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Cables underneath New York City are teeming with entangled quantum particles of light thanks to Qunnect, a company that has spent a decade working on building an unhackable quantum internet

Magnesium has been called the “super mineral of the moment”, hailed for its supposed benefits for the brain and body. But columnist Alice Klein finds that the evidence is lacking for many of these claims

Icy moons circling the outer planets may be far more dynamic—and explosive—than they appear. New research suggests that when heat from tidal forces melts their ice shells from below, the sudden drop in pressure could cause hidden oceans to boil beneath the surface. On smaller moons like Enceladus, Mimas, and Miranda, this process may help explain strange features such as Enceladus’ tiger stripes and Miranda’s towering cliffs.

Twisting atomically thin magnetic layers does more than reshape their electronics—it can create giant, topological magnetic textures. In chromium triiodide, researchers observed skyrmion-like patterns stretching far beyond the expected moiré scale, reaching hundreds of nanometers. Even more surprising, their size doesn’t simply follow the twist pattern but peaks at a specific angle. This twist-controlled magnetism could pave the way for low-power spintronic devices built from geometry alone.

Twisting atomically thin magnetic layers does more than reshape their electronics—it can create giant, topological magnetic textures. In chromium triiodide, researchers observed skyrmion-like patterns stretching far beyond the expected moiré scale, reaching hundreds of nanometers. Even more surprising, their size doesn’t simply follow the twist pattern but peaks at a specific angle. This twist-controlled magnetism could pave the way for low-power spintronic devices built from geometry alone.

Editors of The Lancet published an op-ed decrying RFK Jr.'s one year of failure at HHS. They're correct about RFK Jr, but they are not blameless in what has happened.

The post One year of Robert F. Kennedy Jr. as HHS Secretary: The Lancet reacts, and so do I first appeared on Science-Based Medicine.

NYU researchers have found a way to use light to control how microscopic particles assemble into crystals, effectively turning illumination into a tool for shaping matter. By adding light-sensitive molecules to a liquid filled with tiny particles, they can adjust how strongly the particles attract or repel one another simply by changing the light’s intensity or pattern. This allows them to trigger crystals to form, dissolve, or even be reshaped in real time.

Simulated lunar dirt can be turned into extremely durable structures, potentially paving the way to more sustainable and cost-effective space missions, a new study suggests. Using a special laser 3D printing method, researchers melted fake lunar soil—a synthetic version of the fine dusty material on the moon surface, called regolith simulant—into layers and fused it with a base surface to manufacture small, heat-resistant objects.

Inverted perovskite solar cells offer strong potential for scalable, low-cost solar power, but a hidden interface inside the device has limited their performance and durability. Researchers have now introduced crystal-solvate nanoseeds that guide crystal growth and release solvent in a controlled way during heating, improving film quality at this buried layer. The result is smoother, denser material with better electronic properties and stability. A large mini-module achieved 23.15% efficiency with minimal scaling losses.

They are the toughest animals on Earth and possibly the key to surviving on Mars. Tardigrades, the microscopic creatures nicknamed 'water bears', have survived the vacuum of space, the crushing pressure of the deep ocean and temperatures that would kill virtually anything else. Now a new study has put them to work as unlikely pioneers, testing whether the hostile soil of Mars could ever support life and the results are full of surprises.

A visitor from another star system has just had its portrait taken by a spacecraft on its way to Jupiter and the image is superb. Comet 3I/ATLAS, only the third interstellar object ever discovered passing through our Solar System, has been captured in stunning detail by ESA's JUICE mission, revealing a glowing halo of gas, a sweeping tail, and hints of jets erupting from its ancient, icy heart. But the picture itself is just the beginning of the story.

SpaceX's Starship is the most powerful rocket ever built and it may be about to change everything. But researchers at the German Aerospace Centre have been asking a question: does Europe have an answer? Their new study, built on meticulous analysis of Starship's own flight data, suggests the answer is yes although it will require a fundamentally different approach, and a willingness to think differently.

For the first time ever, scientists have uncovered a vast field of tektites in Brazil — mysterious glassy fragments forged when a powerful extraterrestrial object slammed into Earth about 6.3 million years ago. Named “geraisites” after Minas Gerais, where they were first found, these dark, aerodynamic droplets of natural glass stretch across more than 900 kilometers and may mark one of South America’s most significant ancient impact events.

We’re back again with readers’ photos, but this is only one of two batches I have left. Please send ’em if you got good photos.

