This ancient predator had two spiny appendages sticking out of its face. This creature Anomalocaris canadensis may have been the freakiest thing to ever haunt the sea. For decades, scientists thought it used those strange limbs to snatch trilobites off the seafloor. The beast could then crush and eat these crunchy snacks. But a new study hints that A. canadensis instead used its spiny limbs to swiftly hunt soft prey. 



Researchers shared their new findings on July 12. The work appeared in Proceedings of the Royal Society B.





A. canadensis means the abnormal shrimp from Canada. It prowled the seas roughly 500 million years ago. Only about as long as a housecat, it still was one of the biggest animals of the Cambrian Period. (The Cambrian ran from about 540 million to 485 million years ago.) That makes A. canadensis one of the earliest top predators.





These sea monsters were like the orcas or great white sharks of their time, says Jakob Vinther. He did not take part in the new study. But he is a paleontologist at the University of Bristol in England. 



Some researchers thought A. canadensis hunted another iconic Cambrian critter the trilobite. Thats because people have unearthed lots of fossils of injured trilobites. This hinted that something had attacked them. A. canadensis became a prime suspect.



But Russell Bicknell wasnt so sure. After all, trilobites have hard, thick exoskeletons. And no one had shown that A. canadensis could crack that armor.



Bicknell is a paleobiologist. He works at the American Museum of Natural History in New York City. He was part of a team that set out to learn if A. canadensis really could have crushed and chowed down on trilobites.



This is a closeup of an A. canadensis fossil. It was found in the Burgess Shale of Canada. The fossil shows the creatures head and curled front appendages.Allison Daley


Pinning softies with its spikes



The researchers compared the ancient creatures bendy appendages to those of modern arthropods. These animals include todays insects, spiders and crustaceans. Bicknells team also built computer models of the limbs on A. canadensis. Using those models, the team tested the limbs toughness, range of motion and best swimming position.



The ancient spiky limbs would have been good at grabbing prey. In that way, A. canadensis may have hunted much like todays whip spiders. But the limbs of A. canadensis probably were too fragile to attack armored prey. Those would have included trilobites.





Plus, A. canadensis would have moved most efficiently when its appendages were stretched out front. (Think of how Superman holds his arms while in flight.)



Together, these results suggest that A. canadensis was best suited for chasing soft creatures swimming through the water. It would have snagged prey in its spiky clutches, Bicknell says. It was going to absolutely pincushion something soft and squishy.

The SouthernTropical Andes, which comprisesareasof Ecuador, Peru, and Bolivia, is one of the world's most biodiverse regions especially when it comes to amphibians. The areais home to about980amphibianspecies, including over half of the 150-knownglass frog species. Now, two new membersof the tiny frogs have joined thisever-growing list.

Thecountdown tothe 2020 Summer Gameshas begun. On July 23, 2021, about 11,000 athletes from 206 countries will gather at the Olympic Stadium in Tokyo, Japan, for the opening ceremony of the Games of the XXXII Olympiad.Here are a few contestantsto keep an eye on at the world's mostprestigious sporting event.

A seriesof deadly tornadoesswept across a large swath of the Midwestern and SoutheasternUS overnight onDecember 10, 2021.TheNational Weather Service (NSW)estimates that the severe storms spawned about50 twisters across eight states Arkansas, Indiana,Kentucky, Missouri, Mississippi, Tennessee, Ohio, and Illinois.

Dont watch TV close to bedtime. Put away your phone, too, or you may have trouble falling asleep. You may not realize it, but the blue light from device screens and even common lamps will confuse your brains internal 24-hour clock. Even white light contains these blue wavelengths. And when blue light enters the eyes, your brain gets the message that it needs to stay awake. But a new type of lighting appears to get around these sleep-challenging effects so you can nod off easily at bedtime.



This new light-emitting diode, or LED, might someday deliver the glow in lamps and other types of home lighting, its developers say. It might even find use in TV, laptop and smartphone screens, says Jakoah Brgoch. Hes a chemist at the University of Houston, Texas. He also helped design the new lighting technology.



He and fellow University of Houston chemist Shruti Hariyani have been studying the properties of phosphors. These substances glow when hit with light.



Explainer: Our bodies internal clocks





Light shines through the lens of an LED, usually a plastic bulb. Behind the scenes is an LED chip, which has small light-emitting diodes attached to a printed circuit board. When the chip is coated with powdered phosphors, the color of the light shining through the lens changes. The Houston team created a new phosphor to make their LED shine with a warm white light. Here, warm means the light contains less of the short, blue wavelengths that can mess with sleep.



Those same blue wavelengths are found in sunlight. And they tell your internal body clock that its time to be awake. Normally that body clock winds down as daylight fades. Melatonin is a hormone produced at night. It helps bring on sleep unless blue light tells your body otherwise. Blue light suppresses the melatonin hormone.



Explainer: What is a hormone?



And our bodies may well get confused if its late and our eyes remain bathed in blue light from devices or indoor lighting. Even though your body craves sleep, its still getting that signal for wakefulness.



Most modern screens and lighting systems use blue LEDs. They are energy efficient, long-lasting and cost little. But, Hariyani says, you have to be okay with the negative side effects [of their light] or fix it.



Shes part of a team thats choosing to fix it.





How to lose the blues



A new violet LED, shown here in a drawing, uses red, green and blue-emitting phosphors to combine the colors of the visible spectrum and create white light.S. Hariyani/University of Houston



Software helps some devices emit less blue light. For example, the iPhones night mode shifts its color palette. But this makes images look more red than normal, so users give up color quality. Plus, the LEDs in this and other smartphones still emit enough blue light to affect the bodys internal clock and melatonin production. People can block out some blue light by wearing yellow glasses near bedtime. However, this too will distort the hues in whatever youre viewing.



Says Brgoch, We wanted to know: Can we get to a high-quality light bulb with warmer and better quality light?



LEDs create white light by mixing red, green and blue hues. While these same primary colors of pigment in paint or crayons mix to make black, light works the opposite way. The white light shining out of an LED comes from the bulb color plus the colors of the phosphors used to coat the LED. Common house lighting uses blue LEDs coated with phosphors whose colors add to the LEDs colors to make white light.



A rarer type of LED has a violet bulb. Places such as museums and clothing stores install white lighting made using violet LEDs. Thats because these are designed to show an object’s true color better than the more common bluer LEDs used in most home lights. One drawback is that violet LEDs cost more. Still, Brgoch and Hariyani chose them for their prototype to get the best color.



Used in the new light, this phosphor glows blue when lit with a violet LED.S. Hariyani and J. Brgoch/University of Houston



To reduce their LEDs blue emissions, the chemists first altered a white powdered crystal that didnt glow on its own. They added a bright silver-colored element to the powders structure. This europium turns the crystal into a phosphor. Europium often is added to lighting phosphors because it helps boost the blue part of an LEDs glow. In this case, it made a true, high-quality blue good for use in an LED. That blue can combine with other colors to make white light.



The Houston team tested the new phosphor to make sure it wouldnt break down easily. They exposed it to heat and water. Not only did the phosphor continue to glow at the same intensity, but its color remained steady. Having all of these properties at once makes it superior to many other phosphors, Hariyani says.



Then they mixed the blue phosphor with red and green ones to create white light. The chemists added this combination to a modified violet LED. Compared to standard violet LEDs, this new one emits far less intense blue light.



Good white and good night?



A mixture of the new blue phosphor, together with red- and green-emitting ones, produces this warm white light when lit by a violet LED.S. Hariyani and J. Brgoch/University of Houston



Theres maybe a dozen phosphors used around the world in lightbulbs, notes Brgoch. To find something new thats on par with what you can buy is fantastic. And, he adds, its lower production of short, blue wavelengths should reduce its effect on someones nighttime secretion of melatonin.



But other aspects of light also influence the body, warns Mariana Figueiro. Her work at Mount Sinai Hospital in New York City focuses on how light affects the body clock and melatonin.



Brightness and colors of light other than blue such as green and yellow also affect the bodys natural readiness for sleep, Figueiro notes. To leave nighttime melatonin alone, she explains, A light source needs to have both low light levels and less blue light. She wonders if everyday lamps and screens could be dim enough not to interfere with the body’s internal clock and still be bright enough for practical use. Still, she says, its certainly worth studying.



To know if the new LED could help people who want to sleep better, scientists will have to measure its effect on melatonin.



This is science that is still relatively new to us, Brgoch says. As such, he says it will take some time for scientists to fully understand how to use the new LEDs in household items.



He and Hariyani shared their findings April 14 in ACS Applied Materials and Interfaces.

Did you know that arid deserts in several countries have turned into lush, fertile land? In countries such as the United Arab Emirates and China, fruits and vegetables now flourish, providing fresh produce for their inhabitants. But what caused this miraculous transformation? Lets find out! What is Nanoclay? In the 1980s, the Nile Delta in Egypt, known for its reliable farming, suddenly became barren. For decades, the Nile floodwaters had spread minerals, nutrients, and clay particles over the soil. However, the newly built Aswan Dam prevented clay particles from flowing, reducing the soils...

Memorial Day, whichwill be celebrated onMay 31, 2021,is one of the most important American holidays.Observed annually on the last Monday ofMay, it honors the brave men and women of theUS Army, Navy, Marine Corps, National Guard, Air Force, and the Coast Guard whosacrificed their lives to defend America's freedom. Meanwhile,Veterans Day, which takes place each yearon November 11, honorsall veterans living or deadbut mainly givesthanks to livingveteranswho served their country honorably during war or peacetime.

Donut lovers,rejoice!Friday,June 4, 2021, is National Donut Day. That means it is your civic duty to consume at least one oreven a dozen of the delicious confections. The fun US holiday, observed annually on the first Friday of June,was startedin 1938 by theSalvation Army to help raisefunds forthose in need.

Mythical mermaids are often known for their fishy tails and alluring songs. But if you were underwater with one, her tunes wouldnt sound quite like they do in the movies. And you might struggle to understand the words as Ariel or her other mermaid friends burst out singing.



Even next to a mermaid, the song would sound muffled and would seem to come from all around, says Jasleen Singh. You could still make out what she is saying, but it would sound fuller with less clarity, Singh says. She studies human hearing at Northwestern University in Evanston, Ill.





If mermaids existed, and if they sang and talked to one another, their hearing and sound-making setups might resemble marine creatures features instead of humans. To understand why, you have to start with the basics of sound and hearing.



Explainer: How the ears work



Sound is produced when an object vibrates. Touch your throat while you talk, and you can feel your vocal cords vibrating inside your neck. These vibrations can travel through gases, liquids and solids. In each medium, atoms and molecules get pushed around by a sound sources back-and-forth motion. These particles bump into each other in a rippling pattern of waves. Like a line of falling dominoes, the colliding particles spread sound.



