How Lagrange points solved one of physics’ biggest problems

Paul M. Sutter is an astrophysicist at The Ohio State University, host of “Ask a Spaceman“ and “Space Radio,” and author of “Your Place in the Universe” (Prometheus Books, 2018). Sutter contributed this article to Space.com’s Expert Voices: Op-Ed & Insights. There aren’t a lot of guarantees in life, and there are even fewer in space. Everything is moving; … Read more

Mysteries of Stephen Hawking’s doodle-filled blackboard may finally be solved

Hawking’s blackboard is filled with doodles, in-jokes and half-finished equations scrawled by friends and fellow physicists in 1980. (Image credit: Isidora Bojovic/Science Museum Group) A new museum exhibit hopes to uncover the secrets behind the doodles, in-jokes and coded messages on a blackboard that legendary physicist Stephen Hawking kept untouched for more than 35 years. … Read more

A Harvard Mathematician Has Basically Solved an Epic, 150-Year-Old Chess Problem

On one level, chess seems like a simple game: 64 individual black or white squares, 16 pieces per side, and two competitors striving for conquest. Dig a little deeper though, and the game offers incredibly complex possibilities, posing challenges to chess theorists and mathematicians that can go unsolved for decades or even centuries.   In … Read more

This Eerie Similarity With Earth Has Finally Solved The Mystery of Jupiter’s Cyclones

Earth and Jupiter don’t have a lot in common. One is relatively small, rocky, and habitable. The other is absolutely enormous, completely lacking in solidity, and raging with colossal storms. Yet, if you look at some satellite pictures of marine phytoplankton blooms here on Earth next to pictures of atmospheric turbulence at Jupiter’s poles, it … Read more

Biggest science news of 2021: DeepMind solves 98.5 per cent of human protein structures using its AlphaFold model

In July, DeepMind announced that its AlphaFold model had worked out how most of the proteins in our bodies fold. Pushmeet Kohli tells New Scientist that there is more to come Technology 15 December 2021 By Matthew Sparkes A 3D model of a fruit fly protein from DeepMind DeepMind IT TOOK decades for scientists to … Read more