What We're Reading

Megan Bedell, a researcher at the Flatiron Institute's Center for Computational Astrophysics, weighs in on the launch of NASA's James Webb Space Telescope.

Days from now, the James Webb Space Telescope will launch and unfold a whole new view of the cosmos.

It’s hard enough to predict the outcome of ball collisions in a game of billiards. Do you also have to factor in a player’s effect on the cue ball?

After a decade of work, researchers have achieved the first ever experimental reconstruction of a quantum wave function.

Variational quantum algorithms could help researchers improve the performance of optical atomic clocks and of other quantum-metrology schemes.

Deep-learning algorithms such as AlphaFold2 and RoseTTAFold can now predict a protein’s 3D shape from its linear sequence — a huge boon to structural biologists.

A new theory suggests that searches for molecular complexity could uncover convincing evidence of extraterrestrial life, and soon.

Researchers from Princeton University, the Flatiron Institute in New York, and Jožef Stefan Institue in Slovenia have recently carried out a study investigating clonal dominance in the egg chamber of the fruit fly. Their findings suggest that clonal dominance can emerge spontaneously in excitable cell networks.

The discovery could inspire more optimal materials for solar panels and space travel.

American astronomers are calling for the development of a whole new suite of grandiose space telescopes that will be able to peer into the atmospheres of planets beyond our Solar System, listen to black holes ringing as they form throughout the Universe, and look back in time to when galaxies first emerged.