Human hearing starts with sound waves entering the air-filled space in each earhole. The waves vibrate the eardrum, which wiggles three little ear bones. One of the bones taps on a snail-shaped structure in the inner ear called the cochlea. This fluid-filled structure converts the vibrations into electrical signals that the brain understands as sound.



Underwater, its a different story. Since water plugs your ears, you rely on sound waves directly vibrating the skull. This happens on land too, but it works better below the waters surface. Thats because water and bone have similar densities. When sound waves gently rattle the skull, that is directly stimulating the inner ear the cochlea itself, Singh says. This is called bone conduction. We humans, however, are much more attuned to the sound waves striking our eardrums. As a result, the sound quality of bone conduction is not as good as regular air conduction.



Plus, its difficult to figure out where a sound is coming from underwater. On land, if someone starts talking on your right side, sound waves hit your right ear before your left. This slight variation in timing helps your brain find the source of a sound. But sound travels much faster in water than in air. Thats because the particles that make up liquids are closer together. In water, there is virtually no time difference between sound hitting each ear. That makes underwater noise sound very full, like its coming from everywhere.









Our sea-dwelling relatives



To hear their friends talk and sing properly, mermaids might have evolved hearing structures more like aquatic animals.



Marine mammals, such as whales, dolphins and seals, hear in a way very similar to humans, notes Colleen Reichmuth. A biologist, she studies marine mammals at the University of California, Santa Cruz. These creatures have cochleae. They also have ear bones and eardrums, though not always functional. And they have evolved some adaptations to help them hear under the sea.





The lower jaw of dolphins and some whales contains fat that directs sound to the bony middle ear. This fat has a special chemical composition that makes it really suitable for transmitting acoustic waves, says Laela Sayigh. Shes a marine biologist at Hampshire College in Amherst, Mass., and Woods Hole Oceanographic Institution in Massachusetts.



Some marine mammals, such as seals, have convertible ears. On land, the animals can open ear holes to pick up sound waves traveling through air. But when diving, their ear tissue swells with fluid, plugging the holes. The fluid-filled ears help transfer sound from the water to the cochleae.





Those features could help a mermaid hear her friends songs more clearly. But if mermaid voices were more like those of marine mammals, their vocal systems could get a major upgrade, too.



Whales, dolphins, seals and other marine mammals can sing underwater, creating complex noises with musical notes or rhythms. They produce sound by passing air along tissues to vibrate them, similar to a humans voice box. But unlike people, who must breathe out to make noise, many of these sea creatures dont need to expel air from their mouths or blowholes to produce sound.



Underwater, air is a precious commodity, says Joy Reidenberg. If whales exhaled when using their voices, they would have to keep resurfacing for more air. That would interrupt their lengthy songs, Reidenberg says. She studies animal anatomy at the Icahn School of Medicine at Mount Sinai in New York City.



Instead, whales and dolphins can move air around in their bodies and even reuse it. This air recycling system would certainly help a mermaid sustain conversation or song below the surface, Reichmuth says.



For a voice that really carries, mermaids might be built like baleen whales. These whales, which include humpbacks, have huge vibrating structures in their throats that toss out sound. Some can make noises so loud and low-pitched too low for humans to hear that the songs could potentially travel more than 1,000 kilometers (600 miles) in the ocean. (Lower-pitched sound waves lose less energy when traveling through water than higher-pitched ones.)



Humpback whales sing beautiful, lengthy songs. But they dont need to breathe out of their mouths or blowholes to do it. These whales recycle the air supply in their bodies and can stay submerged for nearly an hour. Craig Lambert/iStock/Getty Images Plus



Something sounds fishy



A mermaids mammal upper half may not be the only part that could make or hear sounds. Crustaceans and fish are known to make quite a ruckus, too. In fact, snapping shrimps, typically around four centimeters (1.5 inches) long, are some of the loudest creatures on Earth. As the name implies, these shrimp snap one of their claws to produce a colossal sound.



Many fish use a similar method to make noise. They click or rub their bodys bony structures together. Sea horses, for example, produce clicks by knocking the tops of their skulls into the horns on their heads. They do this when wooing a mate.



You can think of it like clicking your teeth together, says Audrey Looby. A marine ecologist, she studies fish at the University of Floridas Nature Coast Biological Station in Cedar Key.



Other species can use their muscles to vibrate an internal organ, like playing a drum. Some fish can even communicate by expelling air out their backside, Looby says. Essentially, fish communicating through farting. And they have special cells lining the sides of their bodies that can sense vibrations in the water, helping them to hear.



If you met a mermaid, she might have both fish-like and mammalian structures to communicate with her underwater friends. Motion-detecting cells may line her tail, and her ears may work like a seals to hear both in and out of water. She would probably recycle her bodys air supply to talk and sing without having to keep resurfacing. But her conversations may also be sprinkled with teeth chattering, clapping and even farting.

Hello! This is the holiday contest. I know that the following options may not be your favorites. Don’t worry! Feel free to comment on your favorite, but please vote on the holidays listed below. The winners will have the chance to share their ideas, and I will even give a shout-out! Pick one and good […]

All known stars are made of ordinary matter. But astronomers havent completely ruled out that some could be made of antimatter.



Antimatter is the oppositely charged alter-ego of normal matter. For instance, electrons have antimatter twins called positrons. Where electrons have negative electric charge, positrons have positive charge. Physicists think the universe was born with equal amounts of matter and antimatter. Now the cosmos appears to have almost no antimatter.



Space-station data have recently cast doubt on this idea of a practically antimatter-free universe. One instrument might have seen bits of antihelium atoms in space. Those observations have to be confirmed. But if they are, that antimatter could have been shed by antimatter stars. That is, antistars.



Explainer: What are black holes?





Intrigued by this idea, some researchers went hunting for potential antistars. The team knew that matter and antimatter annihilate each other when they meet. That could happen when normal matter from interstellar space falls onto an antistar. This type of particle annihilation gives off gamma rays with certain wavelengths. So the team looked for those wavelengths in data from the Fermi Gamma-ray Space Telescope.



And they found them.



Fourteen spots in the sky gave off the gamma rays expected from matter-antimatter annihilation events. Those spots did not look like other known gamma-ray sources such as spinning neutron stars or black holes. That was further evidence that the sources could be antistars. Researchers reported their find online April 20 in Physical Review D.



Rare or possibly hiding?



The team then estimated how many antistars could exist near our solar system. Those estimates depended on where antistars would most likely be found, if they truly existed.



Any in the disk of our galaxy would be surrounded by lots of normal matter. That could cause them to emit lots of gamma rays. So they should be easy to spot. But the researchers only found 14 candidates.



That implies that antistars are rare. How rare? Perhaps only one antistar would exist for every 400,000 normal stars.



Understanding light and other forms of energy on the move



Antistars could exist, however, outside the Milky Ways disk. There, they would have less chance to interact with normal matter. They also should emit fewer gamma rays in this more isolated environment. And that would make them harder to find. But in that scenario, one antistar could lurk among every 10 normal stars.



Antistars are still only hypothetical. In fact, proving any object is an antistar could be nearly impossible. Why? Because antistars are expected to look almost identical to normal stars, explains Simon Dupourqu. Hes an astrophysicist in Toulouse, France. He works at the Institute of Research in Astrophysics and Planetology.





It would be much easier to prove the candidates found so far are not antistars, he says. Astronomers could watch how gamma rays from the candidates change over time. Those changes might hint at whether these objects are really spinning neutron stars. Other types of radiation from the objects might point to their actually being black holes.



If antistars exist, that would be a major blow for our understanding of the universe. So concludes Pierre Salati, who wasnt involved in the work. This astrophysicist works at the Annecy-le-Vieux Laboratory of Theoretical Physics in France. Seeing antistars would mean that not all of the universes antimatter was lost. Instead, some would have survived in isolated pockets of space.



But antistars probably could not make up for all the universes missing antimatter. At least, thats what Julian Heeck thinks. A physicist at the University of Virginia in Charlottesville, he too did not take part in the study. And, he adds, you would still need an explanation for why matter overall dominates over antimatter.

Hey guys! Welcome to this group. I am AthenaDaBest, and I am creating this for all people who LUVVV mythology and Percy Jackson fans and other Rick Riordan books, but other mythology series are allowed. Have fun!!

Bacteria can have superpowers. Some flourish in almost any environment. Others can transform toxic materials into harmless sludge. A bacterium called Shewanella oneidensis can do both. But this microbe also has a much rarer superpower: It absorbs and produces electricity. In fact, new research suggests, these bacteria may be able to use energy collected from wind or solar sources to make fuels to run vehicles and more.



I think of these organisms as eating electricity, says Annette Rowe. Shes a microbiologist at the University of Cincinnati in Ohio. Her team has just identified which genes the microbe uses to gobble electricity.



Explainer: Understanding electricity



Electrons are negatively charged particles. A moving stream of them creates an electric current. Scientists already knew that Shewanella can move electrons back and forth across its cell wall. But they didnt know exactly how the microbes controlled their current, Rowe says.





The pathway for getting the electrons in and out of the cell is like a wire, says Rowe. It allows current to flow from the inside to the outside. Reverse the flow, she says, and you can drive electrons into the cell. The cell could then use those electrons to do some other job, such as generate current. Or it could store the energy to use later. Those electrons could later be used to make fuel, for example.



Rowe knew that Shewanellas cellular wire had to be controlled by genes. But which ones?



Buz Barstow was able to help. He is a biological engineer at Cornell University. Its in Ithaca, N.Y. Earlier, he had made a list of nearly 4,000 of this bacteriums genes. That list also included mutations, or changes, in those genes. Rowe tested these mutants to find the genes that made up Shewanella’s cellular “wire.”



Explainer: What are genes?



Within a cell, a gene can deleted. For the new study, Rowe and her colleagues tested groups of bacteria with groups of deleted genes. Their goal: to see which deleted genes allowed the bacteria to pull in electrons. These were likely genes involved in making the cell’s “wire.”



That was no easy task. It was really tricky to look for electron flow and track the electrons, she says. But in time they devised a clever test. They grew the different mutated bacteria on glass covered by a thin metal film. Then they attached a wire to the bacteria. When they sent an electric current through the wire, they could measure how much the bacteria absorbed or added. If electrons didnt flow, the scientists knew the deleted genes must have been the ones needed for electron flow. 



In time, they narrowed in on five such genes that Shewanella apparently uses to absorb electrons. Each gene tells the cell how to make a protein. Some of those proteins likely grab electrons and bring them into the cell. Others may send signals within the cell that guide the process. Still others can likely expel electrons from the cell.





Bacterial biofuels



Scientists see many ways to use electric microbes. One would be to make biofuels. These differ from fossil fuels, such as coal and natural gas. (Fossil fuels are rich in carbon from decayed remains of ancient living things.) Ethanol, which can be made from corn or sugarcane, is a biofuel that can be added to standard gasoline. Cars that run on diesel can be adapted to run on another biofuel. Called biodiesel, it is fuel made from vegetable oil or animal fats.



