Science + Technology – The Conversation – new research, AI, space, psychology and more

Young men's arms with plastic cups on bar

Dozens of men failed to stop an alleged gang rape at Cornell – here’s the misperception that keeps bystanders from intervening and how to short-circuit it

Catherine A. Sanderson, Amherst College

Too many males to choose from can overwhelm female frogs – and change who gets to mate

Claire Therese Hemingway, University of Tennessee; Smithsonian Institution

100 years ago, Schrödinger’s equation shed light on quantum physics – scientists use it today to fine-tune chemical reactions

Sophya Garashchuk, University of South Carolina

a dark room with a set of very large display screens

The ‘War Games’ problem: Computer science has long understood what it takes to keep AI under control

Deven Desai, Georgia Institute of Technology

Starship’s first orbital flight put its heat shield to the test – how it fares could determine if SpaceX’s vision is possible

Sven Bilén, Penn State

A rocket lifting off from a launchpad, with a plume of flame and smoke beneath it.

As AI political deepfakes go viral, lawmakers struggle to keep up – 2 states’ laws show limits of what they can do

Stefani Langehennig, University of Denver

A woman looks at a hand-held computer screen with two men depicted on it.

a video screen showing traffic in a city intersection with annotations

From lab to life: Why translating AI advances to the real world is a major challenge

Bo Wang, University of Mississippi

Last year, Floridians over 60 lost nearly $710M to cybercrime – here’s what to do if you or a loved one has been scammed

Angela Ramos, University of Tampa

older man sitting in front of his computer with his credit card

What was the original first-person shooter? Two largely forgotten computer games from the 1970s ushered in the genre

Mark J. P. Wolf, Concordia University Wisconsin

Trump frames unregulated AI as a way to keep ahead of China – but in fact, it harms US national security

Stephen Collins, Kennesaw State University

Two men walk down a white path next to a green lawn.

Hibernating bacteria can invade hospitals and survive outer space – but their high energy bill is a weakness that scientists can strike

Canan Karakoç, Georgia Institute of Technology

Microscopy image of thin, small translucent rods colored purple, blue and white scattered across the screen.

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Space

A telescope on a mountaintop set in a box with two antenna disks

An overlooked era of cosmology is stealing the show in the quest to understand the cosmos

Cara Giovanetti, University of California, Berkeley

Physicists zoom into the birth of cosmic rainstorms with new CERN study

Jesse Liu, New York University

An illustration of cosmic rays striking Earth's atmosphere and creating showers of particles.

NASA’s Roman Space Telescope will use gravity as a magnifying glass to find distant planets

Thomas Fauchez, American University

A photo showing thousands of galaxies in a night sky.

Space weather can cause both beautiful auroras and infrastructure challenges – 5 essential reads on protecting life and technology

Mary Magnuson, The Conversation

The Sun's surface, with bright rays coming off it.

‘Star Trek’ and NASA have intertwined legacies – the show championed diversity and inspired generations of real space scientists

Deana L. Weibel, Grand Valley State University

A group of people standing in front of a space shuttle

Digital life

a computer screen showing a name with letters of different colors and a search field

How to know if you can trust an AI’s answer to your question

Leo S. Lo, University of Virginia

Your robotic vacuum is a witness: What home robots mean for evidence, privacy and the law

Henry F. Fradella, Arizona State University; George Grispos, Arizona State University, and Jihun Joun, Arizona State University

a floor-level view of a room with a cat's face in the foreground

What the settlement left out: Meta can still collect data from kids

Randolph A Robinson II, University of Illinois Chicago

six people stand in fron tof a large sign board that contains a stylized infinity symbol

American women in communities with ample broadband access lose less time waiting for services, reducing time poverty

Mattia Caldarulo, Rochester Institute of Technology; Andrea Hetling, Rutgers University, and Gregory Porumbescu, Rutgers University - Newark

Many women wearing blue jeans and white T-shirts standing in a long line.

