Greetings, fellow observers of the physical world!
As we cross the halfway mark of July 2026, the global temperature isn’t the only thing hitting a fever pitch. With the 2026 World Cup barreling through its high-stakes knockout rounds, the high-intensity drama on our screens is matched only by the invisible, brutal engineering tournament happening directly beneath the players’ cleats.
This week, we are pulling our focus out of the clouds to examine two very different kinds of competitive arenas: a physical tournament of highly engineered grass, and Big Tech’s brand-new multi-agent “idea tournaments” designed to automate hard science. Grab a cold drink—it’s time to break down the mechanics of the game.
Greetings, science aficionados, Salutojn, sciencamantoj, [Esperanto is spoken today by over 2 million people, usually as a second language. L.L. Zamenhof published this ‘created language’ in 1887]
Let’s open a fascinating chapter of Public Health at a time we were confronted by an earlier deadly pandemic: Polio
Poliomyelitis - Infantile Paralysis - Polio - has been with us for over 4,000 years, but it did not become a major killer until the advent of modern sanitary practices. This paradox is attributed to the existence of multiple strains of the virus that are (1) mostly harmless, (2) easily contracted in less sanitary community conditions, and (3) confer immunity to a less common but deadly strain.
This week, we are pulling our heads out of the abstract digital clouds and smashing them squarely into a massive pile of wet rocks—exploring how an ancient Roman architectural masterpiece is helping Silicon Valley solve its most pressing modern environmental crisis.
From Ancient Aqueducts to Green Data Centers
When we think about the current artificial intelligence revolution, we tend to picture lines of code, complex neural networks, and racks of high-powered graphics cards. We rarely think about concrete.
Yet, the literal foundation of the digital cloud is incredibly physical. To power the massive compute clusters required for modern AI models, tech giants are building gargantuan data
Father’s Day has me thinking about mentorship and the people who don’t just advance their field but spend their lives making sure the next generation can, too.
Bruce Alberts is one of the great biochemists of his generation, a pioneering researcher in DNA replication who went on to serve for 12 years as president of the National Academy of Sciences and to edit Science magazine. But alongside all of that, he insisted that science education was a place scientists needed to get personally involved. He has argued that “science education should be about learning to think and solve problems like a scientist, insisting, for all citizens, that st
Before we get into the news this week, a few housekeeping items:
Lick Observatory, one of the South Bay’s hidden gems, sustained substantial damage during the winter when winds as high as 114 mph tore much of the roof off of the dome over Christmas, 2025. Recovery work has been ongoing, and the Observatory is happy to announce that a modified summer program schedule is happening. Usually, Lick holds talks and concerts on select weekend nights that include viewing through both the 140+ year old, 36 “ Great Refractor and the Shane Reflector telescope. While the Great Refractor was not damaged, it is out of commission as construction continues on the dome. So instead of the usual program, Lick Observatory is offering behind
Absurd: ridiculously unreasonable, unsound, or incongruous (Merriam-Webster Dictionary)
MEDICINE / HEALTH
Several individual States [California, Colorado, Illinois, New York, & Washington] and the City of New York joined the World Health Organization’s Global Outbreak Alert & Response Network, GOARN. Wisconsin announced its intention to do the same. ¿Why? Because the
Explosions can be fun! (Mark Rober Ted Talk)But not always! (No injuries in Thursday’s rocket explosion) Credit: NASASpaceflight.com
Hello again science fans, Salam sejahtera sekali lagi kepada peminat sains, About 300 million people speak Malay in Malaysia and Indonesia.
This SciSchmooze focuses on fun.
The explosion of ping pong balls pictured above is one of hundreds of fun stunts – science stunts – Mark Rober has created over the years. He – a former NASA engineer – is now in the m
Windswept impact craters on Mars, taken by Psyche on May 15. Credit: NASA/JPL-Caltech/ASU
Hello again Science fans!
I’ve been overseas for a while. Thanks to David for swapping dates with me last month. While I was able to keep up with calendar updates while I was away, finding time to reliably write the newsletter wasn’t going to be easy. But I’m back now, and over my jet lag (I think).
This weekend marks the unofficial start of summer here in the US. We tend to mark summer as running from Memorial Day to Labor Day. This year that means the longest possible summer period, as Memorial Day is as early as it can be, and Labor Day is as late as it ca
Joanna Stern for the cover of her new book “I Am Not a Robot”
Greetings science fans!
Some weeks, the news and the calendar seem to be in quiet conversation with each other. This is one of those weeks.
The question of what AI actually does to human life is getting harder to avoid. After a year of headlines claiming AI would replace millions of jobs, companies are quietly discovering something more nuanced:
As this Mother’s Day comes to a close, it is only fitting that we trace the literal and metaphorical "threads" that bind us to the maternal—from the cellular engines inherited from our mothers to the self-regulating breath of Mother Nature herself.
The Matrilineal Engine: Lynn Margulis and the Adopted Guest
While our nuclear DNA is a shuffled deck from both parents, our Mitochondrial DNA (mtDNA) is an unbroken heirloom, passed exclusively from mother to child. This Mother’s Day, we salute the late Lynn Margulis, the radical visionary who proved t