Biofuels get their carbon from sources like plants or animal wastes. One day, they may even get their carbon with the help of bacteria, says Rowe.



This technician holds a biofuel sample, an alternative to fossil fuels. One day bacteria may be able to supply the power or the carbon needed to unleash a new wave of such renewable fuels.Sue Barrt/Image Source/Getty Images Plus



Shewanella is among bacteria thatcan pluck carbon atoms out of carbon dioxide. They can use it to create other, larger molecules that could be burned as a biofuel. And powered by the electrons it gobbles, Shewanella could keep making these molecules, Rowe says.



Knowing which genes drive the electron-eating could help scientists develop new biofuels, says Rowe. Even better would be if the electrons that feed the bacteria come from wind or solar power. Such sources could power the biofuel-making process without adding warming carbon dioxide to the air.



Elad Noor is an environmental scientist. He works at the Weizmann Institute of Science. Its in Rehovot, Israel. There, hes helping to develop new ways to fix carbon that is, to pull carbon from carbon dioxide to build other chemical compounds. Using bacteria to create biofuels is attractive because the bacteria can regenerate and should be able to repurpose the carbon. Soring energy in bacteria also would be green, he adds. After all, the microbes dont need dangerous metals, as a normal battery would.



However, working with living organisms is complicated, he warns. Biological systems are hard to predict, he says. There are ways to store energy that are much more efficient.



The genes that Rowes team found in Shewanella show up in other bacteria. The group plans to search for others that can store or release electrons. Rowe also wants to try to improve Shewanellas abilities, because these are the organisms we know the most about.

On the heels of the spectacularMay 26, 2021, total lunar eclipsecomesanothercelestial spectacle. On June 10, 2021, some lucky stargazers willwitness this year's first of two solar eclipses. Sinceit isan annular, not a total, eclipse, the Sun's edges will be visible around the Moon,transforming the star into a stunning "ring of fire."

Ecosystem (noun, EE-koh-sis-tem)



An ecosystem is a network of living and nonliving things interacting in the same place.



The living things in an ecosystem could include animals, plants and microbes. The nonliving things may include soil, water and air. But an ecosystem is worth more than the sum of its parts. Living things need energy and nutrients to live and ecosystems link organisms to both.



Nutrients are chemicals that living things need to function. They include elements such as carbon and nitrogen. They can also be molecules like proteins that are made from elements. These elements cycle through an ecosystem. For instance, when an animal eats a plant. Or when a microbe decomposes a dead animal. That means the same atoms get reused in different living things. In fact, the same carbon atoms in your body might once have been part of a dinosaur!



Energy doesn’t cycle through living things the way nutrients do. But ecosystems need a constant supply of it. Thats because energy is always being lost. Living things use energy to break down food, grow, recover from injuries and much more.



The sun supplies this energy. Plants and algae use photosynthesis to turn solar energy into chemical energy. This is a key link in ecosystems. Humans and other life-forms cant use the suns energy directly. We need to get it from plants, or from organisms that have eaten plants.





Let’s look at how living and nonliving things interact in one ecosystem: a rainforest.



Giant anteaters (Myrmecophaga tridactyla) live in South American rainforests. There, they dig around in the soil for insects. As they hunt, the animals mix up the soil. That allows air to move deeper underground. (Take note air and soil are nonliving parts of the ecosystem.)



This process delivers fresh air to microbes that live in the soil and spurs their growth. The microbes chomp away at dead material in the soil. This breaks down large molecules into smaller ones nutrients that a plant’s roots can absorb. And as a plant converts the suns energy into chemical energy, an insect munching the plants leaves can take some of this energy for itself.



Together, all these living and nonliving parts of an ecosystem form a thriving habitat.



In a sentence



Almendro trees use lightning to gain a competitive advantage in their jungle ecosystems.



Check out the full list of Scientists Say.

Did you know that a few years back, many states decided to stop teaching students how to write in cursive?  A big reason for this change was the rise of technology and digital communication. After the pandemic, students used more computers and tablets, so teachers felt it was more important for them to learn typing […]

Egyptian archaeologistshave discoveredthousandsofancientstructures and even entire cities.However, finding thesix sun templesconstructed by the Fifth Dynastypharaohshas proved elusive. Only two hadbeen found until recently,andthe last one was unearthed 50 years ago.

E. Toby Kiers rarely wore shoes as a kid. She loved the feeling of soil between her toes. I always felt like something was under there, something secret and hidden, she says.



Now, as an adult, shes revealing that hidden world. Its a tangled network of fungus and plant roots. They all trade resources and even messages. People walk over this network all the time without even realizing its there. Yet understanding its mysteries could help us better cope with Earths changing climate.



Its pretty much the last frontier in understanding how our planet works, says Kiers. She studies fungal networks as an evolutionary biologist at Free University Amsterdam. Its in the Netherlands.



These are the mushrooms of the honey fungus. Its underground mycelia can grow to massive sizes. One individual that lives in Michigan is around 2,500 years old and has mycelia as heavy as three blue whales!Dan Molter (shroomydan) at Mushroom Observer/Wikimedia Commons (CC BY-SA 3.0)



When you think of fungus, mushrooms may come to mind. But the mushrooms that pop up above ground are temporary. The main body of a typical forest fungus remains underground. It is a vast, branching network of very thin, thread-like structures called mycelia (My-SEE-lee-uh). In just one teaspoon of soil there may be enough of these threads to span 10 kilometers (6.2 miles), writes Merlin Sheldrake in his 2020 book, Entangled Life.



All fungi need carbon to grow. Fungi that form networks may feed on the carbon in decaying wood or dead plant matter. Or they may form relationships with living plants. Some fungal networks grow around root tips, like tiny socks. These are known as EM, short for ectomycorrhizae (EK-toh-my-koh-RYE-zee). Others grow into the cells of plant roots. Known as AM, they have an even longer name: arbuscular mycorrhizae (Ar-BUS-kew-lur MY-koh-RYE-zee).





Plants get carbon from photosynthesis. But to grow, they also need nitrogen and phosphorus. Mycelia can range farther than roots to find these nutrients. So fungi and plants regularly trade with each other to get what they need. Almost all the plants in the world share resources through a network of mycelia. Mostly, plants give carbon and receive nitrogen and phosphorus. But mycelia also distribute carbon among plants and carry messages between them. Its almost like the internet or a highway system.



Suzanne Simard is a forest ecologist in Canada at the University of British Columbia in Vancouver. She was the first to show that trees could exchange carbon through fungal networks in a natural setting. A 1997 news report about that work called this the wood wide web. (Its a play on the world wide web, an early name for the internet.) This isnt a perfect metaphor, however, because a fungal system is alive and has its own agenda. But her work opened peoples eyes to the fact that a forest is a highly interconnected ecosystem.



How do networks of mycelia grow and explore? How do they connect with plants? And can their carbon-trading skills help us cope with climate change? Researchers are just starting to find answers.



This stunningly beautiful animation reveals how fungal networks grow underground. E. Toby Kiers team created the video using data captured as a real network grew in the lab.C. Biost/L. Galvez/S. Spacal



Memory without a brain



A fungus is not a plant. It also is not an animal. It belongs to its own taxonomic kingdom. Though mushrooms remain in one place like plants, mycelia can sense and explore their world. Sheldrake writes, Mycelium is a living, growing investigation. Imagine if you could divide your body in two, each side walking through a different door at the same time, then eventually rejoin with yourself. Mycelia do this. They grow in many directions in search of food. Unsuccessful ventures die off while successful ones thicken and branch further. Mycelia have no brain. Yet they fight with other fungi and with critters that graze on them. They even seem to have a basic form of memory, according to new research by Yu Fukasawa and Lynne Boddy.



At Cardiff University in the United Kingdom, Boddy studies fungi that break down things like wood and dead plants. In the 1980s, she showed how a fungal network searches for food and then re-forms itself after it finds something yummy. Last year, Fukasawa and Boddy tested the memory of a typical fungus that likes to feast on wood. They placed blocks of wood containing this fungus onto trays of soil. Then they let the fungus explore until it found a nearby block of fungus-free wood.



Next, the researchers lifted out the original block and carefully shaved off every bit of mycelia growing from it. They placed it into a new tray, with no new block of wood to discover. As the mycelia in the block began to grow again, they sent out extra threads from the side that had faced food in the past. We did this on lots of different trays and with lots of different sizes of wooden blocks, says Boddy. Almost always, you get much more growth on the side where the new food resource had been.



The fungus had somehow remembered which part of itself had faced toward food in the past. So it sent out more growth in that direction. Boddy thinks that the more researchers look, the more examples of fungal memory they will find.



This is not a mushroom. Monotropa uniflora, often called a ghost pipe, is a plant that cannot make its own food from photosynthesis. It mooches off underground mycelia for all the carbon it needs. The mycelia get that carbon from other plants in the forest.egschiller/iStock/Getty Images Plus



Hoarding and trading



A fungus that networks with living plants doesnt feast on them to get the carbon it needs. It trades. Kierss team in Amsterdam has studied how this works in AM networks. Theyre the ones that grow inside plant root cells. These mycelia regularly move nutrients through the soil. And they seem to do so with the shrewdness of a bartering salesperson.



It isnt easy to watch trading inside those microscopic threads below the ground. So the researchers developed a way to put a chemical tag on phosphorus. They added tiny dots that glow when ultraviolet light strikes them. They can make these dots glow in different colors. This lets them watch how phosphorus moves through a network.



In one 2019 study, Kierss team grew mycelia and carrot roots in small dishes. Some regions in each dish were rich in the nutrient phosphorus. Other areas had little of this fertilizer. The fungus moved phosphorus from the rich area to the poor area. Kiers thinks this happens because plants growing in a nutrient-poor area cant get phosphorus on their own through their roots. So compared to plants growing in a nutrient-rich area, those at a nutrient-poor site will trade more carbon to the mycelia for phosphorus.



In 2020, Kiers showed that mycelia will also hoard nutrients when they are plentiful. This makes those nutrients temporarily unavailable to plant roots. Then, plants have to pay [the mycelia] more carbon to get at it, says Kiers.





It seems like aliens, says E. Toby Kiers. In fact, this video shows nutrients moving through an underground network of thread-like fungus. Similar networks link plants and support ecosystems all around the world.



Invisible messages



Mycelia dont just trade with plants. They also carry their messages. Plants may seem like they sit there doing nothing. In fact, they constantly chat among themselves using chemicals. Anything that makes plants smell nice or have a flavor, thats stuff plants are making, says Kathryn Morris. And theyre most likely making it to kill other things, such as insects or disease-causing microbes, she says. Or they could make it as a signal. Morris is a biologist at Xavier University in Cincinnati, Ohio.



