Issues
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Cover Image
Cover Image
Cover: This IR image shows a bow shock caused by stellar wind emanating from a bright star. Interstellar shocks can also be created by the exhalations of dying stars. As shocks propagate through the interstellar medium, they can give rise to new stars that are enriched with heavier elements. On page 36, Cecilia Ceccarelli and Claudio Codella discuss how interstellar shocks influence the composition of the Milky Way. (Courtesy of NASA/JPL-Caltech/UCLA.)
Readers' Forum
The roles of research and “fit” in tenure
A note on 100 kW laser power
Search and Discovery
An all-in-one device creates and characterizes high-pressure superconductors
Diamond has the ability to squeeze materials to immense pressures and to measure their magnetic properties. Now it can do both at the same time.
Climate change drives extinction—and always has
Rising temperatures may threaten species regardless of the traits that they have, according to a new paleoclimate and paleobiology analysis.
When unmixable metals mix
At the bulk scale, gold and rhodium separate like oil and water, but at the nanoscale, they can mix completely. The reason for the miscibility is on the particles’ surface.
Updates
Better batteries for cold weather
A solvent with small molecules forms channels that increase the speed of lithium-ion transport, even at low temperatures.
Most automobile brakes emit charged aerosols into the atmosphere
The charges may allow engineers to mitigate the aerosols’ contribution to urban pollution.
Issues and Events
US nuclear agency struggles with production and costs
The National Nuclear Security Administration must cope with resurgent geopolitical threats accentuated by Vladimir Putin’s nuclear saber-rattling.
New center for quantum sensing focuses on medical applications
The techniques promise earlier disease detection that can lead to better outcomes.
The many lives of an 11th-century astrolabe
An art historian uncovers an astronomical device that exposes centuries of cross-cultural exchange.
Q&A: Asmeret Asefaw Berhe reflects on her tenure as DOE Office of Science director
As Berhe returns to academia, the soil biogeochemist discusses the federal agency’s work on major research facilities, AI algorithms, and training the next generation of scientists.
Articles
The real butterfly effect and maggoty apples
Even though the Navier–Stokes equations are deterministic, it seems that you cannot make predictions beyond a fixed time horizon, no matter how small the initial uncertainty.
A shocking beginning to star formation
The birth of stars is tightly entangled with interstellar shocks, which makes shocked regions a paradise for astrochemistry.
Science for All at CERN
In the 1960s CERN initiated a series of popular-science talks for nonacademic staff in the belief that getting them interested in science was key to its becoming a world-leading laboratory.
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Journey to a metal world
A mission en route to the unusual asteroid Psyche may be humanity’s only opportunity to visit the core of a planetary body.