Science

Scientists may have spotted a long-sought triplet superconductor — a material that can transmit both electricity and electron spin with zero resistance. That ability could dramatically stabilize quantum computers while slashing their energy use. Early experiments suggest the alloy NbRe behaves unlike any conventional superconductor. If verified, it could become a cornerstone of next-generation quantum and spintronic technology.

Researchers tested whether generative AI could handle complex medical datasets as well as human experts. In some cases, the AI matched or outperformed teams that had spent months building prediction models. By generating usable analytical code from precise prompts, the systems dramatically reduced the time needed to process health data. The findings hint at a future where AI helps scientists move faster from data to discovery.

For the first time, scientists have mapped Uranus’s upper atmosphere in three dimensions, tracking temperatures and charged particles up to 5,000 kilometers above the clouds. Webb’s sharp vision revealed glowing auroral bands and unexpected dark regions shaped by the planet’s wildly tilted magnetic field.

Astronomers have uncovered one of the most mysterious galaxies ever found — a dim, ghostly object called CDG-2 that is almost entirely made of dark matter. Located 300 million light-years away in the Perseus galaxy cluster, it was discovered in an unusual way: not by its stars, but by four tightly packed globular clusters acting like cosmic breadcrumbs.

Astronomers have uncovered one of the most mysterious galaxies ever found — a dim, ghostly object called CDG-2 that is almost entirely made of dark matter. Located 300 million light-years away in the Perseus galaxy cluster, it was discovered in an unusual way: not by its stars, but by four tightly packed globular clusters acting like cosmic breadcrumbs.

Lordy be, now we have Trump attacking the conservative Supreme Court because it struck down the tariffs he imposed on nearly every country. I am delighted for two reasons. First, because I always said that if anybody is going to stop Trump, it wound have to be the courts, who have now demonstrated some rare unanimity against his nonsense.  It heartens me that the Court, right-wing as it is, can still be rational.  Second, I have also argued (along with all rational economists) that tariffs are never good, and in the end it is the consumers who suffer.

The 3 dissenters in the vote were Kavanaugh, Alito, and Thomas, with the last two predictable.

So now Trump is frothing at the mouth at the court he though he could count on. And it is the Court of Last Resort. Though he swears he will find a way to circumvent this ruling, I do not think he will. Click below to read, or find the article archived here.

At last, some happy political news. An excerpt, and note that the Chief Justice wrote the opinion, as he can reserve that right for himself:

A Supreme Court decision on Friday striking down President Trump’s sweeping global tariffs dealt a major blow to his economic agenda and brought new uncertainty to global markets struggling to adapt to his whipsawing trade policies.

The court, in a 6-3 decision written by Chief Justice John G. Roberts Jr., ruled that Mr. Trump had exceeded his authority when he imposed tariffs on nearly every U.S. trading partner last year. The ruling prompted a defiant response from the president: In a news conference at the White House, he vowed to restore tariffs using other authority and excoriated the justices who had ruled against him as “fools and lap dogs.”

The ruling threw into doubt a series of trade deals with countries around the world that the administration struck in recent months, and left unclear whether U.S. companies or consumers would be able to reclaim some of the more than $200 billion in fees the federal government has collected since the start of last year. Justice Brett M. Kavanaugh warned in a dissent that any refund process could be a substantial “mess.”

Mr. Trump was the first president to claim that the 1977 emergency statute, which does not mention the word “tariffs,” allowed him to unilaterally impose the duties without congressional approval. Writing for the majority, Chief Justice Roberts said that statute did not. The court’s ruling, backed by justices from across the ideological spectrum, was a rare and significant example of the Supreme Court pushing back on Mr. Trump’s agenda.

A small but vocal group of Republicans in Congress joined Democrats in celebrating the court’s ruling, reflecting frustration that their branch of government has ceded its authority over trade matters to the White House. Senator Mitch McConnell, the Kentucky Republican and former longtime party leader, said the ruling left “no room for doubt” that Mr. Trump’s circumventing of Congress was “illegal.”

Trump learned the bad news at a meeting in the White House, when an aide passed him a note as he was answering questions:

The ruling, Mr. Trump said, was a “disgrace.” Speaking to a crowd of governors, cabinet officials and White House aides, the president lashed out at the court but insisted that he had a contingency plan.

He took one more question from Gov. Josh Stein of North Carolina, a Democrat, about hurricane assistance, but then ended the meeting early. He wanted to work on his response to the ruling, he said.