Essential digital technologies are critical infrastructure – they are not always built and managed that way

Francine Berman, UMass Amherst

More articles about artificial intelligence

New research

Is science journalism dying? Comparing a ‘science crash’ 40 years ago to today

Bruce Lewenstein, Cornell University and Chris Mooney, University of Tennessee

woman reaches for a newspaper in black and white archival photo of a city newsstand

Why an overactive immune system attacks the bodies of people with lupus but still leaves them vulnerable to infection

Andrew Monteith, University of Tennessee

Person looking down with eyes closed, scratching at a rash on the back of their neck

Shingles can cause severe chronic pain – new research on how exosomes alter neurons offers pathways to treatment

Andrew Bubak, University of Colorado Anschutz

Microscopy image of a blob composed of concentric circles, the innermost a vivid red

Learning without a brain – how bacteria store memories and remember the past like artificial neural networks

Shiladitya Banerjee, Georgia Institute of Technology

Microscopy image of translucent blue rods clustered against and stacked atop each other.

Tiny backpacks reveal the secret, sometimes circuitous migrations of small songbirds

Stephanie Szarmach, Smithsonian Institution

A small black, white and yellow bird perched on a branch with a green background.

Compared to driving, flying is extraordinarily safe – but why doesn’t it feel that way?

Mihhail Berezovski, Embry-Riddle Aeronautical University and Alex Chaparro, Embry-Riddle Aeronautical University

Two commercial passenger airplanes on a runway at an airport

Caterpillar twitches in an ultraquiet chamber are helping biologists understand how these insects hear without ears

Aishwarya Sriram, Binghamton University, State University of New York; Carol Miles, Binghamton University, State University of New York; Ronald Miles, Binghamton University, State University of New York, and Sara Aghazadeh, Binghamton University, State University of New York

A striped caterpillar sitting on a platform with a large speaker behind it.

Worms navigate narrow paths faster than wide ones – these findings could inform robot design

K. R. Prathyusha, University of Colorado Boulder

Brain and mind

Why does your brain mix up memories? A new study examines how memories are misplaced in your brain’s filing cabinets

Ian McDonough, Binghamton University, State University of New York

Three generations of women look at a photo album together while behind them a wall features dozens of framed photos.

Your memories of how you heard about 9/11 may well be wrong – we’ve been asking the same people what they remember for 25 years

Elizabeth A. Phelps, Harvard University and William Hirst, The New School

Uniformed people with serious expressions look down at a TV monitor

Decades after 9/11, toxic dust and PTSD may be accelerating brain aging among first responders

Roberto Lucchini, Florida International University

Silhouettes of people in uniform from behind at the 9/11 Memorial and Museum, buildings rising into the sky

I’m part of the team writing the next bible of psychiatry – for the first time, the DSM will use biology to understand mental disorders

Anand Kumar, University of Illinois Chicago

Curious Kids

Real kids ask real questions and real experts answer them

a black and white image of cornwallis and british forces surrendering to george washington at the battle of yorktown in 1781

What happened at the end of the Revolutionary War? Here’s how Americans set up a brand-new country once the fighting ended

Sandra Slater, College of Charleston

Why do I talk in my sleep? A sleep psychologist explains

Michael R. Nadorff, Mississippi State University

young boy asleep in bed with his mouth open

Kids ask the questions. Scholars answer them.

Be sure to include your name, age and where you live. We won’t be able to answer every question, but we will do our best.

Send in your question!

Graphic that says 'connecting experts with curious kids', with words in background saying 'how? why? who?'

Do you need to worry about the Sun turning into a black hole?

Anuradha Gupta, University of Mississippi

An illustration of a black hole drawing in a cloud of gas in space

What would you see if you had one eye on the back of your head and the other in the front?

Abigail Witmer, The Ohio State University

View from behind of a child's head with sunglasses on the back.

