Science + Technology – The Conversation – new research, AI, space, psychology and more

Uniformed people with serious expressions look down at a TV monitor

Your memories of how you heard about 9/11 may well be wrong – we’ve been asking the same people what they remember for 25 years

Elizabeth A. Phelps, Harvard University and William Hirst, The New School

Silhouettes of people in uniform from behind at the 9/11 Memorial and Museum, buildings rising into the sky

Decades after 9/11, toxic dust and PTSD may be accelerating brain aging among first responders

Roberto Lucchini, Florida International University

six people stand in fron tof a large sign board that contains a stylized infinity symbol

What the settlement left out: Meta can still collect data from kids

Randolph A Robinson II, University of Illinois Chicago

Microscopy image of translucent blue rods clustered against and stacked atop each other.

Learning without a brain – how bacteria store memories and remember the past like artificial neural networks

Shiladitya Banerjee, Georgia Institute of Technology

American women in communities with ample broadband access lose less time waiting for services, reducing time poverty

Mattia Caldarulo, Rochester Institute of Technology; Andrea Hetling, Rutgers University, and Gregory Porumbescu, Rutgers University - Newark

Many women wearing blue jeans and white T-shirts standing in a long line.

Space weather can cause both beautiful auroras and infrastructure challenges – 5 essential reads on protecting life and technology

Mary Magnuson, The Conversation

The Sun's surface, with bright rays coming off it.

An illustration of a black hole drawing in a cloud of gas in space

Do you need to worry about the Sun turning into a black hole?

Anuradha Gupta, University of Mississippi

People with Tourette syndrome, like Billie Eilish, use everything in their power to suppress tics – this exhausting process is key to treatment

Michael Okun, University of Florida

A young person with eyes closed makes a face in front of a maroon background

‘Star Trek’ and NASA have intertwined legacies – the show championed diversity and inspired generations of real space scientists

Deana L. Weibel, Grand Valley State University

A group of people standing in front of a space shuttle

Tiny backpacks reveal the secret, sometimes circuitous migrations of small songbirds

Stephanie Szarmach, Smithsonian Institution

A small black, white and yellow bird perched on a branch with a green background.

AI is helping ease competition for scarce space on the airwaves

Aylin Yener, The Ohio State University

numerous disk-shaped objects attached to a metal tower at various angles

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Space

Trump is proposing a US Space Academy – if created, it could blur the lines between NASA and the military

Wendy Whitman Cobb, Air University

Many space missions are searching for life beyond Earth – but are we prepared for the fallout if they succeed?

Margaret E. Kosal, Georgia Institute of Technology; Dayana Alagirova, Georgia Institute of Technology, and Karryl Kim Sagun Trajano, Nanyang Technological University

An illustration of floating round microbes

NASA is gearing up to launch its next flagship space telescope – combining spy technology with sophisticated infrared detectors

Don Figer, Rochester Institute of Technology

An illustration of the Roman telescope against purple light. It looks like a tube with panels coming off the sides

Mars rovers give scientists a ground-level view of the red planet – peek inside their NASA control room

Ashwin R. Vasavada, NASA

The Curiosity rover is parked in front of rock outcrops on Mars.

Radio telescopes help scientists map molecules in space and uncover where and how stars form

Olivia Harper Wilkins, Dickinson College

Three radio antennas in front of a mountain range.

Digital life

Essential digital technologies are critical infrastructure – they are not always built and managed that way

Francine Berman, UMass Amherst

Daejon Love case highlights online romance scams: Research reveals scammers’ tactics – and how to defend against them

Fangzhou Wang, University of Texas at Arlington

cartoon of a woman with hands on chest as five hearts float nearby and a smartphone screen showing a bouquet of flowers and a man clad in black lurking behind the phone

Changes to Facebook and Instagram are key part of Meta’s $17B settlement with the states over harm to teens

Carolina Rossini, UMass Amherst

a man with curly hair wearing a business suit and tie surrounded by several other men outside a stone building

Why social media algorithms send you posts you don’t like

Ziv Epstein, Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT); Farnaz Jahanbakhsh, University of Michigan, and Michael Bernstein, Stanford University

Illustration of man looking at phone with an angel pulling positive emojis from one side of his head and a devil pulling negative ones from the other

An AI agent spent your money – can anyone prove you authorized it?

Aashis Luitel, University of the Cumberlands

More articles about artificial intelligence

New research

Compared to driving, flying is extraordinarily safe – but why doesn’t it feel that way?

Mihhail Berezovski, Embry-Riddle Aeronautical University and Alex Chaparro, Embry-Riddle Aeronautical University

Two commercial passenger airplanes on a runway at an airport

Caterpillar twitches in an ultraquiet chamber are helping biologists understand how these insects hear without ears

Aishwarya Sriram, Binghamton University, State University of New York; Carol Miles, Binghamton University, State University of New York; Ronald Miles, Binghamton University, State University of New York, and Sara Aghazadeh, Binghamton University, State University of New York

A striped caterpillar sitting on a platform with a large speaker behind it.