For Mr. Trump, the Supreme Court decision was not just a political setback, but a personal one. He has promoted tariffs for decades, and has claimed that his sweeping levies resuscitated the economy and revived American manufacturing.

“Tariff is my favorite word in the whole dictionary,” he said Thursday at an event in Rome, Ga.

Data released on Thursday showed Mr. Trump’s tariffs were not having the effect he had promised they would. U.S. imports grew last year, and the trade deficit in goods hit a record high. U.S. manufacturers have also cut more than 80,000 jobs in the past year.

From the WSJ:

The administration does have other laws it can rely on to try to re-enact the tariffs, but those laws have procedural constraints and might not allow tariffs as expansive as those struck down by the court.

The emergency-economic law invoked by Trump “was designed to address national security concerns and so was designed for flexibility and speed,” said Everett Eissenstat, deputy director of the National Economic Council in Trump’s first term. “Other statutory authorities are not as flexible.”

The president could also seek explicit authorization from Congress to reimpose the sweeping tariffs, though that route appears politically unlikely.

Where is he gonna go now?

 

When the Perseverance rover was sent to Mars, it was largely dedicated to astrobiology. It's driving around an ancient paleolake, Jezero Crater, looking for evidence of past life. But the rover mission is also a testbed for greater autonomous operations. Now, NASA has given the inquisitive rover a way to better navigate the Martian surface with less human intervention.

If humans want to live in space, whether on spacecraft or the surface of Mars, one of the first problems to solve is that of water for drinking, hygiene, and life-sustaining plants. Even bringing water to the International Space Station (ISS) in low Earth orbit costs on the order of tens of thousands of dollars. Thus, finding efficient, durable, and trustworthy ways to source and reuse water in space is a clear necessity for long-term habitation there.

A survey of 100 commercial foods for dogs and cats revealed that PFAS chemicals appear in numerous brands and types, with fish-based products among those with the highest levels

Here Mo puts on a burqa and asserts that he’s a woman because he feels like one.  Of course this panel is triggering for “progressives,” and, though the strip is six years old and recycled, the artist says this:

A Friday Flashback from almost exactly six years ago. Lost a couple of patrons that day. Let’s see if it happens again.

I suspect it will!

The other day I wrote about a course in “Liberatory Violence” given by U of C professor Alireza Doostdar, a course that seemed to me to be (while probably not violating academic freedom) designed to propagandize students—largely against Israel. (Doostdar has a long history of anti-Israeli activism, and is director of our Center for Middle Eastern Studies and Associate Professor of Islamic Studies and the Anthropology of Religion.)  While I can’t say that the course should be deep-sixed, I can say that it’s likely to promote hatred of Jews and Israel, which Doostdar sees as guilty of “Zionist settler colonialism, ethnic cleansing, and apartheid.”  Ah, three big lies in one sentence!

But it’s one thing to teach a permissible but dubious course, and another to fund an initiative designed to indict Israel for “scholasticide”: the destruction of Palestinian academia by design.  Yes, the Neubauer Collegium for Culture and Society, a unit that “brings unlikely partners together to work on complex problems”, has announced funding for ten new group projects in 2026-2027.  Here’s one of them, and, lo and behold, Dr. Doostdar is one of the stars:

Scholasticide in and Beyond Palestine
Jodi Byrd (Race, Diaspora, and Indigeneity), Alireza Doostdar (Divinity School), Eve Ewing (Race, Diaspora, and Indigeneity), Darryl Li (Anthropology)

Bringing together an interdisciplinary team of scholars, this project will use a mixed-methods approach in undertaking empirical research and comparative analysis to investigate “scholasticide” as a critical category for political and historical analysis. In addition to the resident research team, the project will involve a sequence of virtual visiting fellows.

This is another way to use College money to do down Israel, and this I object to. Believe me, if there were a similar project designed to investigate “genocide by Palestinian terror groups,” it would not only not get funded, but would raise an ruckus. This one has elicited nary a peep.  I’m wondering whether the University of Chicago even thinks about the optics of giving money for a project like this.

With this article by Dennis Prager, the Free Press officially raises its flag as “We are totes pro-religion!”  In article after article, the site has touted the benefits of religion as a palliative for an ailing world, but you’ll never read a defense of atheism or nonbelief.  Here Dennis Prager, conservative podcaster and founder of an online “university,” touts religion as the only “objective” source of morality. I suspect the “we love religion” mantra of the FP ultimately comes from founder Bari Weiss, who is an observant Jew.