Science + Technology – The Conversation – new research, AI, space, psychology and more

Top stories

Dozens of men failed to stop an alleged gang rape at Cornell – here’s the misperception that keeps bystanders from intervening and how to short-circuit it

Too many males to choose from can overwhelm female frogs – and change who gets to mate

100 years ago, Schrödinger’s equation shed light on quantum physics – scientists use it today to fine-tune chemical reactions

The ‘War Games’ problem: Computer science has long understood what it takes to keep AI under control

Starship’s first orbital flight put its heat shield to the test – how it fares could determine if SpaceX’s vision is possible

As AI political deepfakes go viral, lawmakers struggle to keep up – 2 states’ laws show limits of what they can do

From lab to life: Why translating AI advances to the real world is a major challenge

Last year, Floridians over 60 lost nearly $710M to cybercrime – here’s what to do if you or a loved one has been scammed

What was the original first-person shooter? Two largely forgotten computer games from the 1970s ushered in the genre

Trump frames unregulated AI as a way to keep ahead of China – but in fact, it harms US national security

Hibernating bacteria can invade hospitals and survive outer space – but their high energy bill is a weakness that scientists can strike

Get our science editors' picks in your inbox every week

Space

An overlooked era of cosmology is stealing the show in the quest to understand the cosmos

Physicists zoom into the birth of cosmic rainstorms with new CERN study

NASA’s Roman Space Telescope will use gravity as a magnifying glass to find distant planets

Space weather can cause both beautiful auroras and infrastructure challenges – 5 essential reads on protecting life and technology

‘Star Trek’ and NASA have intertwined legacies – the show championed diversity and inspired generations of real space scientists

Digital life

How to know if you can trust an AI’s answer to your question

Your robotic vacuum is a witness: What home robots mean for evidence, privacy and the law

What the settlement left out: Meta can still collect data from kids

American women in communities with ample broadband access lose less time waiting for services, reducing time poverty

Essential digital technologies are critical infrastructure – they are not always built and managed that way

New research

Is science journalism dying? Comparing a ‘science crash’ 40 years ago to today

Why an overactive immune system attacks the bodies of people with lupus but still leaves them vulnerable to infection

Shingles can cause severe chronic pain – new research on how exosomes alter neurons offers pathways to treatment

Learning without a brain – how bacteria store memories and remember the past like artificial neural networks

Tiny backpacks reveal the secret, sometimes circuitous migrations of small songbirds

Compared to driving, flying is extraordinarily safe – but why doesn’t it feel that way?

Caterpillar twitches in an ultraquiet chamber are helping biologists understand how these insects hear without ears

Worms navigate narrow paths faster than wide ones – these findings could inform robot design

Brain and mind

Why does your brain mix up memories? A new study examines how memories are misplaced in your brain’s filing cabinets

Your memories of how you heard about 9/11 may well be wrong – we’ve been asking the same people what they remember for 25 years

Decades after 9/11, toxic dust and PTSD may be accelerating brain aging among first responders

I’m part of the team writing the next bible of psychiatry – for the first time, the DSM will use biology to understand mental disorders

Curious Kids

What happened at the end of the Revolutionary War? Here’s how Americans set up a brand-new country once the fighting ended

Why do I talk in my sleep? A sleep psychologist explains

Kids ask the questions. Scholars answer them.

Do you need to worry about the Sun turning into a black hole?

What would you see if you had one eye on the back of your head and the other in the front?

Most read this week

Cholesterol control gets personalized – a cardiologist explains how new guidelines tailor treatment to your unique risk profile

Finding homes for whales and dolphins when parks like Marineland Canada close isn’t easy – a biologist explains why sea sanctuaries aren’t the answer

Starship’s first orbital flight put its heat shield to the test – how it fares could determine if SpaceX’s vision is possible

Vagus nerve stimulation shows promise as a way to counter Alzheimer’s disease- and age-related memory loss

The ‘War Games’ problem: Computer science has long understood what it takes to keep AI under control

What was the original first-person shooter? Two largely forgotten computer games from the 1970s ushered in the genre