Worms navigate narrow paths faster than wide ones – these findings could inform robot design

K. R. Prathyusha, University of Colorado Boulder

FDA approves breakthrough pancreatic cancer drug – an oncologist explains how daraxonrasib nearly doubles survival

Christopher Lieu, University of Colorado Anschutz

Illustration of a crosshairs centering on a cancer cell clinging to an organ wall

‘Male’ and ‘female’ plugs and connectors – gendered language for the ends of garden hoses, electrical cords and pipe fittings sparks debate

Jo Mackiewicz, Iowa State University and Jordan Smith, University of Northern Colorado

Green electrical cord with plug end ready to insert into socket end

Cancer vaccines could transform treatment and prevention – but misinformation about mRNA vaccines threatens their potential

Dannell D. Boatman, West Virginia University

Hand wearing white nitrile glove holding a vial labeled (CANCER mRNA vaccine) between two fingers

Quitting alcohol changes the brain and can increase the risk of compulsive drinking – new research in mice

Danny G. Winder, UMass Chan Medical School and Marie Doyle, UMass Chan Medical School

A lot of casual friends, or only a few you’re really close with? New research questions that trade-off

Jessica D. Ayers, Boise State University and Diego Guevara Beltran, University of Arizona

Brain and mind

I’m part of the team writing the next bible of psychiatry – for the first time, the DSM will use biology to understand mental disorders

Anand Kumar, University of Illinois Chicago

One of the most common brain disorders is one of the most misunderstood – how functional neurological disorder is both ‘all in your head’ and beyond it

Mackenzi Moore, University of Colorado Anschutz

Illustration of white silhouettes of three overlapping side profiles, one missing a puzzle piece in its head and one split into four puzzle pieces

Taxi drivers rarely die of Alzheimer’s – how complex mental maps and spatial reasoning protect your brain

Hatim Sharif, The University of Texas at San Antonio

Vector image of brain hovering above a city, lines connecting it to various points marked with red circles

A lack of pies for a pack of lies – what spoonerisms reveal about how the brain produces speech

Karen Stollznow, University of Colorado Boulder; Griffith University

colorful cakes and desserts in a display case

Curious Kids

Real kids ask real questions and real experts answer them

View from behind of a child's head with sunglasses on the back.

What would you see if you had one eye on the back of your head and the other in the front?

Abigail Witmer, The Ohio State University

How do ice cubes cool a drink?

Matthew Koss, College of the Holy Cross

A glass pitcher with dark fluid and lots of ice cubes against a black background

Kids ask the questions. Scholars answer them.

Be sure to include your name, age and where you live. We won’t be able to answer every question, but we will do our best.

Send in your question!

Graphic that says 'connecting experts with curious kids', with words in background saying 'how? why? who?'

Can we remove or decrease spaces between atoms or molecules?

Robin Macaluso, University of Texas at Arlington

A stack of hexagonal shapes arranged into sheets

What makes muscles contract? A physiologist explains how muscles move

Kiki Crawford, USC Dornsife College of Letters, Arts and Sciences

young girl flexing her right arm at the beach

Science + Technology – The Conversation – new research, AI, space, psychology and more

Top stories

Your memories of how you heard about 9/11 may well be wrong – we’ve been asking the same people what they remember for 25 years

Decades after 9/11, toxic dust and PTSD may be accelerating brain aging among first responders

What the settlement left out: Meta can still collect data from kids

Learning without a brain – how bacteria store memories and remember the past like artificial neural networks

American women in communities with ample broadband access lose less time waiting for services, reducing time poverty

Space weather can cause both beautiful auroras and infrastructure challenges – 5 essential reads on protecting life and technology

Do you need to worry about the Sun turning into a black hole?

People with Tourette syndrome, like Billie Eilish, use everything in their power to suppress tics – this exhausting process is key to treatment

‘Star Trek’ and NASA have intertwined legacies – the show championed diversity and inspired generations of real space scientists

Tiny backpacks reveal the secret, sometimes circuitous migrations of small songbirds

AI is helping ease competition for scarce space on the airwaves

Get our science editors' picks in your inbox every week

Space

Trump is proposing a US Space Academy – if created, it could blur the lines between NASA and the military

Many space missions are searching for life beyond Earth – but are we prepared for the fallout if they succeed?

NASA is gearing up to launch its next flagship space telescope – combining spy technology with sophisticated infrared detectors

Mars rovers give scientists a ground-level view of the red planet – peek inside their NASA control room

Radio telescopes help scientists map molecules in space and uncover where and how stars form

Digital life

Essential digital technologies are critical infrastructure – they are not always built and managed that way

Daejon Love case highlights online romance scams: Research reveals scammers’ tactics – and how to defend against them

Changes to Facebook and Instagram are key part of Meta’s $17B settlement with the states over harm to teens

Why social media algorithms send you posts you don’t like

An AI agent spent your money – can anyone prove you authorized it?

New research

Compared to driving, flying is extraordinarily safe – but why doesn’t it feel that way?

Caterpillar twitches in an ultraquiet chamber are helping biologists understand how these insects hear without ears

Worms navigate narrow paths faster than wide ones – these findings could inform robot design

FDA approves breakthrough pancreatic cancer drug – an oncologist explains how daraxonrasib nearly doubles survival

‘Male’ and ‘female’ plugs and connectors – gendered language for the ends of garden hoses, electrical cords and pipe fittings sparks debate

Cancer vaccines could transform treatment and prevention – but misinformation about mRNA vaccines threatens their potential

Quitting alcohol changes the brain and can increase the risk of compulsive drinking – new research in mice

A lot of casual friends, or only a few you’re really close with? New research questions that trade-off

Brain and mind

I’m part of the team writing the next bible of psychiatry – for the first time, the DSM will use biology to understand mental disorders

One of the most common brain disorders is one of the most misunderstood – how functional neurological disorder is both ‘all in your head’ and beyond it

Taxi drivers rarely die of Alzheimer’s – how complex mental maps and spatial reasoning protect your brain

A lack of pies for a pack of lies – what spoonerisms reveal about how the brain produces speech

Curious Kids

What would you see if you had one eye on the back of your head and the other in the front?

How do ice cubes cool a drink?

Kids ask the questions. Scholars answer them.

Can we remove or decrease spaces between atoms or molecules?

What makes muscles contract? A physiologist explains how muscles move

Most read this week

Your memories of how you heard about 9/11 may well be wrong – we’ve been asking the same people what they remember for 25 years