Plants can broadcast scent messages through the air. But they also send some through the soil. Consider when aphids attack a broad bean plant. The besieged plant blasts out chemicals that attract wasps to eat the aphids. A 2013 study showed that a broad bean plant that isnt under attack but that taps into the same fungal network as one that is will also send out these warnings. This happens even when researchers separate the plants with plastic barriers so they cant detect signals floating through the air. This suggests the plants must be sending messages underground.



It may seem like the plant in trouble is helping its neighbor. But maybe not. The plant that hasnt been attacked yet may be eavesdropping to detect when it needs to take action and protect itself. Or perhaps the fungal network carries these messages because this helps the survival of all the plants on which it depends for carbon.



Morriss research with AM networks has shown that plants chemical signals reach much farther through the soil if mycelia are there than when they arent. What she wants to know now is how this happens. How do the mycelia broadcast messages? We really dont know, says Morris. Her team is working on a method that will detect where chemicals are and how they move through fungal networks.





Yummy carbon



For a fungus, the whole point of networking with plants is to get the carbon it needs to grow. Plants get their carbon from the atmosphere. They take up carbon-dioxide gas during photosynthesis. Then they turn it into carbon-based sugars that they use to grow. Along the way, those plants will trade some of their sugars with fungi.



The globe is warming, in part, because of all the greenhouse gases that human activities spew into the air as we power our cars, electricity-generating plants, electronics and other machines. Carbon dioxide is the most common greenhouse gas. As you may already know, planting trees and boosting the health of forests can help suck extra carbon dioxide out of the air.



EM fungi form fuzzy socks around plant roots. You can sometimes see them if you look closely at roots (see upper image). Andy Taylor



But not all forests do equal work when it comes to combating climate change. The types of trees and the types of fungi that these trees communicate with can make a big difference in how much carbon a forest absorbs.



The AM fungal networks that Kiers and Morris study are by far the most common type in the world. They are ancient, says Kabir Peay. He is a biologist at Stanford University in California. These networks evolved some 500 million years ago. The mycelia in them tend to network with only one or a few trees or other plants at a time.



EM networks the type that form tiny socks around plant roots are newer. Some EM fungi can decompose dead wood or plants or network with living plants. EM networks tend to be larger and more interconnected than the AM types. Trees also find them more expensive, says Peay. By that he means they charge trees higher prices for nutrients. To make those payments, trees that trade with EM mycelia tend to absorb more carbon from the air, says Peay.



New lab research looked at how much carbon European beech trees take in when connected to an EM network. Bruna Imai is a PhD student in microbiology at the University of Vienna in Austria. After venturing into a nearby forest to collect tree seedlings, she set up pairs of baby trees in her lab. She let an EM network grow to connect some pairs. She kept other pairs from linking up.



To measure the amount of carbon the trees absorbed during the experiment, she exposed them to a special form of carbon that isnt common in nature. She found that plants that were connected to a fungal network took in nearly twice as much carbon dioxide as did plants not connected to any network. This would suggest those fungal networks can play a role in slowing climate change.



A world map of fungi



Fungal networks could be an important ally in the fight against climate change. Thats the goal, says Kiers. But first, researchers need to learn more about the complex sharing of resources and messages underfoot. Trillions of tiny worms, amoebas and microbes live in soil. Hundreds of thousands of fungal species live there, too. All of these species interact with plants and move carbon around. And they do this in ways we dont fully understand right now, says Peay at Stanford.



Explainer: What is a computer model?



Researchers also need to map fungal networks. In 2019, Peay and his team decided to start on this. Another group had already done a global tree survey. It had counted 3 trillion trees. Those data came from hundreds of researchers who went out into forests to identify individual trees and estimate their total across the planet.



Peays team wrote a computer program that looked at the mix of tree species tallied and the climate in each forest. Then it determined what type of fungal network would most likely thrive there. The result was the first world map showing where EM and AM fungal networks likely dominate. AM networks tend to prefer warm, tropical areas. EM networks prefer colder forests.



A pine forest (left) hosts mainly EM fungal networks while a tropical forest (right) hosts mostly AM networks. EM fungal networks can store higher amounts of carbon. But both types of forest store more carbon than soil in a city, farm or pasture.Kabir Peay



As Earths climate warms, forests filled with AM fungi could take over areas that are currently filled with EM fungi. Then those forests would trap even less carbon dioxide than they do now. Peay says that many EM forests are already on the edge of this sort of transformation. Plus, most land used for farming and grazing ends up with poor soil that lacks healthy fungal networks. It end up releasing carbon rather than trapping it.



Peays study didnt directly confirm the presence of particular types of fungal networks under the soil across the globe. In 2021, Kiers launched a new organization called SPUN (The Society for the Protection of Underground Networks) to take that next step. She calls it an underground climate movement.



Its goal is to protect fungal networks and use them to help heal ecosystems. It also runs a youth group called SPUN Youth (@spun.youth on Instagram and TikTok). Eventually, teens will be able to get involved. Theyll be asked to help identify fungal networks in the natural areas near their homes.



When the protection of nature only focuses on plants and animals above the ground, says Kiers, were missing half of the picture. There are ecosystems not being saved because we cant see them, she says.



She hopes that as people learn more about the living world beneath our feet, they will care more about protecting the fungal species that help trees, plants and even people thrive.

When Mary started puberty, she went to the doctor. She was 12, and it was the first visit for this transgender girl to an endocrinologist. These doctors specialize in the function of hormones and the glands that secrete them. They discussed treatments that would help her body and gender match after puberty.



Mary is not her real name, but one selected to protect her privacy.



Puberty is when a childs body begins changing into an adult. Their bodies make more of the hormones that will allow a girl to morph into a woman and a boy into a man. And thats fine for most cisgender kids, whose gender matches the sex they were assigned at birth. For these individuals, usually no medical care is needed.



But around 1.4 percent of U.S. teens are transgender. Their gender differs from the sex they had been assigned at birth. Another 2.5 percent are nonbinary, meaning their gender is not exclusively male or female. (It could be both, in between male and female or neither. Some but not all nonbinary people identify as transgender.)



Having a body that doesnt match ones gender can cause extreme distress and mental-health problems. As a result, many of these individuals may need medical treatment to help their bodies begin to match their gender.



Such treatment typically starts at the onset of puberty. This tends to be around age 9 to 12, when armpit or pubic hair starts to grow. Treatments to guide puberty have existed for decades and are also used in cisgender kids who need them. These include medicine to pause puberty and hormones to restart it. For some, treatment also can include surgery, usually after age 18, to shape someones adult body.



This transgender girl and her nonbinary friend are doing their homework. Such teens can feel that once puberty starts, their body doesnt match their gender. But with gender-affirming health care, they can develop an adult body that does fit.Lisa5201/E+/Getty Images Plus



A pause button for puberty



The main hormones that guide puberty are estrogen and testosterone. Both have many jobs and act as chemical messengers to carry out those tasks. Estrogen plays a role in keeping the bones, brain, heart and liver healthy. Testosterone also helps keep bones and muscles healthy. It also affects mood and energy levels.



During puberty, these hormones take on additional roles. They tell the body to start producing what are called secondary sex characteristics. Those include a beard or breasts.



Transgender females may take estradiol, the most potent of the estrogens. The molecule is identical to that produced in the bodies of cisgender females. Evgeny Gromov/iStock/Getty Images Plus


People designated female at birth typically produce more estrogen; those designated male at birth usually make more testosterone. But anyone with testes or ovaries makes both hormones, notes Douglas Austin. How much of each they make will vary over their lifetimes.



Austin is an endocrinologist at the Fertility Center in Eugene, Ore. One aspect of his work is to manage those hormones that determine how our bodies develop. He works with transgender kids and their families. He helps adjust hormone levels in these kids during puberty to guide their bodies development.



For many of these young people, puberty blockers are the first step, says Austin. If given soon after puberty starts, these blockers act like a pause button. (This medication also may be given to cisgender kids who begin puberty too early, he says.)



This is a model of a testosterone molecule. Transgender males may take this hormone during puberty to develop male secondary sex traits. Evgeny Gromov/iStock/Getty Images Plus


When puberty starts, a part of the brain called the hypothalamus sends a message to its neighbor, the pituitary gland. It instructs the bean-sized gland to message the bodys testes or ovaries. Spit out more hormones testosterone or estrogen it says. Blockers get in the way of this, says Austin. They stop pubertys call to produce more such hormones. That also stops the development of body changes such as breasts or facial hair.



Mary knew she was transgender from a young age, about 3 or 4 years old. But some transgender people dont realize it until later, often around puberty. Thats one reason blockers can be so helpful. They give teens more time to explore their identity before their bodies undergo permanent changes. Marys doctor prescribed a blocker called Lupron. This stopped her body from making extra testosterone.





Bio-identical hormone therapy



Most youth on blockers go on to take hormones that will restart their puberty. Depending on the person, this may be after a few months or even a few years. Marys hormone therapy started with estrogen patches twice a week for two years. She likened it to putting a sticker on my hips. Now, she takes pills. As her estrogen levels increased, her body began looking more like a typical woman’s body.



One type of hormone therapy uses patches, like this one. It goes on like a sticker and delivers estrogen into the body. This helps transgender girls develop an adult body to match their gender.SVPhilon/E+/ Getty Images Royalty Free


After taking estrogen, Mary says she feels better about her body and herself.



This is called bio-identical hormone therapy, explains Austin. The molecules in the patches and pills are identical to the hormones our bodies make. Transgender boys take testosterone. Transgender girls take estradiol the strongest of four estrogens produced in the body.



Nonbinary kids may want their adult body to look between whats considered male or female. Achieving this is very much trial and error, says Austin. He uses hormones to sculpt their bodies to be less male or less female. The end goal is an adult body that feels right for the individual.



Gender-affirming surgery



Some transgender and nonbinary teens may choose to have gender-affirming surgery. Trans males who developed breasts may choose to remove this tissue and sculpt their chests to look more typically male. This is referred to as top surgery. Other surgeries can reconstruct genitals. These are more complicated, says Austin, and the healing process is harder, too. Thats one reason people have to wait until they are at least 18 years old for this type of surgery. 



Puberty-related surgeries are not only for trans and nonbinary people. Around 4 percent of cisgender boys aged 10 to 19 may grow breast tissue during puberty. Some later have surgery to remove the unwanted tissue.



Explainer: What is puberty?



Austin starts working with new patients years before any surgery may occur. Still, he talks about it on day one. This may feel scary for the parents, he says. But it’s important for kids to know their options and to think broadly about their future. Another consideration: Will they want to save sperm or eggs to have biological children later on? After surgery, they learn, this may not be possible.



Not all trans and nonbinary people want surgery, adds Tess Kilwein. Shes a psychologist in Nashville, Tenn. She works with trans and nonbinary young people across the country through her online practice. Some are satisfied with a social transition, which often includes changing their clothes, hair and pronouns. Others may choose only hormone therapy.