Today we have plants (and one video of flamingos), and different views of one species of plant from reader Eric Cabot. Eric’s captions are indented, and you can enlarge the photos by clicking on them. Following Wallace Stevens, I’d call this “Eleven Ways of Looking at a Lotus.”

Here is a series of photographs featuring the American Lotus (Nelumbo lutea), taken at a roadside pond in Middleton, Wisconsin,  in mid-August, 2018    There are few things as comforting as a quiet boardwalk-stroll through a flotilla of this beautiful plant towards the end of a fine day.

I was unsure of the plants’ identity until I found this statement on an informative website (https://www.wisconsinwetlands.org/):  Lotus leaves are circular but do not have a notch/sinus—they are continuous all the way around.

Unfortunately, the pond and the paths and boardwalks associated it were completely washed away by a deadly flash flood the following spring.  The pond has since been rebuilt, but not the boardwalk.  I haven’t gone back to see if the site has any lotuses. For now the images will have to do.

Here a video of pink flamingos the I recorded in “Cabo” a few years ago. [JAC: Keep watching for the displays and weird cries.]

 

Camera: NIKON S9300

Scientists have pulled off a feat long considered out of reach: getting light to mimic the famous quantum Hall effect. In their experiment, photons drift sideways in perfectly defined, quantized steps—just like electrons do in powerful magnetic fields. Because these steps depend only on nature’s fundamental constants, they could become a new gold standard for ultra-precise measurements. The discovery also hints at tougher, more reliable quantum photonic technologies.

Scientists have pulled off a feat long considered out of reach: getting light to mimic the famous quantum Hall effect. In their experiment, photons drift sideways in perfectly defined, quantized steps—just like electrons do in powerful magnetic fields. Because these steps depend only on nature’s fundamental constants, they could become a new gold standard for ultra-precise measurements. The discovery also hints at tougher, more reliable quantum photonic technologies.

Astronomers have long known the universe is expanding—but exactly how fast remains one of the biggest mysteries in cosmology. Different techniques for measuring the Hubble constant stubbornly disagree, creating the so-called “Hubble tension.” Now researchers at the University of Illinois Urbana-Champaign and the University of Chicago have unveiled a bold new way to weigh in on the debate using gravitational waves—the faint ripples in spacetime produced by colliding black holes.

The Hili dialogue will be shortened today as I was preoccupied with the war between Iran and every other country.

Welcome to the first day of March: Sunday, March 1, 2026, and International Rescue Cat Day. Here’s the rescue of a kitten in Malaysia, and of course it ends well (the woman who rescued him had nine cat!). Click “play on YouTube” or go here:

It’s also Casimir Pulaski Day, honoring the Polish man who helped the colonies during the Revolutionary War, but was neither born nor died on this day), and National Banana Cream Pie Day.

Here’s the March entry from the Très Riches Heures du Duc de Berry (1412-1416), showing plowing and other spring planting activities at the Château de Lusignan. Almost nothing remains of the castle, château, and town.

Limbourg brothers, Public domain, via Wikimedia Commons

Readers are welcome to mark notable events, births, or deaths on this day by consulting the March 1 Wikipedia page.

Da Nooz:

I’ll feature the latest on the war today, but concentrating on opinion beside the news. First, though, an update from the NYT and the Times of Israel.

First, the NYT headline, which affirms that the Supreme Leader was taken out. Click on headline to read, or find it archived here:

An excerpt:

The Iranian government vowed on Sunday that it would retaliate for the attacks that killed Ayatollah Ali Khamenei, Iran’s longtime supreme leader and an implacable enemy of Israel and the United States, as attacks on the country entered a second day.

The Iranian state news agency confirmed the ayatollah’s death on Sunday morning, and the Islamic Revolutionary Guards Corps — a powerful institution answering to the supreme leader — said that Iran would avenge him. Ali Larijani, a senior leader and Khamenei confidant, vowed that Iranian forces would fight even harder.

The ayatollah’s death prompted a range of reactions within Iran on Saturday. Large crowds poured into the streets of Tehran and other cities to celebrate the toppling of a leader who had ruled with an iron fist for nearly 37 years. Others mourned him.

The killing is a seismic political shift that raises the prospect of chaos and a power vacuum in an already turbulent region.

The United States and Israel said overnight that they were still attacking Iran. President Trump said on social media that U.S. strikes would continue “throughout the week or, as long as necessary to achieve our objective of PEACE THROUGHOUT THE MIDDLE EAST AND, INDEED, THE WORLD!”

In Israel, where the authorities reported one death on Sunday, air-raid sirens warned of further Iranian missile launches. Iran fired waves of ballistic missiles at Israel in retaliation for the initial strikes. The United Arab Emirates, Qatar, Bahrain and Kuwait — all of which host U.S. military bases — said they had come under attack, as did Jordan.

