Researchers at ETH Zurich have demonstrated a means of generating "perfect randomness" by using entangled superconducting qubits.

Creating true randomness is extremely difficult. Even the most sophisticated conventional random number generator can carry tiny biases. While in most everyday uses those biases are harmless, in cryptography — where the security of encrypted systems depends on unpredictability — even the most subtle pattern can become an exploitable weakness.

The team at ETH Zurich, led by physics professors Renato Renner and Andreas Wallraff, say they have shown how to overcome this flaw and create perfectly random numbers using quantum physics, a milestone they describe as the first certified realization of perfect randomness.

Traditional random-number generators often rely on physical processes such as photon behavior, but those systems can still be slightly skewed and exhibit a bias that causes certain numbers to appear more frequently than others. The ETH team's approach uses quantum entanglement to push randomness beyond that limit.

On May 28th, at Launch Complex-36 A (LC-36A), located at the Cape Canaveral Space Force Station (CCSFS) in Florida, Blue Origin was conducting a hot-fire test of its New Glenn Rocket. During the test, which was meant to prepare the rocket for its fourth launch, an anomaly led to a spectacular explosion that damaged the facility and sent debris flying. Fortunately, no one was harmed, but the explosion represents a major setback for Blue Origin that could affect its plans to deliver a Human Landing System (HLS) for NASA's Artemis Program.

Shortly after the explosion, Blue Origin announced the situation via their X account, saying: "We experienced an anomaly during today's hotfire test. All personnel have been accounted for. We will provide updates as we learn more." What followed were a few days of debris advisories for local residents, and the company claiming it had regained limited access to LC36 and would begin clearing away debris and investigating the cause of the explosion shortly. They also indicated that the fireball did not appear to damage the New Glenn 1st stage or the 2nd stages (GS2s) in the nearby integration facility.

Yesterday, in what was the largest update yet, Blue Origin CEO Dave Limp took to X to share some good news. He wrote:

Now that we’ve had access to the pad and integration facility we can share a bit of good news. The propellant farm, oxygen, liquid hydrogen and LNG tanks are all in good shape. This is good luck because these are very long lead items. The water tower is also good. The big support tower is damaged, but it can be repaired in place rather than torn down and replaced. The booster “Never Tell Me The Odds” and the three GS-2s that were onsite in the integration facility also look good.

NASA has confirmed that a bright fireball meteor exploded in the sky over New England on Saturday (May 30), releasing the equivalent energy of about 230 tons of TNT and generating a sonic boom heard across multiple U.S. states and two Canadian provinces.

The meteor was relatively small — about 5 feet (1.6 meters) in diameter, NASA wrote in a statement on X. However, it faced incredible friction while tumbling through the atmosphere at about 42,000 mph (67,000 kilometers per hour). The meteor broke the sound barrier as it split apart roughly 31 miles (50 km) over Earth, raining debris onto Cape Cod, according to NASA.

No injuries or property damage were reported in connection to the fireball. But onlookers in several northeastern states said they heard a loud boom and felt buildings shake as the meteor exploded around 2:06 p.m. EDT, according to The Guardian.

A train line in western Switzerland now carries two kinds of traffic: passengers above, and sunlight below.

On a 100-meter stretch of active railway near the village of Buttes, 48 solar panels sit between the rails, low enough for trains to pass over them and removable enough for crews to take them away when the track needs work. The installation, developed by the Swiss startup Sun-Ways, is small. Its 18 kilowatts of capacity could generate about 16,000 kilowatt-hours of electricity a year, roughly the annual use of a few European households.

But this is just a pilot program. If the system works safely on a busy rail line, it could point to a new way of expanding solar power without covering farmland, forests or mountain slopes with panels. That’s perhaps important in Switzerland, more so than in other places, where renewable energy is urgently needed, but new solar projects can face resistance when they move into cherished landscapes. NIMBY is sadly a global phenomenon.

Current evidence indicates that nearly every large galaxy contains a supermassive black hole at its center, with a mass ranging from millions to billions of times that of the Sun. Exactly how these objects grow so large remains a major unanswered question. Accumulating (accreting) gas from their surroundings alone would be too slow, suggesting that mergers with other massive black holes play a crucial role in their growth.

Galaxy collisions are common throughout the Universe, making it likely that the supermassive black holes at their centers also eventually merge. Before combining into a single object, the two black holes are expected to orbit one another while gradually moving closer together.