But Prager is wrong on two counts. First, religion is not the only source of morality—or even a good one. Second, there is no “objective” morality. All morality depends on subjective preferences. Granted, many of them are shared by most people, but in the end there is no “objective” morality that one can say is empirically “true”. Is abortion immoral? How about eating animals? What is wrong with killing one person and using their organs to save the lives of several dying people?  Can you push a man onto a trolley to save the lives of five others on an adjacent track?  If these questions have objective answers, what are they?

First, the FP’s introduction:

If you were to name the defining figures of the 21st-century conservative movement, Dennis Prager would surely rank near the top of the list. A longtime radio host and founder of digital educational platform PragerU, he is one of the world’s best-known public intellectuals, publishing more than a dozen books on religion, morality, and the foundations of Western civilization.

His latest book, “If There Is No God: The Battle Over Who Defines Good and Evil,” hits shelves next week. Drawn from a weekend-long lecture Prager delivered to 74 teenagers in 1992, it is a full-throated defense of objective, biblical morality at a time, he says, when more people dispute its existence than ever before. Though rooted in an earlier moment, the book holds new weight: In 2024, Prager suffered a catastrophic fall that paralyzed him from the waist down.

“A certain percentage of this book,” he reveals in the introduction, “was written by dictation and editing from my hospital bed. Were it not for Joel Alperson, who also organized and recorded the entire weekend, the book would not have been finished. We completed the book together. It is a testament to how important we both consider this work.”

Next week, our Abigail Shrier will interview Prager from his hospital room, so stay tuned for their full conversation. And below, we bring you an exclusive excerpt from his book, answering a question that many of us ask every day: In a world where profoundly evil things happen, how do we raise good people? —The Editors

I’m hoping that Abigail Shrier does not throw softballs at Prager, and asks him about “objective” morality and his evidence for God. But I’m betting she won’t: one doesn’t harass a man recently paralyzed from the waist down, and Shrier is employed by the Free Press.

Click, read, and weep.

At the beginning, Prager raises one of these moral questions, and argues that yes, there’s an objective answer—one that comes from the Bible (bolding is mine):

One of my biggest worries in life is that people these days are animated more by feelings than by values.

Let me explain what I mean. Imagine you are walking along a body of water—a river, lake, or ocean—with your dog, when suddenly you notice your dog has fallen into the water and appears to be drowning. About 100 feet away, you notice a stranger, a person you don’t know, is also drowning. Assuming your dog can’t swim, and also assuming that you would like to save both your dog and the stranger, the question is: Who would you try to save first?

If your inclination is to save your dog, that means you were animated by feelings. Your feelings are understandable, and as I own two dogs, I fully relate. You love your dog more than the stranger, and I do, too.

But the whole point of values is to hold that something is more important than your feelings. There is no ambivalence in the Bible about this. “Thou shalt not murder” is not for one group alone. “Thou shalt not steal” is not for one group alone. It is for every human being. Human beings are created in God’s image. Therefore, human life is sacred and animal life is not. You should save the stranger.

Unfortunately, those universal values are not what we’re teaching people today.. . . .

What? You can’t murder a dog? What if the drowning person is Hitler?  And aren’t five human lives on the trolley track worth more than one? What would Jesus do?

And what other Biblical values should we take literally? Should we levy capital punishment for homosexuality? Is it okay to have slaves so long as you don’t beat them too hard? Was it “moral” for the Israelites to kill all the tribes living on their land? Is it okay for God to allow children to die of cancer?  (Of course, sophisticated theologians have made up answers to these questions so that, in the end, they find nothing immoral in Scripture.)

When Prager says that our big problem is that feelings have replaced values, I wonder where those “values” come from. Apparently they come from God. But that raises an ancient question: is something good because God dictates it, or did God dictate it because it was good? (This is Plato’s Euthyphro Dilemma.) And if the latter is true, then there is a standard of morality that is independent of God’s dictates.

This is not rocket science. But Prager sticks to the first interpretation, adhering to the “Divine Command Theory“:

In fact, the Bible repeatedly warns people not to rely on their hearts. If you want to know why so many people reject Bible-based religions, there it is: Most people want to be governed by their feelings and not have anyone—be it God or a book—tell them otherwise.

The battle in America and the rest of the Western world today is between the Bible and the heart.

And Prager sticks to his guns, arguing that atheists and agnostics have no guidelines for morality:

Millions of people today are atheist or agnostic. If you are one of them, my goal is not to convince you that God exists. But I am asking you to live as if you believe God exists, and by extension, as if you believe objective good and evil exist.