Of course Iran is already retaliating as hard as it can, and I’m not sure how they’ll retaliate even harder.  I am shedding no tears for the death of Khamenei; as he really was a guiding force of Iran and its use of proxies. The council of theocrats he appointed will of course choose a replacement. Iran should have given up its nuclear program, but of course that was never in the cards.

From the Times of Israel:

An excerpt:

US President Donald Trump threatened early Sunday morning to hit Iran with unprecedented force after Tehran warned it would step up attacks in retaliation for the killing of its supreme leader and fired successive volleys of rockets at Israel for a second consecutive day Sunday.

In Iran, the Israel Defense Forces continued to carry out strikes on military sites, including a massive blast in Tehran. The army announced that it had dropped over 1,000 pieces of munition in just over 24 hours of attacks that kicked off Saturday morning with a strike that killed Supreme Leader Ayatollah Ali Khamenei and other top officials.

“Iran just stated that they are going to hit very hard today, harder than they have ever hit before,” Trump wrote on his Truth Social social network. “THEY BETTER NOT DO THAT, HOWEVER, BECAUSE IF THEY DO, WE WILL HIT THEM WITH A FORCE THAT HAS NEVER BEEN SEEN BEFORE!”

His comments came just a few hours after the Iranian regime confirmed that its longtime leader Khamenei had been killed in a strike on his office early Saturday morning.

Iran’s parliament speaker, Mohammad Bagher Ghalibaf, said Sunday morning in a video carried on state TV that Trump and Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu have “crossed our red lines” and “will suffer the consequences.”

The elite Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps vowed in a statement Sunday that Iran’s armed forces would soon retaliate again with the “most ferocious offensive operation in history” against US bases and Israel.

“The hand of revenge of the Iranian nation for a severe, decisive and regrettable punishment for the murderers of the Imam of the Ummah will not let go of them,” the IRGC said in a statement.

Waves of sirens rang out repeatedly across much of central, southern and northern Israel on Saturday night and Sunday morning as Iran fired ballistic missiles at the country, sending millions of Israelis to shelter. Iran’s state broadcaster said 27 US bases in the region, as well as Israel’s military headquarters and a defense industries complex in Tel Aviv, were among the targets in the new wave of strikes.

There were no reports of impacts in residential areas or direct injuries following the salvos, medics said. Magen David Adom said it treated people lightly hurt by falling while running to bomb shelters.

Police said they received reports of missile and interceptor fragments that landed in the Jerusalem area, and the Fire and Rescue Service said it was responding to a gas leak caused by falling shrapnel in the West Bank.

In contrast to the large barrages fired at Israel during the 12-day war with Iran in June, most salvos Saturday and Sunday have consisted of small number of missiles, usually three at a time, with breaks of a few minutes between each launch, according to the IDF.

There has been one Israeli killed, a remarkably small toll for a supposedly big reprisal:

The attacks have caused only a small number of injuries, aside from a particularly large barrage of some 20 missiles toward the Tel Aviv area Saturday night in which one projectile managed to evade air defenses, hitting near a residential building and killing a woman.

The slain woman, a foreign caregiver for an elderly woman, did not manage to reach a shelter in time, the military said Sunday after an initial investigation. The woman she was caring for was extracted by rescue workers from the rubble alive.

According to the NYT, the CIA helped locate the Ayatollah, which led to the attack taking place when it did:

Shortly before the United States and Israel were poised to launch an attack on Iran, the C.I.A. zeroed in on the location of perhaps the most important target: Ayatollah Ali Khamenei, the country’s supreme leader.

The C.I.A. had been tracking Ayatollah Khamenei for months, gaining more confidence about his locations and his patterns, according to people familiar with the operation. Then the agency learned that a meeting of top Iranian officials would take place on Saturday morning at a leadership compound in the heart of Tehran. Most critically, the C.I.A. learned that the supreme leader would be at the site.

The United States and Israel decided to adjust the timing of their attack, in part to take advantage of the new intelligence, according to officials with knowledge of the decisions.

Another NYT piece (archived here), summarizing world reaction, says that most governments in the West, save Australia, have urged restraint in the attacks, and few (save Spain, Turkey, and some Arab states) have outright condemned the attack on Iran.  I’m surprised by the mildness of the reaction, but it seems to come from Iran’s position as a promoter of worldwide terror, combined with the reported killing of up to 30,000 of its own citizens who protested the government.

