptops as well.” https://www.pcworld.com/article/2767927/a-janet-jackson-song-killed-laptops-for-nearly-a-decade.html

Microbiologist Brantley Hall of the University of Maryland in College Park and colleagues study the metabolism of gut microbes. They tried unsuccessfully to measure hydrogen production from gut microbes with a sensor in an oxygen-free chamber. Frustrated, “we took the sensor out of the chamber, and we were like, ‘Screw it. We’re going to try to measure a fart.’” So Hall stuck the device down his own pants and let rip. “And the signal was enormous.” https://www.sciencenews.org/article/smart-underwear-human-fart-frequency

A report on using silica glass on concrete, wood and perhaps other products --> https://www3.nhk.or.jp/nhkworld/en/shows/2091066/ Enjoy.-

Engineered Yeast provides rare but essential pollen sterols for honeybees

Unsurprisingly, D-K appears to happen there, because why wouldn’t it? https://www.psypost.org/people-with-the-least-political-knowledge-tend-to-be-the-most-overconfident-in-their-grasp-of-facts/ “New research published in the Journal of Experimental Psychology: Applied suggests that people often overestimate their understanding of political facts. This tendency to be overconfident appears most common among individuals who actually know the least about politics and those who lean conservative. The findings provide evidence that psychological traits, like a desire for quick and definitive answers, help explain why some voters struggle to accurately judge their own political…

"Results show that, compared with the non-autistic population, as represented by standardized norms ... and typically developing (TD) control groups ..., individuals with ASD exhibit significantly lower math scores ... and greater variability." https://medicalxpress.com/news/2026-02-closer-mathematical-abilities-autistic-people.html

“This month could be the best time to spot the northern lights for nearly a decade, as the combination of the "equinox effect" and supercharged solar activity will make auroras more likely. However, precisely where and when they will appear is still up in the air.” https://www.livescience.com/space/the-sun/march-could-be-the-best-month-for-the-northern-lights-for-nearly-a-decade-if-the-sun-stays-active I had not previously heard of the equinox effect (aka Russell–McPherron effect, as I learned) but it makes sense that there would be times where the alignment of the earth’s field made it easier for the solar wind to enter the atmosphere https://www.northernshotstours.com/…