Yet scientists have struggled to model the final stages of this process accurately. Despite the frequency of galaxy mergers over cosmic timescales, no close pair of supermassive black holes had been definitively identified. A new study of the galaxy Markarian 501 (Mrk 501) in the constellation Hercules has now provided compelling evidence.

An international team led by Silke Britzen of the Max Planck Institute for Radio Astronomy (MPIfR) in Bonn discovered direct signs of a supermassive black hole pair at the center of Mrk 501. The findings have been published in the Monthly Notices of the Royal Astronomical Society.

Ever since the first protoplanetary disk was discovered in 1984 around the star Beta Pictoris, these objects have presented astronomers with laboratories to study the births and evolution of worlds around distant stars. A team at France's National Center for Scientific Research (CNRS) and the University of Bordeaux, made a recent breakthrough in understanding these planetary birthplaces when they directly observed the rotation of a protoplanetary disk around the young star AB Aurigae.

The disk appears to rotate as you might expect based on based on the laws of physics. However, there are several regions there that don't quite move as predicted by theory. Such a rotational anomaly likely is caused by the presence of giant planets in the process of formation in the disk.

The team used an instrument called SPHERE (for Spectro-Polarimetric High-contrast Exoplanet REsearch), installed on European Southern Observatory's Very Large Telescope in Chile. This highly sensitive infrared tool allowed the team to track the disk's rotation by focusing on emissions from dust grains embedded in the disk.

Astronauts working on the International Space Station briefly sheltered in a docked capsule Friday as Russian colleagues assessed leak repairs, NASA said.

Five astronauts had briefly entered the docked Dragon spacecraft as a precautionary measure—the capsule functions as a lifeboat of sorts in the case an evacuation is needed.

NASA gave the all clear and the astronauts were able to return to their stations.

A NASA spokesperson told AFP that Roscosmos cosmonauts took measurements of the leaks and were now assessing data.

"With today's operations, they wanted to be extra safe, extra precautionary, and have the crew move into the safe haven posture," the spokesperson said.

NASA spokesperson Bethany Stevens then said on social media that "NASA has instructed the crew members inside the Dragon spacecraft to end the safe haven procedures and return to planned operations aboard the International Space Station."

In a statement cited by Russian state media, Russia's Roscosmos space agency said that while pressurizing the transfer chamber, known as PrK, a leak was recorded.

"During an inspection of the PrK, the cosmonauts discovered two potential air leak sites. The first was promptly sealed by applying the first layer of the two-component sealant 'Germetall‑1.' The second site is located on the conical part of the PrK. Work is underway to prepare for its sealing," read the statement.

NASA's Stevens had previously said the transfer tunnel had suffered cracks and leaks for some time.

A fly that deposits its parasitic, flesh-eating offspring inside cows has been detected in Texas for the first time in decades, the U.S. Department of Agriculture (USDA) reported Wednesday (June 3).

Here's what to know about the New World screwworm (Cochliomyia hominivorax), a pest that was eradicated from the U.S. in the 1960s.

What is the New World screwworm?
New World screwworms are parasites that feed exclusively on the living flesh of warm-blooded animals, according to the American Society for Microbiology (ASM). The screwworms are the larvae, or maggots, of adult C. hominivorax flies...

Humans are the only species known to use fully symbolic language: a system capable of expressing abstract ideas, imaginary worlds and endless combinations of meaning. But how did we get there?

The origins of language have fascinated philosophers, scientists and storytellers for thousands of years. Despite all our advances in linguistics, archaeology and cognitive science, we still don't know exactly how language began.

That uncertainty hasn't stopped people from trying to solve the mystery. In fact, some of the earliest theories of language's origins are among the strangest and most entertaining ideas in the history of science.

The natural climate cycle, which supercharges temperatures and shifts weather patterns across the planet, officially took hold over the past month, according to a June 11 update by the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration's (NOAA) Climate Prediction Center.

What's more, an accompanying average of various forecasting models gives a "63% chance of a very strong El Niño during November-January that would rank among the largest El Niño events in the historical record going back to 1950," NOAA officials wrote in the update.

This is no longer much of a surprise. Last week, the European Centre for Medium-Range Weather Forecasts, considered the "gold standard" of global weather models, suggested that this year's brewing El Niño would likely become the strongest ever recorded.