Now 15 years old, Mary does plan to have surgery. Shes excited, but also nervous. She looks forward to the day she can feel comfortable with her shape and wearing any type of clothes.





This video gives an overview of what puberty looks like for a transgender youth.



Life-saving hormones



Gender-affirming care saves lives, says Kilwein. Trans and nonbinary youth face a far higher risk of depression, eating disorders and suicidal thoughts than cisgender kids, she notes. But research overwhelmingly shows that gender-affirming care improves peoples mental health, quality of life and body image.



In 2023, researchers reviewed nearly 50 studies on hormone therapy and mental health in transgender people. In all, their data came from more than 40,000 participants. Those receiving hormone therapy reported less depression and fewer symptoms of anxiety. Overall, these people also felt more positive about their lives. Blockers, too, showed mental-health benefits in trans youth.



Explainer: What is anxiety?



Some people may be concerned about possible physical impacts of blockers and hormone treatments. Puberty blockers are widely used and considered safe, says Austin. Most of their effects are reversible.



But two effects can last into adulthood.



One is height. Puberty kicks off a growth spurt that ends at someones adult height. If puberty is delayed, a person will keep growing, they just wont get the rapid growth spurt. If used too long, someone may grow extra tall. This can be an issue for trans females who dont want to be taller than most women, Austin says. We have to time the transition properly to manage height expectations.



Bone density is the other consideration. Hormones released during puberty strengthen bones. Blockers pause this important development.



When someone stops blockers or starts taking hormones, their bone density will again increase normally. There is a chance someone could end up with weaker bones, Austin says. But this should only happen if they took blockers and had their gonads (testes or ovaries) removed without receiving other hormones. Thats not likely to be recommended.



Hormone therapies have been studied for effects on heart and bone health. For example, some types of estrogen may increase the risk of stroke or blood clots. And in some studies, trans women had higher risk of heart attack than cisgender women. But their risks were the same as for cisgender men. In one review of 53 different studies of transgender people, hormone therapy didn’t consistently raise the risk of heart or bone problems.




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Threats to health care for trans and nonbinary kids



Mary lives in Oregon. There, her healthcare rights are protected. But thats not true everywhere. As of 2024, almost half of U.S. states have laws restricting or prohibiting this care. Denying kids the option to grow into an adult body that matches their gender can harm their health.



Many lack access to the care they want. In one 2022 survey of more than 11,000 trans and nonbinary youth, half said they would like to use gender-affirming hormone therapy but were not. More than one in three were not interested in it. Just 14 percent were receiving such care.



I wish people knew how much of a mental toll it takes [to be transgender], and how harmful it can be if you dont get treatment, says Mary. But treatment wont solve everything, she adds.



Sad or stressed? Heres where to find health-ful info



Gender-affirming care isnt a rigid type of medicine, says Austin. For youth, its a discussion on how to get from the early stages of puberty into the right adult body for them, then finding the treatment to make that happen. 



And this process calls into question people’s prejudices around gender. For many parents, its the first time theyve had to think about what gender means, he says.



Marys mother, too, found the process hard at first. She didnt know how to talk about her daughters gender and felt the situation was a failure of her parenting. Now, she sees Marys gender as a gift. Its helped their family become more flexible and accepting. Not just for transgender people, she says, but in all parts of their lives. 



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Everything about The wizard of oz or wicked! Simple as that.

Celebrated annually on the third Monday of January, Martin Luther King Jr. Dayhonors thelife and legacy of one of the most influential leaders of the American civil rights movement. Designated a national day of service by the US Congress, the federal holiday encourages citizens to help realize the Baptist minister'svisionof abeloved communityby bridging racial and ethnicbarriers, addressing social issues,and volunteering to improve their communities.

Droughts are one of a farmers most feared threats. And in our warming climate, the risk of drought has been climbing. Anticipating a drier future, two teen engineers have been investigating how to help farmers keep their crops from getting dangerously thirsty. Working on opposite sides of the United States, the teens used different methods to fight to keep plants green. Their inventions landed each a major award at this years Regeneron International Science and Engineering Fair.



John Benedict Estrada, 16, identified a way for a robot arm to measure plant thirst. For his work, John won the $50,000 Gordon E. Moore Award for Positive Outcomes for Future Generations.



Arya Tschand, 17, mounted a somewhat simpler plant-thirst detection system on a drone. His proof-of-principle tests show those flying sensors could then tell ground-based irrigation systems which plants need water and how much. Arya took home ISEFs $10,000 Craig R. Barrett Award for Innovation.



Both teens showcased their research to the public on May 18 as part of the ISEF competition. Created by Society for Science, the fair moved online this year due to the COVID-19 pandemic. (The Society for Science also publishes Science News for Students.) This year, nearly 2,000 high school students from 64 countries, regions and territories showed off their projects online. With posters, videos and images to present their work, the teens competed for $5 million in awards. 







Pinpointing plant thirst



Dry spells can stunt or even kill crops. Living in Californias Central Valley, John has seen lots of these droughts. A sophomore at Clovis North High School in Fresno, he wanted to help farmers save their plants from getting dangerously parched.



Johns robotic arm can rotate in all directions, allowing him to measure the leaves of a plant, the soil and more.J. Estrada



The main model scientists use for drought stress in crops relies on measuring things such as how dry the air is above farm fields and how hot a plant gets. (Johns little sister, Pauline Estrada, used this model of drought stress when she built a plant-sensing rover. Based on this project, she was a finalist last fall in the Broadcom MASTERS competition. Its held for middle-school researchers.)



John wanted to see if he could measure a plants drought stress more directly. So he built a small robotic arm and used it to measure the light reflecting off of bell peppers. As plants get dry, the way they reflect blue, green and red light changes very slightly. Its not something that our eyes can see. But it is something a robot could detect. At the same time, his robot measured soil moisture and temperature.



With these data, he built a computer model. It predicts which plants will be suffering from thirst faster than other methods, John says. Identifying at-risk plants, he says, can point farmers sooner to where they should start watering before their plants truly suffer. Next year, I am planning to do a field experiment, John says. He might even borrow his sisters rover to collect field data and adapt my model to actual field conditions.



Drones for drought



Its also important to make sure that no irrigation water is wasted. Thats why Arya Tschand, 17, has been launching his drone into the sky. This senior at High Technology High School in Lincroft, N.J., aims to help poor farmers like the ones he saw while traveling in India.



Explainer: What is a computer model?



I would gaze in utter disbelief across endless fields of wilted crops, he says. The problem, he learned, was water shortage. So Arya set out to find ways to limit water waste.



The teens drone hovers over plants and measures their color. Using a computer model, Arya taught the drone to predict how thirsty a plant was based on the color of its leaves. Based on that color, the drone then sends a signal to an irrigation system on the ground, which adjusts how much water it sends out to plants.





In this video, Arya describes how his drone can detect plant color, and then control how much water that plant receives.



Currently, many farmers irrigate using pipes with holes. Aryas system adds a small valve that adjusts how much water is going in to the pipe. This ensures crops get as much was as they need, but not too much. In areas with drought, where every drop matters, farmers cant afford to waste any moisture. 



I didnt have a field of crops to test my drone on, so I used some plants I had at home, Arya says. Like John, his next step is to scale up his project. In the meantime, he has applied for a patent on his system.



I know that making even the smallest improvement with my project has the potential to significantly help people affected by water shortage, Arya says. The best thing about science like this is that every little drip of water research helps.

If youre thinking of the Mesozoic Era the Triassic, Jurassic and Cretaceous periods you probably think DINOSAURS! Youre not wrong. That era, 252 million to 66 million years ago, was when dinosaurs evolved, reigned and died. But youd also be missing out on a lot of other amazing creatures, especially other reptiles.



Dinosaurs are only one group of Mesozoic reptiles. Other land-dwellers included ancestors of modern-day crocodiles, called Batrachopus. Meanwhile, the air was ruled by pterosaurs.



Though pterosaurs often come in sets of play dinosaurs, they were only dinosaur relatives. Well-adapted for flying, they had hollow, air-filled bones, similar to modern birds. Their wings, though, were usually covered with thin membranes rather than feathers. (Some pterosaurs, though, may have been covered in fuzzy protofeathers.) Pterosaurs ranged in size. Some were as small as eagles. The largest known, Quetzalcoatlus, had a wingspan of some 10 meters (33 feet).



See all the entries from our Lets Learn About series





The Mesozoic seas were dominated by other non-dinosaur reptiles. These included the ichthyosaurs, or fish-lizards. Scientists have discovered fossils of more than 100 species of these animals. Among them are the remains of one unlucky reptile who likely died from trying to eat a meal as big as itself. Plesiosaurs had long necks with dozens of bones. Their giant flippers let them swim through the water like a penguin. Although big, plesiosaurs still had plenty of worries. These included giant mosasaurs that preyed on plesiosaurs. You might recognize those giant sea monsters from the aquatic show in Jurassic World.



While the Mesozoic Era is often called the Age of Reptiles, reptiles werent the only animals around, of course. Fish still swam the seas. Insects and other invertebrates were numerous. And mammals our ancestors were just getting their start.





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Thats no dino! Not all ancient reptiles were dinosaurs. Some soared, many swam the seas and still others looked like dinos but actually werent. (6/12/2015) Readability: 6.6



The real sea monsters No known dinosaurs lived in the oceans. But there were lots of big aquatic reptiles that were every bit as ferocious and awesome. (6/19/2015) Readability: 7.3



Early dino-era start for modern mammals Fossils of an extinct group of rodent-sized mammals suggest they were related to modern mammals. These ancient remains push back the origin of mammals by many millions of years. (10/1/2014) Readability: 7.3





Dinosaurs may get most of our attention, but there were plenty of other reptiles that roamed Earth during the Mesozoic the Age of Reptiles.



Explore more



Scientists Say: Jurassic



Explainer: How a fossil forms



Explainer: Understanding geologic time



Fossil hunting can start as childs play



These crocodile ancestors lived a two-legged life



These fuzz-covered flying reptiles had catlike whiskers



This ancient reptiles last meal may have truly been a killer



Activities



Word Find



Download and print Pterosaurs: A Card Game from the American Museum of Natural History. The game, based on the museums collections and exhibits, challenges players to gain points by building their own food chains and breaking their opponents.

Youre acting like a child, the police officer said.



I am a child, the 9-year-old Black girl replied. She kept crying for her dad.



This past January, a report of family trouble had brought police to the girls home in Rochester, N.Y. Officers told her to get into a police car. Instead, she sank into the snow. As she screamed on the ground, an officer clamped handcuffs on her wrists. Police pushed the crying girl partly into the car. But she wouldnt lift her legs inside. Another officer then squirted her in the face with pepper spray.



In February 2021, police arrested a 13-year-old Black boy in Baton Rouge, La. The officer restrained the teen by locking his arm around the childs neck. He relaxed the hold only after a bystander called out, Youre choking him! And in March 2021, police killed a 13-year-old Latino boy in Chicago, Ill. The boy was raising his hands when he was shot.





