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In the vastness of empty space surrounding Earth, the Moon is our closest celestial neighbor. Its face, periodically filled with light and devoured by darkness, has an ever-changing, but dependable presence in our skies. In this article, we’ll learn about the Moon and its path around our planet, but to experience that journey first-hand, we have to enter the cosmos itself. This article has many interactive demonstrations which are best seen on the website.
The dream of soaring in the sky like a bird has captivated the human mind for ages. Although many failed, some eventually succeeded in achieving that goal. These days we take air transportation for granted, but the physics of flight can still be puzzling. In this article we’ll investigate what makes airplanes fly by looking at the forces generated by the flow of air around the aircraft’s wings. More specifically, we’ll focus on the cross section of those wings to reveal the shape of an airfoil – you can see it presented in yellow below: This article has many interactive demonstrations which are best seen on the website.
There is something delightful about riding a bicycle. Once mastered, the simple action of pedaling to move forward and turning the handlebars to steer makes bike riding an effortless activity. In the demonstration below, you can guide the rider with the slider, and you can also drag the view around to change the camera angle: Compared to internal combustion engines or mechanical watches, bicycles are fairly simple machines – most of their parts operate in plain sight. This article has many interactive demonstrations which are best seen on the website.
In the world of modern portable devices, it may be hard to believe that merely a few decades ago the most convenient way to keep track of time was a mechanical watch. Unlike their quartz and smart siblings, mechanical watches can run without using any batteries or other electronic components. Over the course of this article I’ll explain the workings of the mechanism seen in the demonstration below. You can drag the device around to change your viewing angle, and you can use the slider to peek at what’s going on inside: This article has many interactive demonstrations which are best seen on the website.
More in science
Naturally, the early history of space exploration is filled with firsts. Just six decades ago at this time, the world watched as NASA’s Mariner 4 spacecraft […]
The US House and Senate appropriations subcommittees have now completed their markups on the bills relevant to the FY26 appropriations for NSF, NASA, and NIST. The AAAS has an interactive dashboard with current information here if you want to click and look at all the science-related agencies. Other agencies still need to go through the Senate subcommittees. Just a reminder of how this is supposed to work. The House and Senate mark up their own versions of the detailed appropriations bills. In principle these are passed by each chamber (with the Senate versions for practical purposes requiring 60/100 votes of support because of the filibuster). Then a conference committee hashes out the differences between the bills, and the conference version of the bills is then voted on by each chamber (again, needing 60/100 votes to pass in the Senate). Finally, the president signs the spending bills. In the fantasy land of Schoolhouse Rock, which largely described events until the 1990s, these annual spending bills are supposed to be passed in time for the start of the new fiscal year on October 1. In practice, Congress has been deeply dysfunctional for years, and there have been a lot of continuing resolutions, late budgets, and mammoth omnibus spending bills. To summarize: NSF - House recommendation = $6.997B (a 20.7% cut from FY25), Senate = $9B (a 2% increase from FY25). These are in sharp contrast to the presidential budget request (PBR) of a 55.8% cut. NASA - House = flat from FY25, Senate = $24.9B (0.2% increase). NIST - House = $1.28B (10.6% increase from FY25), Senate = $1.6B (38.3% increase from FY25) NOAA - House = $5.7B (28.3% increase from FY25), Senate = $6.1B (36.3% increase from FY25) DOE has gone through the House, where the Office of Science is recommending a 1.9% increase, in contrast to a 13.9% cut in the PBR. If you are eligible and able to do so, please keep pushing. As I wrote a few days ago, this is a long-term project, since appropriations happen every year. As long as you're making your opinions known, it's good to push on representatives and senators that they need to hold the agency leadership accountable to actually spend what congress appropriates. A science post soon....
Fundamental technique lets researchers use a big, expensive “teacher” model to train a “student” model for less. The post How Distillation Makes AI Models Smaller and Cheaper first appeared on Quanta Magazine
When Europeans arrived to the Pacific Northwest, they spread smallpox that devastated the Indigenous people, plundered stocks of salmon and herring, hunted down deer and other game, and built sprawling cities and ports. New research tallies the profound impact on wildlife. Read more on E360 →
A team of mathematicians based in Vienna is developing tools to extend the scope of general relativity. The post A New Geometry for Einstein’s Theory of Relativity first appeared on Quanta Magazine