What is El Niño?
El Niño events occur every two to seven years as part of the El Niño-Southern Oscillation (ENSO) natural climate cycle in the Pacific Ocean. The ENSO cycle flips between the warmer El Niño phase and the cooler La Niña phase, with neutral periods in between. El Niño periods bring elevated sea surface temperatures in the central and eastern Pacific, thereby weakening or reversing trade winds and strongly disrupting global temperatures and rainfall patterns.

Go far and wide with NASARoman! NASA’s next space telescope will be joining Webb in L2, a million miles away to join us and your name can come too!

Get your boarding pass to send your name with Roman as we work to create the most complete picture of the universe yet: go.nasa.gov/RomanNames

Submitted names will be uploaded to an SD card attached to the observatory.

China has become the first country in the world to operate an underwater data center, or UDC, powered by wind. Located off the coast of Shanghai, the complex represents a significant advance in the country's strategy to secure energy supplies in the face of the accelerated growth of artificial intelligence, reduce dependence on fossil fuels, and reduce the environmental impact of its technology infrastructure.

The initiative is the result of a collaboration between private company HiCloud Technology and state-owned China Communications Construction, which involved an investment of 1.6 billion yuan, equivalent to about $236 million.

With an initial capacity of 24 megawatts, the facility is submerged at a depth of 10 meters in the Lin-gang Special Zone, within the China Pilot Free Trade Zone in Shanghai. This location allows seawater to be used as a natural cooling system, reducing the proportion of energy used to cool the infrastructure to less than 10 percent.

This feature solves one of the main energy consumption challenges of conventional data centers, where air conditioning systems typically account for 40 to 50 percent of the total electricity required to operate.
...

A report recently published by the UN points out that only 32 countries host data centers specialized in artificial intelligence. Of that global infrastructure, about 90 percent is concentrated in two nations: China and the United States.

Both powers have taken steps to secure the energy demanded by AI development, albeit through different approaches. While the United States has reduced investments and proposals related to the energy transition, China seeks to reduce its dependence on fossil fuels both to meet its climate goals and to reduce its vulnerability to external suppliers.

Shocks are disturbances created by a perturber/object/fluid moving through a fluid faster than the local speed of sound, causing an abrupt change in pressure at the boundary between the two.

Typical examples are bow shocks where planetary atmospheres and solar winds meet, named after the analogous shocks produced on water by the bow of a ship.

Most shocks in space plasma are collisionless, because particle densities are too low for direct collisions between particles to convert the shock’s energy into heat. Instead, this is done by electromagnetic forces.

Collisionless shocks are thought to be a site in which cosmic rays can accelerate to relativistic speeds (near the speed of light), a process known as relativistic electron acceleration.

However, a lack of direct observational evidence has limited scientists’ understanding of how these structures work.

“Astronomers have sought the origins of cosmic rays since their discovery more than 100 years ago,” Dr. Savvas Raptis from the Johns Hopkins University Applied Physics Laboratory and colleagues said in a statement.

“These energetic particles can come from many sources, including supernovas and eruptions from the Sun.”

“When solar cosmic rays reach Earth, they can trigger space weather effects that disrupt satellites, communications, and power systems.”

“NASA missions showed how some electrons become highly energized in a region near Earth called the foreshock, where solar particles first encounter Earth’s magnetic field.”

“Scientists suspected the same process was responsible for accelerating high-energy particles in foreshocks at other planets and astrophysical systems, but they could not confirm it until now.”

Scientists at the University of Cambridge have created miniature brain and spinal cord circuits in the lab that mimic the neural pathways responsible for movement. Using this advanced model, they discovered that damage to these connections, long considered permanent, may actually be reversible.

As the human body develops from embryo to fetus and eventually into infancy, nerve cells called neurons form networks that allow signals to travel between the brain and spinal cord. A crucial part of these cells is the axon, a long nerve fiber that carries information to other neurons and helps trigger muscle movement.

However, at some point during development, neurons in the central nervous system lose much of their ability to grow new axons. As a result, damage to the brain or spinal cord often becomes permanent, leading to severe disabilities such as paralysis or loss of hand function. This limited regenerative capacity is a major challenge in traumatic spinal cord injuries and neurological disorders including motor neurone disease and multiple sclerosis.

Earth's underground fungal network is so vast that, if it were in outer space, it would span roughly 10% of the Milky Way if placed in a straight line, a new study finds.