New studies show that compared to their white peers, children and teens of color are more likely to be harmed by police. Research has also linked such differences in policing of young people to higher risks of mental-health problems later on.



From 2003 to 2018 in the United States, 140 12- to 17-year-olds died in police encounters. All but nine of those children had been shot by the police. During the same period, police killed about 6,500 adults in the United States. Compared to their numbers in the population, Hispanic teens were nearly three times more likely to be shot and killed by police than were white teens. Among Black teens, the risk of being shot and killed by police was about six times that of white teens. Researchers shared those findings in the December 2020 Pediatrics.



Hospital data also point to kids unequal risk of being wounded by police. Kriszta Farkas is an epidemiologist at the University of California, Berkeley. She studies factors leading to inequalities in health. Recently, she and others analyzed hospital data for California from January 2005 to December 2017. They found 15,967 cases where youths up to age 19 had been harmed during contact with law enforcement.



Psychology shines light on the harm racism can do



Boys are more likely to be physically hurt by police than girls about seven times more likely, Farkas says. The highest rate of injuries was among 15- to 19-year-olds. In that group, Black boys were roughly 3.5 times more likely to be harmed than white boys.



Police were less likely to injure younger teens and tweens than older youth. However, racial disparities were greater in the younger 10- to 14-year-old group. Here, the risk of harm from police was 5.3 times higher for Black boys than white boys,  



Although boys were more likely to be harmed, Farkas found that there were larger racial inequities among girls, especially younger ones. Indeed, the new study shows that Black girls are uniquely harmed by policing, Farkas says. For instance, Black girls aged 15 to 19 were more than 4.3 times as likely to be hurt by police as were white girls of the same age. And among kids aged 10 to 14, Black girls were 6.7 times as likely to be hurt by police as white girls. Overall, white girls reported far fewer injuries from law enforcement than any other group.



Her team shared its findings September 7 in JAMA Pediatrics.



Some feel dehumanized



Results from that study are not surprising to those who have these lived experiences, says Dominique Johnson. Based in New York City, she worked on community engagement with the Center for Policing Equity. Today she works with AMC Networks. As a child she found that others judged Black people like her differently. White children did not have that burden, she said.



Black teens can feel especially vulnerable when they are dehumanized because of their race, Johnson says. That happens when they are treated as if they dont deserve dignity or respect.



Five things students can do about racism



Monique Jindal is a pediatrician at the University of Illinois at Chicago. She and others reviewed 29 studies on police contact with Black youth. Some studies found links between experiences with police and mental-health problems. Many young people said they felt unsafe, stressed out, angry, sad or depressed. In several studies, Black youths said they felt hopeless, fearful or unable to just be kids. The team shared its report, too, in the September 7 JAMA Pediatrics.



Its a very harsh reality for children of color, Jindal says. From a young age, Black children come into contact with police in parks, schools, neighborhoods and elsewhere. Yet kids are going through critical development periods during this time, she explains. Healthy development calls for children to feel safe. They need to feel they belong.



Unfortunately, Jindal says, Black children often learn, theres this social institution that is not there to protect them that may actually do them harm. That can affect a childs view of society and the world. It can also mess with their ability to just be a kid. They may worry that police will see them as being up to no good, for example, instead of just hanging out with friends. Or they may avoid places, such as a park, because they dont want to be hassled by police.



Since the 1990s, many schools are more likely to have police on their premises than mental health professionals. Here, an officer tells schoolboys to tuck in their shirts.David McNew/Staff/Getty Images News



Seen differently



Phillip Atiba Goff is a social psychologist at Yale University in New Haven, Conn. He also heads up the Center for Policing Equity. Goff spoke at a May 21 webinar about policing and racism. The Association for Psychological Science hosted the event.



In general, police are less likely to use force against children, compared to adults of the same race, Goff says. But data from nine cities show that is less true for Black children than for white children. In addition, police were more likely to use force against Black children than against white adults.



In these nine cities, whiteness is more protective than childhood, Goff says.



In an earlier study, a group of mostly white participants saw Black children over age 10 as less innocent than non-Black children in the same age group. And police were more likely to estimate higher ages for Black and Latino children, compared to white children.



In the research world, we call this being adultified, says Farkas, who did not work on that study. But another way of thinking about it is not being allowed by the world around you to live your life as the carefree child or young person that you should be.



Farkas says her groups work adds to scientific evidence on policing as a form of structural racism. That term, she adds, refers to the patterns and practices that a society uses to give rise to and support racial discrimination. In this case, she says, policing unjustly, or unfairly, shapes the lives of Black children and teenagers in negative ways, compared to white youth.



People in different racial groups are no more or less likely to break laws, explains epidemiologist Catherine Duarte. Yet people in racial minority groups are more likely to experience police contact. And that can lead to more risk of harm. Duarte worked on the study with Farkas at UC Berkeley. She teaches at Stanford University in California.



In a separate study, Duarte and others looked at how public policy shapes young peoples contacts with police. Some policies affect whether theres a police presence at schools. Other policies deal with policing in different neighborhoods. Still other policies shape police contacts with young people who dont have stable housing. Various laws have also increased funding for police but not social services. Other laws expanded the crimes young people may be charged with.



Also, many laws that dont seem to discriminate end up being applied more harshly against children of color than against white children, Duarte says. For example, police are more likely to stop children of color than white children. And such police stops are often less intrusive when they involve white children. The group shared its findings in the American Journal of Public Health in September 2020.



In public health research, we find that all of this is linked to worse health, Duarte says. Thats especially true for people in minority groups who experience racism. Unjust differences in health are a sign of basic problems in our social systems, and we all have a responsibility to address them, she says. Everyone, she notes, should have the opportunity to live healthful lives.



Talk with friends, family members and trusted adults about what you can do to speak out against discriminatory policing. These young people attended a rally in Washington, D.C., to protest the 2014 fatal shooting by police of unarmed teenager Michael Brown in Missouri. Chip Somodevilla / Staff/Getty Images News



Taking action



Science is critical to knowledge and advocacy on issues such as racism, Johnson says. Still, she adds, I wish these disparities did not exist and that we did not have to utilize statistics and data to prove our humanity.



Adds Jindal, Hopefully people are waking up, and they are starting to really look at the ways that we have not protected children. She encourages youths who are not in a minority group to ask trusted adults what can be done to change things. And she hopes young people will have empathy for friends and classmates with different racial identities.



Teens and tweens of color also should share their experiences with the adults in their lives who love and care about them, Jindal says. If they have negative experiences with police or others, they should find someone they trust to talk about it. That could be a parent, teacher, doctor or someone else.



Farkas likewise urges young people to talk about their feelings with friends, family members and other trusted adults. Its important to take care of yourself and people you care about, she says. And, if you have the energy and opportunity, learn about and engage with this topic, even if in small ways.

Most of us are used to clean water flowing right into our homes. We drink it, shower with it, and use it to flush the toilets. We water our plants with it. Have you ever wondered where this water comes from? Or where it goes? Or what might happen if we dont have enough? If you live in a city or a town, the water may be delivered to your home from a nearby river or lake, or from large pumps that pull it out of the ground (groundwater). Perhaps it was piped from hundreds of miles away, over mountains and through valleys. If you live in the country, you probably have your own small well and a...

Hello, My Munchkins! I did my first A Bit About Me a little bit over a year ago, so Im making an updated one. Lets jump into it.                     MY INTERESTS My favorite color is seafoam green, and my favorite food is cheese and broccoli soup. […]

Thequarter dollaris both themost commonly-used coin in the American currency and themost unique.Since 1999, the coin'sreverse, or "tails,"sidehas showcased all 50 US states, as well as thebreathtaking beauty of the country's national parks. Now, the US Mint plans to use the silver canvastocelebratefemale leaders who have played a crucial part in shaping the nation'shistory.

I relaxed my old body on the large couch inside my bubble home. My grandchildren were right before me playing video games, completely oblivious to the outside world. Just then, my oldest grandchild burst out of the bedroom, holding a printed-out photograph. She was surfing the internet on her holographic pad and came across the picture. I studied the photograph. It was a picture of students in a school wearing masks. I sighed, gathered all my grandchildren, and began to talk about the COVID-19 pandemic. I fished through my memories, trying to locate ones about the pandemic. Eventually, they...

A tiny mantis shrimp found off the Pacific coast of South and Central America has inspired a new robot that somersaults and rolls as well as a circus acrobat or Disney sidekick.





Forty years ago, Roy Caldwell documented the somersaulting mantis shrimp in his lab.Credit: Roy Caldwell



Wen-Bo Li is a mechanical engineer exploring how to design soft robots that move by rolling. He works at Shanghai Jiao Tong University in China. Not long ago, he came across a description from more than 40 years ago of how a mantis shrimp navigated beaches.



Roy Caldwell is an ecologist at the University of California, Berkeley. Back in 1979, he published a report in Nature about a mantis shrimp known as Nannosquilla decemspinosa. The tiny crustacean looks a bit like a cross between a caterpillar and a lobster. Caldwell watched as the animal walked underwater. But when waves pulled back, beaching the critter on wet sand, it no longer used its legs. The animal continues in a series of backward somersaults, generally moving in a straight line until it encounters an obstacle or water suffiently deep for swimming, or until it becomes fatigued,” he wrote. He described this as a unique form of locomotion.





Intrigued, Li searched for more detailed information. I found that it could move by a series of backward somersaults for as far as 2 meters [79 inches]. Along the way, it might do 20 to 40 consecutive, dynamic rolls, he learned. It can even mount an incline.





Wen-Bo Li used video footage to analyze the movement of his teams novel robot.Credit: Wen-Bo Li



His team set to work. “After figuring out this fascinating mechanism, Li says, we started to design a soft robot to emulate the somersaulting.” They made the robots body in a series of segments, similar to those in a mantis shrimp. We used 11 chambers. The shape is the same as the flat dorsal [backside] surface of the animal. That makes it stable.



Before it moves, the robot called SomBot stretches out straight. Suction-cup action holds it to the floor. As the researchers push air through long thin tubes attached to one end, the suction releases. This causes the robots torso to bend into a circle and roll.



SomBot can roll pretty quickly up to 9.2 body lengths per second. Li says that the suction combined with the somersault is the key to that speed. With the help of the controllable anchoring, the curling body can be converted into fast movement, he says.



The team described its design in the April 2021 issue of IEEE Xplore.



The rolled-up shape of the ocean dwelling N. decemspinosa (left) and the soft-robot SomBot (right) look similar. Inspired by the mantis shrimp, engineers built their segmented soft robot to scoot faster than other soft robots.R. Caldwell; W.-B. Li



Soft versus hard robots



Daniela Rus is a robotics engineer at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology in Cambridge. She designed a soft-fish robot called SoFi. Hard-bodied robots are made of materials such as hard plastics and metal, she notes. Often large and heavy, these can be dangerous to be around, she explains. Thats why many robot designers prefer softer materials. These robots will end up closer to real organisms in softness.



