Repeating distance patterns let optical systems tackle large optimization problems

From planning transportation networks to organizing massive datasets, many of society’s most important challenges boil down to an optimization problem: finding the best solution among an enormous number of possibilities. As these problems increase in size and scope, however, the computational resources required to solve them can increase dramatically.

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Calif. police wrangle runaway pony

San Jose officers located and returned the pony after it spent the day trotting around the suburbs

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No charges for N.J. officer in OIS of knife-wielding burglary suspect captured on bodycam

Video from the 2024 incident shows Haddon Township officers confronting the man in a stairwell; he approached them with a knife, prompting the shooting

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Scientists demonstrate transition between strong and weak coupling regimes in a polariton microcavity

Researchers from Skoltech, together with colleagues from the N.D. Zelinsky Institute of Organic Chemistry and Westlake University, have experimentally demonstrated how the operating regime of a polariton laser changes with a gradual increase in cavity thickness.

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Conn. officer wins reinstatement appeal after being fired in transport incident that left arrestee paralyzed

New Haven Officer Luis Rivera has returned to his job after his criminal charges were dismissed in the incident that left Randy Cox partially paralyzed

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The future of the UK’s renowned Lovell radio telescope is in question after a funding cut

Scientists have reacted with alarm to news that the British government will cut funding to the world-famous radio telescope at the Jodrell Bank Observatory, a UNESCO World Heritage Site in northwest England that has been helping explore the cosmos for almost 70 years.

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Ultracold neutrons don’t disappear into the mirror world

For decades, a theory in physics has postulated the existence of a mirror world whose interaction with our own reality is extremely feeble. The particles in this mirror universe are also thought to be candidates for dark matter. Researchers at the Paul Scherrer Institute PSI have now examined some 25 billion neutrons—thereby ruling out, with […]

Video: Interagency team nabs suspected kidnappers, rescues abducted 13-year-old

FBI and GBI investigators tracked the girl after she was taken from Georgia and transported more than 130 miles; the Jacksonville Sheriff’s Office SWAT team aided in the arrest

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Evidence of giant rings in Venus’s atmosphere uncovered in archived observations

In 2010, scientists waiting to use the William Herschel Telescope in the Canary Islands captured a brief 36 minutes of images of Venus. They were waiting for the sun to set so they could look at distant stars and dust disks around young stars. Consequently, little attention was paid to the data, which was filed […]

New research shows how ‘hot electrons’ can reshape metals in billionths of a second

Researchers at The University of Manchester have revealed how intense electronic excitation can trigger rapid structural changes in metals—without heating the atomic lattice—offering new insight into ultrafast materials behavior.

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A way to read quantum bits faster and with less hardware

Quantum computers process information in a fundamentally different way from conventional computers, using quantum bits, or qubits, that can exist in multiple states at once. This could allow them to tackle problems beyond the reach of today’s machines, from simulating new materials to optimizing complex systems.

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N.Y. sheriff pledges to continue working with ICE despite warnings from state A.G.

“This is going to affect me very little,” Madison County Sheriff Todd Hood. “I’m still going to work with ICE. They can’t prevent us from working with them”

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Tabby’s star may be orbited by a planetary-mass companion

By analyzing data from NASA’s Transiting Exoplanet Survey Satellite (TESS) and conducting new radial velocity measurements, U.K. and French astronomers have found evidence that the mysterious Tabby’s star may be orbited by an object about nine times more massive than Jupiter. The new findings are published on the preprint server arXiv.

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Martian space suits will need to be 40% lighter

Long before a human ever sets foot on the Red Planet, we already know how harsh the environment is. Once a human finally does, the only things protecting them from that environment will be the infrastructure we’ve built there and the spacesuit that keeps them in a protective bubble. Unfortunately, modern spacesuits aren’t built with […]

Chicxulub’s lingering dust may have turned falling debris into a global firestorm

Sixty-six million years ago, the six-mile-wide (10-kilometer-wide) Chicxulub asteroid crash-landed in Mexico’s Yucatán Peninsula and changed life on Earth forever. The reign of the dinosaurs ended, and only creatures that could shelter in burrows or shallow waters survived into the age of mammals that followed.

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