These subterranean structures, called arbuscular mycorrhizal fungal networks, work in partnership with most of the world's land plants, feeding plants nitrogen and phosphorus in return for their carbon. Now, the first global map of this fungal network has revealed where their intricate branching structures are most densely packed.

In grasslands that are high-altitude or flooded grasslands, such as the Everglades in Florida, the top 6 inches (15 centimeters) of soil are especially dense, containing around 40% of the global fungal biomass. This highlights that undisturbed grasslands are an essential, reliable carbon sink, according to the research, which was published Thursday (June 11) in the journal Science.

Deep in Book VII of Plato's Republic, Socrates describes prisoners chained inside a cave, mistaking shadows cast on a wall by firelight for reality itself. They name the shadows, debate them and develop expertise about them. The prisoners are completely, sincerely wrong, and they have no idea. The cave isn't a place of stupidity; it's a place of convincing, well-organized illusion.

But Plato's real interest wasn't the cave; it was in the periagoge—a Greek word meaning the turning of the soul away from shadows and toward the light. For Plato, this was education itself: not the filling of an empty vessel with facts, but a fundamental reorientation of how a person relates to truth and how they come to know that truth.

The shadows persist, but today they aren't cast by firelight; they are generated by machines. Large language models (LLMs), image-making and AI-powered search produce outputs that are fluent, confident and immediate.

But here's the crucial difference from Plato's original problem: His shadows were at least connected to something real. What AI produces is different in that a language model has no built-in commitment to truth, only a statistical relationship to an enormous quantity of text. When it tells you something, it isn't reporting; it's composing.

The outputs can be correct. But they can also be wrong in ways that are structurally indistinguishable from being right. The shadow no longer flutters on a cave wall. It speaks now, and sometimes it speaks beautifully.

This is why periagoge—turning toward the light—matters more now than ever and why AI threatens it so quietly. Knowledge isn't merely true belief; it's true belief held for the right reasons, connected to the world through justification, evidence and process.

AI disrupts this at the root. It is useful precisely because it decouples output quality from the slow, demanding work of verification. You don't need to consult a primary source, triangulate between perspectives or sit with the discomfort of not yet knowing.

Bypassing learning
GenAI poses many problems for learning. When an AI hands us an answer, we risk bypassing the process through which learning happens. We've received a product that looks like knowledge from the outside but is hollow at its core; it's a shadow that convinces us of something we haven't actually understood.

GenAI doesn't just help us think. It thinks instead of us. And there's growing evidence it's making us measurably worse at doing it ourselves.

NASA on Tuesday revealed the crew for its Artemis III mission, the next step in the space agency's plan to eventually land astronauts on the moon.

The announcement came two months after Artemis II's record-breaking trip around the moon that surpassed the distance record of Apollo 13.

NASA's Randy Bresnik, Frank Rubio, Andre Douglas and the European Space Agency's Luca Parmitano won't fly to the moon or land on the surface. Instead, they'll orbit Earth while practicing docking their Orion capsule with two lunar landers.

"To the Artemis III crew, we wish you Godspeed on the journey ahead," said NASA administrator Jared Isaacman.

Elon Musk's SpaceX and Jeff Bezos' Blue Origin are racing to deliver the lunar landers. The two-week demo is targeted for 2027. Blue Origin suffered a recent setback when its massive rocket exploded during an engine-firing test on the launch pad in Florida, shaking nearby homes and illuminating the sky with an orange fireball.

Think about a train sitting at a station. Passengers have boarded, conductors are checking tickets, and everything is ready to go. But if the engineer’s watch never signals departure, the doors stay open, the whistle never blows, and the train never leaves the platform.

A similar problem can occur inside living organisms when developmental timing goes wrong. Instead of delaying a trip, a breakdown in the body’s internal schedule can prevent normal growth and maturation.

Researchers at Cold Spring Harbor Laboratory (CSHL) have now identified what appears to be a master developmental clock in the tiny worm C. elegans. The discovery helps explain how cells know exactly when to activate key genetic programs during growth and development.

A Master Clock for Development
Previous work by CSHL Professor Christopher Hammell and his colleagues showed that development in C. elegans is driven by bursts, or pulses, of gene activity. What remained unclear was how those pulses were timed with such precision.

The new study reveals that two proteins already known to scientists, MYRF-1 and LIN-42, form a feedback circuit that acts as a central developmental clock. Together, they determine when each pulse of gene expression begins and how long it lasts.