Engineers often choose soft robots for missions where they need to protect soft organisms around them such as people or other animals. Rus says that this new tech would not only be safer but also more capable of a wide range of motions than hard-bodied robots.



For its new robot, the Shanghai team used an elastomer. Its a polymer a material made from a long chain of repeating units. The same rubbery elastomer is sometimes used in shoe soles and car tires. After molded into a desired shape, it stays elastic. Rus describes this as being compliant. That flexibility, she says, should allow it to withstand force and to move as needed.





A need for speed



Lis group had started with one big goal: make SomBot faster than earlier types of soft robots. Its somersaulting action appears to have helped them succeed. The team tested SomBots speed against a rigid-but-soft robot inspired by a cheetahs spine. That soft-rolling robot looks like a caterpillar. It was designed to move much like human fingers. SomBot beat it by more than three body lengths per second.



But while SomBots speed is impressive, Li and his team have not yet gotten full control of its rolling action. They are beginning to consider giving it a closed-loop design. This may be something like a doughnut or perhaps the mythical snake that bites its own tail.



SomBots suction also works best on smooth surfaces. However, most natural ones are fairly coarse. “Anchoring by suction won’t work on rough and uneven surfaces,” such as sidewalks, Li admits.



The new robots style of moving is something that Disneys animators appreciate, too. In their new animated film, Raya and the Last Dragon, the sidekick who transports the warrior princess also relies on rolling locomotion. One of the movies producers has described that sidekick named Tuk Tuk as part armadillo, part pillbug and part pug (a type of dog). Two of those can roll into a ball. In the movie, Tuk Tuk somersaults across the Asian landscape, speeding Raya from one site to another.

Claudia Sheinbaum made history on June 2, 2024,when she became the first female president of Mexico.She isalso the first person of Jewish heritageto lead thisprimarily Catholic nation.Sheinbaum'sachievement is even more remarkable considering that women in Mexico only gained the right to vote 70 years ago, in 1953.

Our world is filled with rules, but imagine if you had the power to create just one for everyone to follow.  What would it be, and how could it change the way we live? So whats yours? Share your answers in the comments below and explain why!

When rain or snow falls, much of it seeps into the soil. From there it flows down through porous rock, gravel and sand, forming underground streams. This groundwater will sometimes travel long distances. Scientists have now attempted to calculate its path in North America. Their findings suggest water can travel below ground much farther and deeper and for a much longer time than had been expected.



For instance, some groundwater can travel up to 238 kilometers (148 miles), the new study reports. And it can seep to depths of more than 90 meters (300 feet).



Or consider the deep groundwater pumped up for drinking. Most was believed to be separate from polluted water that often resurfaces in streams and rivers. But through long, buried treks, groundwater can link areas thought to be separate sharing pollution it picked up along the way. 



Explainer: Earths water is all connected in one vast cycle



All that water now appears a lot more connected, says Reed Maxwell, an author of the new study. He works at Princeton University in New Jersey. As a hydrologist, he studies the movement of water.



His team shared its findings on how water moves in the January 6 issue of Nature Water.



Understanding these connections between water sources, they say, is important. It could help water managers work together to make better decisions about how to use water for drinking, irrigating crops and supporting ecosystems.





How they investigated waters movement



A watershed (also known as a catchment) is the broad expanse of land that funnels snowmelt and rain downhill to a body of open water (such as a lake or ocean). Some rain and snowmelt will remain above ground. But much will seep underground as it moves.



Water managers decide who gets to use the water within a watershed and how. Watersheds are managed separately. But water can flow freely underground across watershed boundaries, says Laura Condon. Shes a hydrologist at the University of Arizona in Tucson. 



If watersheds are connected, then problems in one might affect another, says Maxwell. This got him thinking: If you dump pollution in one watershed, does it get to another? 



Others had mapped groundwater flows in various parts of the United States. But how distant sources of underground water might be connected hadnt been clear. That was one motivation for this study, says Maxwell. Understanding how water moves across a continent underground can help show how, when and where impacts to that water may occur.




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Maxwell and Condons team decided to track groundwaters flow beneath most of continental North America. They started with where this water reemerges in streams. Then, working backward, they figured out where it must have first seeped into the Earth.



To do this, they built a computer model. It simulated North Americas underground layers of rock to depths of 392 meters (1,200 feet). Next, they divided the continent into little blocks. Each was one kilometer long by one kilometer wide.



Then they asked the model to calculate how much water would likely flow through each block. That would depend on the shape and thickness of Earths underground layers and the space between the rocks.



Each block is like a Lego brick, Maxwell says. Once they calculated waters flow in each one, they stacked them together 85 million of them.



Then they added simulated water droplets to the computer model. The model pushes these droplets around based on how water would flow through the layers of below ground rock. And the scientists tracked everywhere they would go.



Think of a video game: Where would the little ball go? Itll be pushed by the velocity this way, says Condon.  Then, where would it go next?



Water often travels more than 97 kilometers (60 miles), the model showed. That wouldnt be far if water was streaming across the surface, says Maxwell. But it was far longer than it had been expected to flow below ground.



Most water stays below the surface for five to 10 years, the model found. But buried aquifers (underground layers of water-filled rock) also exist. Water can collect in them for 100,000 to 1 million years.





Rain and snow seep into the Earth, forming streams of groundwater that travel long distances below the surface.



Impacts to water



Knowing how far water travels and for how long helps determine impacts to water. How? If you have pollution underground, you need to understand where its going to go, Maxwell explains.



Consider, for instance, the nitrate fertilizers that farmers apply to soils. In large amounts, nitrates can harm people and aquatic life. Rain can wash these chemicals into groundwater. From there, they can potentially travel far from the farms on which they had been used. That can pollute water once thought to be free of such chemicals.



Models might also point to where water being pumped from the ground at one site (for drinking or irrigation) had been on its way to hydrate a distant wetland. Knowing this, says Claudia Faunt, managers might then make sure they leave enough water in the ground to sustain that wetland and the ecosystem it supports. Faunt didnt take part in the new study. But as a hydrologist with the U.S. Geological Survey in San Diego, Calif., she understands these issues. 



Everythings connected, Maxwell says. By knowing how one watershed may be linked to others, you can understand how the system works as a whole, he explains. And that could be key to managing Earths life-giving resource.  

One Yksi, kaksi, kolme, nelj, I whispered to myself while skating laps around the rink. The ice beneath my skates felt like home, but this time, home felt different. I was alone on the rink; none of my teammates or school friends, like Helmi or Juhani, were there. It was just me, skating endless laps, […]

Magawa,anAfrican giant pouched rattrained to sniff outconcealed explosivedevices, has retired. Therodent, who receivedBritish veterinary charity PDSA's gold medal forbraveryin 2020,wasone of Belgian non-profitAPOPO's most successful HeroRATs. During his illustrious five-year career,Magawadiscovered more than 71 landminesand helped clear over2,420,000 sq. feet(225,000 sq.meters) of land inSiem Reap, Cambodia.

WestJet Airlines' annual "Christmas Miracle"videos,which capture employees providingmuch-needed holiday cheer to those in need, are legendary. Past "miracles" includeflyingin gifts and snow to the DominicanRepublicand hostingaholiday party for a town devastated by a forest fire. In 2020, WestJetemployees delivered 12,000care packageswith essentials and giftstofamilies hurtby the COVID-19 pandemic.This year, the company wants to reunite familiesfor the holidays.

In October 2022, U.S. President Joe Biden visited a quantum computer in Poughkeepsie, N.Y. The gorgeous contraption had been built by the high-tech company IBM. Like a futuristic sculpture, it had complex curves of gold tubes and wires.



Photos of the visit show Biden studying the machinery. But anyone looking at those photos might wonder: How is this thing a computer?



The temperature inside the machine, called IBM Quantum System One, is almost unfathomably cold. Its a fraction of a degree above absolute zero, which is the coldest possible temperature. IBM has installed Quantum System One machines in many places around the world. Some of them are encased in the same kind of glass used to protect Leonardo da Vincis Mona Lisa.



U.S. President Joe Biden visited IBM in Poughkeepsie, N.Y. in 2022 where company CEO Arvind Krishna described a quantum computer. The tubes and wires look like a golden chandelier. Theyre actually used to help keep the computer chilled at just above absolute zero. MANDEL NGAN/Contributor/AFP/Getty Images



At absolute zero, everything stops moving. And quantum computing can take place only at a sliver of a fraction of a degree above absolute zero. The golden sculpture-looking part of Quantum System One is what keeps the computing part so cold.



Any time you google quantum computer, the pictures that come up are these big beautiful golden chandeliers, said Corban Tillemann-Dick. He founded Maybell Quantum Industries in Denver, Colo. He spoke there about these quantum machines last February. It was at the annual meeting of the American Association for the Advancement of Science.



This is an IBM Quantum System One machine installed in Tokyo. Quantum computers require the lowest possible temperatures, and the golden chandelier is like a giant refrigerator.Satoshi Kawase, for IBM/IBM Research/Flickr (CC BY-ND 2.0 DEED)


Looking at those photos, I get kind of amused, he said. They think theyre standing next to a quantum computer. But really that chandelier is the fridge.



The part that solves computing problems sits on a piece of silicon at the bottom of the contraption. Its so small it could fit in your hand. Tillemann-Dick should know. He designs and builds ways to keep those quantum devices cold. (He jokes that hes a high-tech refrigerator salesman.)



Tech companies including IBM, Microsoft, Google and others are racing to build the best quantum computer. Why? Their scientists think these devices will soon be able to complete tasks and solve problems faster than any number-cruncher today. Quantum computing will likely be able to tackle problems that todays machines cant.



Quantum computers are not able to do that yet. But theyre getting close.



Kayla Lee is a biologist by training who now works on building a global quantum-computing community at IBM in Charlotte, N.C. Its an exciting time to be in the field, she says. Theres so much opportunity.



Whats the big deal?



Weve already gotten some glimpses that quantum computers might one day outperform normal, or classical, computers.



Take Sycamore. Last December, Google reported that Sycamore its quantum system had quickly completed a difficult task related to how a random system runs. It required only six seconds. The same task would likely require years on the worlds fastest traditional computer. Thats a supercomputer known as Frontier. Its housed at the Oak Ridge National Laboratory in Tennessee.



Googles test put Sycamore through some early paces. The problem it solved in six seconds showed off the machines number-crunching power. But that computing task itself isnt very useful for solving the worlds problems. No quantum computer works well enough yet to start solving big, important challenges. Whats got experts excited is what this new generation of computers might do and soon.





This short video compares conventional computers to quantum computers. It also points to some of the special roles where a quantum number-cruncher might shine. To see those right away, jump to the videos 3-minute mark.