Why? Because for a good society to maintain itself, we need objective morality. What would happen to math if it were reduced to feeling? There would be no math. Likewise, if we reduce morality to feeling, there would be no morality. In other words, if values and feelings are identical, there would be no such thing as a value.

Imagine a child in kindergarten who sees a box of cookies meant for the whole class and takes them all for himself. Most people would acknowledge that the child has to be taught that this is wrong. But if values were derived from feelings, this child would keep all the cookies on the basis of his personal value that whoever gets to the cookies first gets to keep them. It’s not as though this philosophy is without precedent. It has been the way many of the world’s societies have looked at life: “Might makes right.”

Again, this palaver appears in the Free Press, which apparently thought it worth publishing.

What Prager doesn’t seem to realize is that an atheist can give reasons for adhering to a certain morality, even if in the end those reasons are directed towards confecting a society that (subjectively) seems harmonious.  For example, John Rawls used the “veil of ignorance” as a way to structure a moral society. Others, like Sam Harris, are utilitarians or consequentialists, arguing that the moral act is one that most increases the “well being” of the world.  But even these more rational moralities have issues, some of which I raised in my questions above. The systems adhere largely to what most people see as “moral”, but they are not really “objective”. They are subjective.

But adhering to the word of the Bible, and twisting it when it doesn’t fit your Procrustean bed of morality, is palpably inferior to reason-based morality. Indeed, the fact that theologians must twist parts of the Bible so that, while seeming to be immoral they turn out to be really moral, shows that there’s no objective morality in scripture.

Does Prager even know his Bible? Have a gander at what he writes here:

That’s precisely why the Ten Commandments outlaw stealing. Because stealing is normal. The whole purpose of moral and legal codes is to forbid people from acting on their natural feelings.

Consider another example, this one far more serious. In virtually every past society, a vast number of women and girls have been raped. In wartime, when victorious armies could essentially do what they wanted, rape was the norm, with few exceptions, such as the American, British, and Israeli armies. Only men whose behavior is guided by values rather than feelings do not rape in such circumstances.

Both of these vastly different examples prove the same thing: To lead good lives, people must first learn Bible-based values, mandated when they are children.

Has he read Numbers 31? Here’s a bit in which, under God’s orders, Moses and his acolytes not only butcher a people, but save the virgin women for sexual slavery (my bolding, text from King James version):

And the Lord spake unto Moses, saying,

2 Avenge the children of Israel of the Midianites: afterward shalt thou be gathered unto thy people.

3 And Moses spake unto the people, saying, Arm some of yourselves unto the war, and let them go against the Midianites, and avenge the Lord of Midian.

4 Of every tribe a thousand, throughout all the tribes of Israel, shall ye send to the war.

5 So there were delivered out of the thousands of Israel, a thousand of every tribe, twelve thousand armed for war.

6 And Moses sent them to the war, a thousand of every tribe, them and Phinehas the son of Eleazar the priest, to the war, with the holy instruments, and the trumpets to blow in his hand.

7 And they warred against the Midianites, as the Lord commanded Moses; and they slew all the males.

8 And they slew the kings of Midian, beside the rest of them that were slain; namely, Evi, and Rekem, and Zur, and Hur, and Reba, five kings of Midian: Balaam also the son of Beor they slew with the sword.

9 And the children of Israel took all the women of Midian captives, and their little ones, and took the spoil of all their cattle, and all their flocks, and all their goods.

10 And they burnt all their cities wherein they dwelt, and all their goodly castles, with fire.

11 And they took all the spoil, and all the prey, both of men and of beasts.

12 And they brought the captives, and the prey, and the spoil, unto Moses, and Eleazar the priest, and unto the congregation of the children of Israel, unto the camp at the plains of Moab, which are by Jordan near Jericho.

13 And Moses, and Eleazar the priest, and all the princes of the congregation, went forth to meet them without the camp.

14 And Moses was wroth with the officers of the host, with the captains over thousands, and captains over hundreds, which came from the battle.

15 And Moses said unto them, Have ye saved all the women alive?

16 Behold, these caused the children of Israel, through the counsel of Balaam, to commit trespass against the Lord in the matter of Peor, and there was a plague among the congregation of the Lord.

17 Now therefore kill every male among the little ones, and kill every woman that hath known man by lying with him.

18 But all the women children, that have not known a man by lying with him, keep alive for yourselves.

I suppose that Prager thinks that not only atheists and agnostics lack moral standards, but that’s also true of all the non-Christians of the world, as morality not based on the Bible is evanescent at best:

Again, you don’t need to believe in God. But deciding between right and wrong is essentially impossible without a value system revealed by God. If there isn’t a God who says pushing little kids down—or raping women—is wrong, then all we have to go by are feelings, and then doing whatever you feel like doing isn’t wrong at all.