Those protesting the attacks include the MSM, including the New York Times. whose op-ed yesterday was called “Trump’s attack on Iran is reckless.”

Mr. Trump’s approach to Iran is reckless. His goals are ill-defined. He has failed to line up the international and domestic support that would be necessary to maximize the chances of a successful outcome. He has disregarded both domestic and international law for warfare.

. . .A responsible American president could make a plausible argument for further action against Iran. The core of this argument would need to be a clear explanation of the strategy, as well as the justification for attacking now, even though Iran does not appear close to having a nuclear weapon. This strategy would involve a promise to seek approval from Congress and to collaborate with international allies.

Mr. Trump is not even attempting this approach. He is telling the American people and the world that he expects their blind trust. He has not earned that trust.

The Washington Post is a bit milder, but also faults Trump for having no clear endgame and not getting Congressional approval:

It’s hard to see how “freedom for the people” can be accomplished in any meaningful sense without some U.S. boots on the ground, at least for a time. Yet Trump appears to lack any appetite for doing so. That might give pause to civilians trying to decide whether to risk their lives by rising up.

Whether Trump has made the right call will hinge on factors now beyond his control. No president has ever intended to get drawn into a quagmire.

The Constitution gives Congress the power to declare war. Short of that, the War Powers Act ensures the legislative branch will get a say on this war of choice. It’s essential that the people’s elected representatives get to vote on whether these strikes are justified. A comprehensive case has yet to be made, and better late than never.

Most of the NYT op-eds are critical of Trump and say the attack either was useless or conducted incorrectly. Here’s a screenshot of some the paper’s op-eds (there is at least one pro-attack one, see below):

But then there’s Bret Stephens, whose take on the war seems to be sensible (i.e., it resonates with mine). His column yesterday was called “The case for striking Iran” (archived here). An excerpt:

It’s happening. On Saturday, the United States and Israel jointly launched what President Trump has described as a “massive and ongoing” series of strikes on Iran, aiming not only to destroy the Islamic Republic’s military capabilities but also to overthrow the regime itself. The president may rightly be faulted for barely bothering to spell out the reasons for war in the weeks leading to Saturday’s attack. But it doesn’t mean there isn’t a compelling case for action.

There are three, in fact.

Iran poses a threat to global order by way of its damaged but abiding nuclear ambitions, its deep strategic ties to Moscow and Beijing, its persistent threats to maritime commerce and its support for international terrorism.

It poses a threat to regional stability, not just through its support for anti-Israel proxies like Hamas and Hezbollah, but also by its meddling in Lebanon, Iraq, Yemen and (until the overthrow of the Bashar al-Assad regime) Syria.

And it’s a mortal threat to the life and safety of its own people, many thousands of whom it slaughtered last month. There was a time not long ago when Americans, both left and right, cared enough about human rights to believe it could, in some circumstances, justify military intervention.

Why is a military attack crucial? Look at what hasn’t worked to change the regime’s behavior.

He then lists all the sanctions, economic engagements, failed diplomatic efforts that have failed. Those failures would have simply continued without the US/Israel attack on Iran. Stephens concludes this way:

No wonder protests in Iran have resumed, this time among university students who are bravely undaunted by the terrifying risk. Their protests seem connected to the 40-day memorials for the victims of last month’s massacres. But it’s not a stretch to assume those protests are also a signal to Trump that his promise last month to Iranians that “help is on its way” hasn’t been forgotten, and that ordinary Iranians are prepared to join the fight for their own liberation.

If so, then there is at least a reasonable chance that a sustained military operation that not only further degrades the regime’s nuclear, missile and military capabilities — a desirable outcome in its own right — but also targets its apparatus of domestic repression could embolden the type of sustained mass protests that could finally bring the regime down. Even more so if the leaders who give the orders, including the supreme leader and his circle, are not immune from attack.

For all of its willfulness and the evil it has wreaked over 47 years, the regime does not stand 10 feet tall. It nearly fell during the 2009 Green Movement against that year’s fraudulent elections. It nearly fell again in 2022 during the Women, Life, Freedom protests.

The difference on those occasions was the absence of external military support. Donald Trump now has a unique opportunity to provide it. Despite the risk that military strikes entail, the bigger risk, in the judgment of history, would be to fail to take it.

His sentiments are echoed in the short video below  by Elica Le Bon, an Iranian-American activist and lawyer whose parents fled Iran during the Revolution. Here is her eloquent indictment of the Western media and defense of the attack on Iran. She winds up in tears. (If you can’t see this 3-minute video, go to her X page here.)