Some predict quantum machines will solve complex problems related to climate change. Quantum computers might also identify better battery designs. They might find new ways to generate renewable energy or make energy systems more efficient.



Quantum computers could also help solve what seem like old-school problems, but really arent.



Take figuring out how to move goods around the world. This is remarkably hard to optimize because it involves trucks, trains, ships and planes moving across different environments. Shipping companies can save time, money and energy by using the best routes. And quantum computers may help find those paths.



Part of Lees job at IBM is to help people learn what quantum computers will and wont be able to do. She also helps businesses and researchers get started in learning how to use such a device. Even though its a computer, a quantum computer is unlike the technology behind laptops, phones and other electronics.



Small things, big possibilities. At a quantum-computing summit in December 2023, IBM introduced Heron (shown), its most powerful quantum-processing chip ever. Its specialized to reduce errors in quantum computing.Ryan Lavine/IBM/Flickr (CC BY-ND 2.0 DEED)



Some news articles, Lee says, oversell the possibilities. Its not just a faster computer, she says. Its not going to solve every problem.



One big challenge is to find the problems that quantum computers will solve faster.



In some cases, a quantum computer may not offer an advantage if theres no quantum algorithm, or recipe, for solving a problem. And some problems solved by quantum algorithms can still be solved as fast by classical computers. Quantum computers also may not be good at tasks that require lots of memory, because they cant yet store much data. They also may not speed up tasks that focus on multiplying or adding numbers because classical computers already do that well.



But these emerging computers should excel at certain types of problems, Lee says. Knowing how depends on knowing how quantum computers work.



Quantum weirdness



The science that led to quantum computing goes back hundreds of years. It started with physicists who wanted to know more about the behavior of light.



In the 17th century, Isaac Newton argued that light was made up of tiny particles. But experiments in the 18th and 19th centuries showed that light traveled like a wave. By 1900, most scientists thought light was made up of waves.



In fact, both Team Wave and Team Particle turned out to be right and wrong.



In 1905, physicist Albert Einstein put the pieces together. He proposed that light traveled like a wave, but it could be observed like a particle. Another physicist later introduced the term photon for this type of particle.





Light can act like a particle or a wave. Lets explore the history of that bizarre discovery.



Surprising discoveries about photons in the early 1900s paved the way for quantum computers, Lee says. Key among these was the idea of superposition.



The principle of superposition says that thanks to its wavelike nature, a photon can exist in more than one state at one time. Here, the word state describes some physical property of the particle, such as its location. So the rule of superposition says that a photon can be in more than one place at a time.



We will never actually see a photon in two states (such as two places) at once. As soon as you look at a photon, it only has one location. Physicists explain this by saying it collapses into one state. But while a photon remains unobserved, superposition allows it to exist in multiple states at once.



This device at Princeton University uses lasers to cool and control individual molecules. It now allows them to entangle molecules so that they share a quantum state. Scientists reported this last December in Science. Entangled molecules can be used as building blocks of quantum computers. Princeton University, Richard Soden



Physicists have since discovered that photons are not the only particles that can act like waves. Electrons, atoms and even molecules can show wavelike behavior. So they, too, follow the rule of superposition. Its just harder to see these weird quantum effects as you look at bigger objects at warmer temperatures.



If that sounds confusing to you, youre in good company.



I think I can safely say no one understands quantum mechanics, Richard Feynman said in a lecture he gave in 1964. And he should know. Hes the physicist who came up with the idea to harness the weirdness of superposition in a computer.



Even after scientists and engineers like Feynman had the idea for a quantum computer, it took them decades to build such a machine. Think of it, Lee says, as a new model of computation.



Bits, qubits and entanglement



A normal computer stores and processes information using bits. A bit is a sort of switch that can be in one of two states: on or off. This can be described as the bit having a value of 1 or 0. Each bit must be one state or the other at any given time.



See those five small squares in the middle of this chip made by IBM? Those squares are the qubits used by a quantum computer to make calculations.IBM Research/Flickr (CC BY-ND 2.0 DEED


If youre reading this on a screen, then every letter, number and punctuation mark you see is represented inside your digital device by bits. It requires about 5 bits to represent a letter or number. Inside a computer, a device called a transistor acts as the bit. Modern computers can hold hundreds of billions of bits.



Quantum computers are different. Instead of bits, quantum machines store and process data using qubits. Thats short for quantum bit. Qubits can be made from any quantum particle or molecule that can exist in a superposition of states.



Unlike a bit, a qubit isnt limited to just being on or off. Because of superposition, it has some probability of being on and some probability of being off at any given time. It doesnt settle into one of those states until someone measures it. Then, it collapses into a single state, just like a photon does when someone observes it. The combination of all those collapsed qubits reveals the answer to the problem.




Qubit?



Calin Hanga/iStock/Getty Images Plus
The computers inside your laptop and cell phone use bits to store and process data. A bit is like a switch thats either on or off (or in a 0 or 1 position). But the qubits used by quantum computers are different. A qubit has some probability of being in the 0 state, and some probability of being in the 1 state. Its not in either state until its measured.





Thats what gives us the big speed up, says Dan Gauthier. Hes a physicist at the Ohio State University in Columbus. His research focuses on how to use quantum technology in new tools. 



Because they might be in multiple states at once, qubits can process data faster than classical bits, Gauthier says. Imagine you wanted to find your way through a maze. Using a classical computer is like trying each possible path one at a time. A quantum computer, on the other hand, acts more like a mist that can float through walls, hover over all the ways through the maze and condense into the correct path.



A bunch of connected qubits can pack a lot of computing power. Say you have a quantum computer and an ordinary computer that can store and compute the same amount of information. If you add just one qubit to the quantum computer, your ordinary computer will now need twice as much memory to store the same information as the quantum one. It will require twice as much time to compute the same problem, too.



Quantum computers may also get a boost from another strange feature of physics. Its called entanglement. Physicists predicted this special kind of connection between photons in the 1930s. If two photons are entangled, each loses its individuality. The two now share a single set of properties. If scientists measure the properties of one particle, they automatically know those same properties of the other particle.





Lets explore the strange phenomenon of quantum entanglement.



The oddest part of entanglement? If you entangle two particles and take them far away from each other, they remain entangled. This has been proven in lab experiments. Albert Einstein famously called this spooky action at a distance. Why? Because it seems like the particles somehow share information instantly. And nothing, not even information, is supposed to travel faster than the speed of light.



Experiments on entangled quantum particles won the physics Nobel Prize



How entanglement works is still a physics mystery. But scientists have found ways to entangle photons. Theyve found ways to entangle atoms, too. In December 2023, physicists at Princeton University even showed how to entangle molecules made up of many atoms. Entanglement could be useful for quantum computers because errors are easier to find and correct in qubits with entangled states. 



Scientists are still trying to find the best ways to build qubits and to put them together. The challenge, explains Gauthier, is working with such small things. Superposition and entanglement can only be observed at tiny scales and very cold temperatures.  Quantum mechanics has different rules, he says, about how we make a larger system from a bunch of small quantum entities.





This fun, 12-minute video shows you how quantum computers work and why they wont solve all problems more quickly than old-style computers. In fact, quantum computers truly shine where some problem becomes especially complicated. To see why, jump to the videos 8-minute mark.



Solving problems the quantum way



Heres one example of a problem that a quantum computer might solve.



Imagine your math teacher gives you two very large prime numbers and asks you to multiply them together. (Remember that a prime number is divisible only by itself and 1.) You can probably do that pretty easily, especially with a calculator.



Now imagine youre given the same problem in reverse. Your teacher gives you a very large number and asks you to find two prime numbers (factors) that when multiplied together will give you that big number.



Its more difficult. You could start by trying to divide the large number by prime numbers, moving up the list number by number. Divide by 2, then 3, then 5, then 7 and so on. But a calculator wont help you much. Neither will a regular computer. Even with a good algorithm this task becomes very hard, very fast. Finding factors for a 250-digit number would require thousands of years on an ordinary computer. 




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Not so for a quantum computer!



Because of quantum superposition, this device could more quickly rule out wrong solutions and find the right ones. In 1994, mathematician Peter Shor described a quantum algorithm for how to do it. Mathematicians think Shors algorithm offers a speedup because of entanglement. A powerful enough quantum computer could identify those factors quickly. It can evaluate all solutions at once, explains Gauthier. 



The ability to find prime factors of super large numbers may not sound useful. But it could actually pose a privacy risk to lots of sensitive information sent over the internet. That may include financial or health records.



When data is sent online, it is encrypted or hidden from hackers using an algorithm. One of the most powerful algorithms for encryption involves multiplying large prime numbers. In order to make sense of encrypted data, the intended recipient has to know those two numbers. They act as a sort of key for unlocking the message.



Onlookers may be able to see the encrypted message. But to make sense of it, they’d need to know those two prime factors. And since finding those factors is a hard problem for any computer today, no hackers should be able to find the key.





With Shors algorithm, a quantum computer could. Then, a hacker could unmask the encrypted data. This makes computer security experts nervous. So computer scientists are on the hunt for quantum-safe ways to keep our data protected.



Lee, at IBM, points out that quantum computers will be able to solve other real-world, complex problems too. They might be used to find new medicines. Or study financial systems like the stock market. Or analyze chemical reactions or even help scientists better understand quantum physics.



Plus, remember the problem of finding the most efficient routes for transporting goods? Using qubits, a quantum computer could quickly find routes that were cheaper, faster or more energy-efficient or that had a smaller carbon footprint. Or it could find a better mashup of all of these.



Whats stopping the quantum computing revolution?



Right now, all of these applications remain just possibilities. They cant be calculated yet, at least not in any reasonable amount of time. Quantum computers also dont yet have enough qubits or enough accuracy to factor enormous prime numbers. So they dont yet pose a risk to encrypted data.



In fact, todays qubits are prone to errors. Thats because theyre susceptible to noise. Noise can be anything that interferes with their superposition. Wi-Fi signals, for instance, or temperature.



Noise mixes up the information thats stored or computed in a quantum computer. A large part of quantum computer research focuses on error reduction. This can be done by changing the design of quantum computing chips, improving software or better harnessing entanglement.



Lets learn about the quantum realm



Were still figuring out what a good qubit looks like and how do they talk to each other, says Lee.



Companies are racing to build bigger, better quantum computers. In October 2023, a U.S. company called Atom Computing unveiled the first one to have more than 1,000 qubits. IBM has also since built a 1,000-qubit machine. The latest version of Googles Sycamore system has only 70 qubits, but they produce few errors.



Researchers are excited by the fast progress and the potential of these systems. But quantum computers need some time and tests before theyll be truly useful.



If you ask me when we will have any real payback, I have no idea, Gauthier says. Im always amazed at how quickly things are progressing. But Im still unwilling to put a real time scale on it.