According to the researchers, this is the first example of a biological clock designed to run through a finite sequence of events rather than repeating continuously.

“This is the central clock for all cells in the worm,” Hammell explains. “It’s responsible for coordinating a finite series of sequential pulses of gene expression that must occur only once, and in order, for proper developmental progression. It’s like a ratchet. It turns genes on and off multiple times during development, but ultimately, it’s only going in one direction.”

Researchers from Brown University and the University of Michigan College of Engineering have succeeded in stabilizing a previously elusive state of matter that had existed only in theoretical models.

Using carefully engineered nanoparticles as building blocks, the team created a new material structure that locks in a fleeting intermediate state between two of the most common crystal arrangements found in metals. The achievement not only provides new insight into how materials change their internal structure, but also reveals unusual optical properties that could one day prove useful for quantum computing and other quantum information technologies.

More broadly, the work demonstrates a powerful new strategy for designing materials from custom-made nanoparticles, opening possibilities for creating entirely new materials with tailored characteristics.

“Our work is a little bit like kids playing with LEGO blocks,” said Ou Chen, an associate professor of chemistry at Brown and a corresponding author of the research. “We synthesize unique nanoscale building blocks and stack them into interesting structures. In this case, we were able to stabilize these theorized transitional structures and demonstrate important quantum optical properties.”

In the next few decades, many physicists are hopeful that nuclear fusion could become a realistic source of practically limitless energy. But before this can happen, it will be critical to ensure that reactors cannot be covertly misused to produce materials for nuclear weapons.

Through new analysis published in Physical Review Applied, a team led by Patrick Huber at Virginia Tech has shown that an existing type of particle detector could be used to flag any such misuse.

Dangerous tampering
Fusion reactors generate energy by forcing two hydrogen nuclei to fuse together, releasing enormous amounts of energy along with a stream of neutrons. Alongside their energy-related advantages, these reactors are also particularly desirable because, unlike conventional nuclear fission reactors, they generally don't require any weapons-grade materials.

However, the neutron stream produced in the reaction presents the possibility of a dangerous scenario: If uranium-238 were secretly introduced into the reactor, those neutrons would convert it into plutonium-239—a key ingredient in certain nuclear weapons. To ensure this can never happen, future fusion reactors will need reliable monitoring.

Detecting covert plutonium
In their study, Huber's team focused on whether this purpose could realistically be served with an antineutrino detector. Antineutrinos are chargeless, extremely low-mass particles that are abundantly produced during nuclear reactions. Crucially, it is impossible either to block them with a shield or to produce them with any non-nuclear process—making them ideal for covert monitoring.

When uranium-238 absorbs neutrons created in the fusion process, it undergoes fission, splitting into smaller nuclei and releasing a distinctive pattern of antineutrinos. The team ran simulations to see whether this signal could be distinguished from the antineutrinos produced during normal reactor operation, as well as those arriving from space.

Reassuringly, the team's results confirmed that even a relatively compact detector would be capable of confirming the production of just a few kilograms of plutonium over a 30-day period, enough to raise the alarm about any weapons program in its early stages.

Crucially, the detector would not need to be housed inside the reactor itself—it could operate at a distance, making the monitoring process minimally intrusive and practical to deploy at real facilities.

Food labels make calorie counts look straightforward. The number listed per serving is calculated from the food’s fat, carbohydrate, and protein content.

In reality, the digestive process is much more complex. As food moves through the body, it interacts with trillions of microbes in the gut that can affect how many calories are ultimately absorbed.

Researchers at Arizona State University have developed a mathematical model called DAMM, short for digestion, absorption, and microbial metabolism, to better capture this process. The model tracks food as it moves through the digestive system, estimating what is absorbed by the body, what reaches the colon, and how gut microbes transform the remaining material into substances that are either absorbed or eliminated.

The researchers say the model could improve understanding of obesity, diabetes, and other metabolic disorders by revealing how different diets influence both the body and the microbial communities living in the colon.

Gut Microbes Change the Calorie Equation
With further development, DAMM could help health care providers create more personalized nutrition plans.

“Digestion is not just a human process—it is a collaboration between our bodies and trillions of microbes living in the gut,” said Professor Rosa Krajmalnik-Brown. “DAMM gives us a powerful new way to quantify how those microbial partners contribute to human health and energy balance and also points at the importance of properly feeding our gut microbes.”