In my view, now that the attack has commenced, the horse has left the barn. It has to be seen through because the Iranian people need to live free. All the kvetching by the press seems to me like so much pilpul, writen largely because it was Trump who did it. It also seems that the MSM, and my own Democratic Party, would prefer that there would never have been an attack on Iran, and, though they criticize the Iranian regime, would sit on their hands rather than stop its horrors, its nuclear program, its spread of terror to other countires, including the U.S., and above all, the slaughter of its people.  The kvetchers would, I think, prefer Iran to continue as it has (as Stephens notes, no attempts to change the regimes behavior have worked). And if the results are nuclear weapons in Iranian hands, well, too bad.  Of course Trump needs a viable endgame, and he hasn’t articulated one, nor did he have a decent one in Gaza.  But once the attack was begun—and I was ambivalent about that from the start—it has to be carried through. We can’t simply stop and let Iran go back to how it was. And, in their hearts, I think that most Western countries agree, despite their calls for caution or even a ceasefire. I am moved by Le Bon’s words.

******************

And we can’t forget The Princess!

Meanwhile in Dobrzyn, Hili is befuddled again.

Hili: I’m trying to understand the world and I’m not sure.
Me: What are you not sure about?
Hili: Whether these attempts aren’t a waste of time.

In Polish:

Hili: Próbuję zrozumieć świat i nie jestem pewna.
Ja: Czego nie jesteś pewna?
Hili: Czy te próby nie są stratą czasu.

 

Jupiter’s icy moons may have been seeded with the chemical ingredients for life from the very beginning. An international team of scientists modeled how complex organic molecules—essential building blocks for biology—could have formed in the swirling disk of gas and dust around the young Sun and later been carried into Jupiter’s own moon-forming disk. Their results suggest that up to half of the icy material that built moons like Europa, Ganymede, and Callisto may have delivered freshly made organic compounds without being chemically destroyed.

This is just a short update on the news, as I presume everyone with an interest in this conflict is following what is happening today. Below is the headline in the NYT; click on the screenshot to read or find the article archived here:

Of coure you wonder how Trump knew that. An excerpt:

President Trump announced on Saturday that the U.S.-Israeli attacks on Iran had killed Ayatollah Ali Khamenei, the nation’s supreme leader for almost 37 years and an implacable enemy of Israel and the United States, in a potentially seismic political shift in Tehran and the broader region.

“Khamenei, one of the most evil people in History, is dead,” Mr. Trump wrote on Truth Social.

Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu of Israel had said earlier that there were “many indications” that Ayatollah Khamenei was dead, but stopped short of making a definitive statement.

There was no immediate confirmation from the Iranian government. Earlier in the day Iranian officials had dismissed such claims as bravado or psychological warfare. Later the ayatollah’s official account on X later posted an image rich with Shia religious symbolism, of a faceless clerical figure holding a flaming sword.

It was not immediately clear which country’s forces had killed Ayatollah Khamenei, but either way, the action exhibited a high degree of coordination between the United States and Israel. Israel’s military said it had targeted a gathering of senior Iranian officials in the opening strikes. Satellite imagery showed a plume of smoke and extensive damage at the supreme leader’s high-security compound.

Mr. Trump and Mr. Netanyahu both made clear that regime change was a goal of the massive waves of strikes on Iran that began around 1 a.m. local time Saturday.

But it is uncertain whether removing Ayatollah Khamenei, who was 86, would result in significant changes to the system he led, as many people in authority owed their positions to him.

The power to choose a new supreme leader rests with the Assembly of Experts, a conservative body of clerics who, given Ayatollah Khamenei’s age and infirmities, have likely given ample thought to potential successors.

In retaliation for the Israeli-U. S. attack, Iran fired waves of ballistic missiles at Israel, while the United Arab Emirates, Qatar, Bahrain and Kuwait — all of which host U.S. military bases — said they had come under attack, as did Jordan.

So it is not definitive, but surely Israel has spies in Iran that could provide some confirmation. Eventually Iran will have to announce it.

So far there ha been little damage to the countries Iran attacked, and not one death in Israel.

Will there be regime change? I have no idea; it is foolish to predict such a thing so early in the conflict.  Perhaps the U.S. could find an amenable leader in the current regime to do its bidding, as it has in Venezuela, but that seems unlikely: all the rulers are, as it says, conservative theocrats. And the government has all the soldiers and weapons while the people have none.

Every day will tell a new story, but the critics of the attacks are predictable: most Democrats (save the rogue Fetterman) and the mainstream media (save Bret Stephens at the NYT).  We will know if the attack was a good thing only in retrospect.