Fla. sheriff’s office must go to trial over its handling of Parkland mass shooting, appeals court rules

The appeals court ruled that immunity applies to policies and procedures, not to negligence or misconduct in the handling of emergencies

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New open-source software predicts energy transfer between tiny defects in solid materials

The performance of many next-generation devices depends on controlling how energy flows at extremely small scales. In the field of microelectronics—where devices continue to shrink and new materials are introduced—small imperfections in solids can strongly influence how a material stores, transfers or loses energy. Those processes can either be used to improve device performance or create problems such as energy loss, information loss, signal disruption or reduced reliability.

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A discarded SpaceX rocket is on a high-speed collision course with the moon

A drifting SpaceX rocket is on a collision course with the moon after launching a pair of lunar landers more than a year ago.

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Curiosity Blog, Sols 4961-4967: Approaching a break in the rock record?

Curiosity spent the week continuing to climb her way through the layers of Mount Sharp, exploring the sedimentary rock strip chart of Martian history. The rover has reached a layer where the science team had spotted a possible “erosional supersurface” by analyzing orbital data alongside images of the layers in the buttes above us.

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Japan probe made closest-ever asteroid flyby: space agency

A Japanese probe flew 400 meters (1,312 feet) from a near-Earth asteroid this month, marking the closest approach ever recorded for such a mission, the space agency said.

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S.C. dive team officer dies during underwater training

Jillian Olson, 29, began her career at the Lexington County Sheriff’s Department in 2021, and had been a member of the dive team since 2024

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Diamond’s newfound defect may tame vibrations that hinder quantum light sources

Researchers in the Department of Electrical and Computer Engineering at the University of Illinois Urbana-Champaign have discovered a new type of quantum light emitter in diamonds that could help overcome a number of challenges facing quantum technologies.

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BWC: Man barricades himself in apartment, lights fire, charges San Diego officers with knife before OIS

As San Diego officers breached a door inside the apartment, the man immediately swung a knife at officers and ran toward them

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First AI-driven telescope goes stargazing

Every night, astronomers must carefully assess changing weather, the intensity of moonlight and shifting atmospheric conditions before deciding where to point a telescope. It’s a constant balancing act designed to squeeze as much science as possible from every precious hour beneath dark skies. Now, Northwestern University, University of Chicago and Fermilab scientists have developed a new artificial intelligence (AI) tool that automatically determines where a telescope should point.

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Surprising boiling behavior in liquids could advance future space missions

When astronauts travel deeper into space, every drop of fuel becomes critical, and keeping those fuels stable for months or even years is one of the biggest engineering challenges facing future missions. Now, University of Florida researchers have uncovered a surprising behavior in boiling liquids that could help solve that challenge.

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New photonic platform offers a four-lane highway for light

Topological photonics can force propagating light to travel in a single direction—allowing researchers to route optical signals around corners and past defects without any of it scattering backward. So far, however, this one-way flow has only been found at the boundary between two specially engineered “topological insulator” regions, leaving most of the material unavailable for light transport.

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Photos: N.J cop dons shrub camouflage to nab more than 70 distracted drivers

“Let this be a reminder: That text or notification can wait. Keep your eyes on the road, not your screen!” the Dunellen Borough Police Department stated

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Less-explored form of quantum code could be more powerful—and more stable—than its alternative in error correction

In mathematics and getting dressed, some processes are commutative, while others are noncommutative. Commutative means the order doesn’t matter (3 + 2 is the same as 2 + 3, and it doesn’t matter which sock goes on first). Noncommutative means the order does matter.

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Astronomers finally measure the full size of the largest known galaxy

Researchers have obtained the deepest images ever taken of IC 1101, allowing them to identify the galaxy’s outer edge for the first time. The observations confirm it as the largest known galaxy, spanning roughly 520 kiloparsecs, or about 1.7 million light-years, and containing an estimated 3.4 trillion solar masses in stars. The paper was posted to the arXiv preprint server on July 16.

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Two independent studies push semiconductor qubits towards practical scales

Semiconductor spin qubits are one of the most promising building blocks for future quantum computers, but turning them into a working, large-scale quantum computer has so far proven difficult. For now, two big questions remain open: how to connect qubits that aren’t sitting right next to each other, and how to control huge numbers of them without an unmanageable tangle of wiring.

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