We’re not talking about theory. We’re living in a country where every few minutes a woman is raped, every minute a car is stolen, and every few hours a human being is murdered. The people committing these crimes don’t act on the basis of biblical values; they act on the basis of feelings.

This is not a wholesale indictment of feelings. Feelings are what most distinguish humans from robots. Feelings make us feel alive. Without feelings, life wouldn’t be worth living. But feelings alone are morally unreliable. Guided by feelings, every type of behavior is justifiable: If you feel like shoplifting and act on your feelings, you’ll shoplift. If a man is sexually aroused by a woman, he will rape her. And, of course, if you have deeper feelings for your pet than for a stranger, you’ll save your dog and let the stranger drown.

If we rely solely on feelings, everything is justifiable. And a society that justifies everything stands for nothing.

So much for Hindus, Buddhists, and Muslims, who march along with us atheists thinking that nothing is immoral.

This is not only stupid, but it’s not new, either. It was Ivan Karamazov in Dostoevsky’s novel who said, “Without God, everything is permitted.”  Prager (and by extension, the Free Press) is making a Swiss cheese of an argument here, one that’s full of holes. If Abigail Shrier doesn’t dismantle it in her interview, I’ll be very disappointed, for I’m a big admirer of her work. And she’s way too smart to buy into Prager’s nonsense.

Here’s Prager’s new book:

More and more papers are coming out about the upcoming Habitable Worlds Observatory (HWO). As the telescope moves from theory to practice (and physical manifestation), various working groups are discovering, defining, and designing their way to the world’s next major exoplanet observatory. A new paper from researchers at NASA Goddard Space Flight Center adds another layer of analysis - we even just reported on its immediate predecessor two weeks ago. In this one, the researchers compared the ability of the telescope to distinguish between carbon dioxide and methane/water, to come up with a specific wavelength the engineers should design for.

Among those who sent in photos in response to my self-abasing plea was UC Davis math professor Abby Thompson, who specializes in tide-pool invertebrates. We have some of those today; Abby’s captions and IDs are indented, and you can enlarge the photos by clicking on them.

Family Littorinidae (periwinkle) (tentative ID) This snail is decorated with bryozoans – here he’s upside down, and here. . . .

. . . he’s right side up, so you can see the bryozoans:

Tectura paleacea (surfgrass limpet), Surfgrass is about 1/8” wide.   This tiny skinny limpet fits perfectly on it:

Doris montereyensis (nudibranch):

Rostanga pulchra (nudibranch). I have several photos from this set of tides with disturbing clear threads in them, which I think must be plastic:”

Family Ammotheidae (sea spider):

Genus Doryteuthis (squid) eggs- in a bunch on the beach:

Squid eggs close up, so you can see the eggs inside one sack:

An unusually colored Epiactis prolifera (brooding anemone). Its babies are nestled into its shoulders:

Strongylocentrotus purpuratus (Pacific purple sea urchin). As juveniles these are green, and I’d only seen juveniles here before.   This was big enough to be turning its adult purple, though it still has lots of green spines:

Qubits, the heart of quantum computers, can change performance in fractions of a second — but until now, scientists couldn’t see it happening. Researchers at NBI have built a real-time monitoring system that tracks these rapid fluctuations about 100 times faster than previous methods. Using fast FPGA-based control hardware, they can instantly identify when a qubit shifts from “good” to “bad.” The discovery opens a new path toward stabilizing and scaling future quantum processors.

Qubits, the heart of quantum computers, can change performance in fractions of a second — but until now, scientists couldn’t see it happening. Researchers at NBI have built a real-time monitoring system that tracks these rapid fluctuations about 100 times faster than previous methods. Using fast FPGA-based control hardware, they can instantly identify when a qubit shifts from “good” to “bad.” The discovery opens a new path toward stabilizing and scaling future quantum processors.

Colliding galaxies can create a beam of focused microwave radiation known as a maser, and astronomers have discovered the brightest one ever seen

New insights into the causes of migraine are prompting a fresh look at a drug target that was sidelined 25 years ago

Planet K2-18b, an apparent water world 124 light years away, has been seen as a promising location in the search for aliens, but telescopes on Earth failed to pick up any radio transmissions

We’ve been missing an important contributor to ageing, says columnist Graham Lawton. Ultra-processed foods are known to be associated with many chronic health problems, but studies have now shown they may also speed up ageing