Science

Using lunar regolith simulant, a team of researchers demonstrated that "immature" regolith similar to what is expected around the Moon's southern polar region is suitable for rovers to drive on.

Scientists have captured stunning new insights into one of the universe’s most powerful phenomena—black hole jets—by using a planet-sized network of radio telescopes. Focusing on Cygnus X-1, one of the first known black holes, they measured jets blasting out with the energy of 10,000 Suns and moving at half the speed of light. By watching these jets get pushed and bent by the fierce stellar winds of a nearby supergiant star, researchers could calculate their true power for the first time.

Scientists have captured stunning new insights into one of the universe’s most powerful phenomena—black hole jets—by using a planet-sized network of radio telescopes. Focusing on Cygnus X-1, one of the first known black holes, they measured jets blasting out with the energy of 10,000 Suns and moving at half the speed of light. By watching these jets get pushed and bent by the fierce stellar winds of a nearby supergiant star, researchers could calculate their true power for the first time.

Engineers at Northwestern University have taken a striking leap toward merging machines with the human brain by printing artificial neurons that can actually communicate with real ones. These flexible, low-cost devices generate lifelike electrical signals capable of activating living brain cells, a breakthrough demonstrated in mouse brain tissue.

As the Moon swallowed the Sun during the April 8, 2024, total solar eclipse, something remarkable happened on the ground—cities went eerily quiet. Scientists analyzing seismic data found that human-generated vibrations, usually caused by traffic, construction, and daily activity, dropped sharply during totality. The effect was so pronounced that it created a clear “seismic hush” across urban areas directly in the eclipse’s path, before quickly rebounding afterward.

Researchers have shown that blending quantum computing with AI can dramatically improve predictions of complex, chaotic systems. By letting a quantum computer identify hidden patterns in data, the AI becomes more accurate and stable over time. The method outperformed standard models while using far less memory. This could have big implications for fields like climate science, energy, and medicine.

We have the crowd. We have the star. Now it's time to put them together. Here's exactly what happens — and why — when a charged particle outruns the local speed of light in a material. Also: why it's always blue.

In 2014, a strange cloudy object called G2 made a close approach to Sagittarius A*, (Sag A*) the supermassive black hole at the heart of the Milky Way Galaxy. Astronomers were pretty excited, partly because they thought it might get torn apart by Sag A*'s intense gravitational pull. That didn't happen, and the event was a cosmic fizzle. Instead, G2 skipped around the black hole. Various observations showed that it wasn't just a gas cloud. It was likely a dusty protostellar object encased in a dusty cloud. Or perhaps several merged stars. But, it survived the flyby and continued on a shortened orbit.

Understanding the beginning of the solar system requires us to look at some very strange places. One such place is at the so-called “Trojan” asteroids that share Jupiter’s orbit in front of and behind it. But for a long time, these cosmic time capsules have held a mystery for astronomers: why are they color-coded? The populations of larger asteroids are very clear split into two distinct groups - the “reds” and the “less reds”, because apparently they’re all red to some extent. A new paper from researchers in Japan tried to solve this mystery by taking a close look at even smaller asteroids, and their findings, published in a recent edition of The Astronomical Journal, actually brings up a completely different question - why don’t smaller Trojan asteroids have the same color-coding?

Electric vehicles could store renewable energy when there is excess supply and give it back to the grid when demand peaks, but car companies disagree on the best way to do that

Researchers from the Earth-Life Science Institute (ELSI) and National Institute for Basic Biology have developed a new method to detect extraterrestrial life without relying on traditional biosignatures. By modelling how life might spread between planets, they demonstrate that life could be detected through statistical patterns across planetary populations rather than on individual planets. This "agnostic biosignature" approach could assist in guiding future searches for life beyond Earth.

There’s a free new article in Boston Magazine called “Can Steven Pinker save Harvard?” (subtitle: “But the celebrity professor’s own record raises a question: Is he the right guy for the job?”)  It’s the same-old-same old, recycling every accusation about Pinker that’s come down the pike (association with Bad People, unwarranted belief in progress, hereditarianism, love of capitalism, work on evolutionary psychology etc.), with nothing that you haven’t read before.  And yes, they do provide talking heads to give some pushback, but it’s all irrelevant in light of the title question.

Pinker helped form the Council on Academic Freedom at Harvard, now comprising 200 people, and they’re working on issues like freedom of speech, institutional neutrality, defusing DEI, extirpating bias, and so on.  It’s really a dumb question to ask whether just one of these people can “save Harvard”, and of course the answer is “we’ll see.” The article is totally a hit piece, but it’s slight for such a long piece, and adds nothing to the literature. But you can click below to read it for free.

Jesse Singal takes it apart at his Substack website, but you won’t be able to read his whole response. See the bottom for a screenshot.

The Boston Magazine piece is very long, but I’ll quote just the “j’accuse” bits and a few other things (indented). My own text is flush left.

J’Accuse!

Steven Pinker is one of the most famous—and divisive—academics in America. A cognitive psychologist at Harvard, he’s spent five decades writing about how we think, picking fights with the left, and wading into culture wars that most professors avoid. Bill Gates calls him a favorite writer. His critics call him a cover for racists. He’s been accused of providing intellectual ammunition to the alt-right, and of dismissing inconvenient evidence when it doesn’t fit his theories. He’s also, right now, one of the loudest voices pushing Harvard to change.

. . . But Pinker’s critics—and there are many, especially in academia—argue that he’s guilty of exactly what he decries: my-side bias, ideological blinders, a willingness to engage with far-right figures in ways that give them legitimacy. He says he doesn’t set out to spark controversy—though he seems to welcome it when it comes. But it’s a double-edged sword in a dangerous time: Pinker has leaped into the fray of what ails Harvard—and higher education in general—starting with his own questions about our universities: What are they doing? Who are they for? Where are they going?

. . . . In The Blank Slate, published in 2002, Pinker argued against a prevailing orthodoxy that we’re born without any innate characteristics, shaped entirely by environment and culture. Instead, he made the case that genetics plays a significant role in how our minds work and who we become. The Better Angels of Our Nature (2011) detailed the long-term historical decline in violence, and Enlightenment Now (2018) made the case for reason and science creating a world of well-being and possibility foreign to earlier epochs. Those last two got Pinker a lot of heat for putting a sunny spin on the way things are now, especially among left-leaning thinkers who have called him a cheerleader for Western capitalism, blind to the inequalities it produces. And The Blank Slate has gotten Pinker criticized over the idea that biology is destiny, which leads into dangerous territory: racial differences, eugenics, the question of who gets to define human nature and why.

Yadda yadda yadds. But wait! There’s more! Louis Menand, with whom I’ve crossed swords by claiming that there’s no “truth” that can be derived from literature, shows up again arguing that Pinker’s ideas “lack nuance.”

The Blank Slate was much praised for opening up the nature-nurture debate—it was shortlisted for the Pulitzer, but it also garnered some now-wait-a-minute reviews that sometimes attacked Pinker for oversimplifying things. Louis Menand, author of The Metaphysical Club, a Pulitzer-winning intellectual and cultural history of late-19th- and early-20th-century America, reviewed the book skeptically in the New Yorker. Pinker’s villains, Menand wrote, were “social scientists, progressive educators, radical feminists, academic Marxists, liberal columnists, avant-garde arts types, government planners, and postmodernist relativists.” His heroes were cognitive scientists and ordinary folks. “I wish I could say that Pinker’s view of the world of ideas is more nuanced than this,” Menand wrote.

It isn’t just Pinker’s conclusions that have drawn fire—it’s his method. “By far the nastiest and most aggressive academic responses I have seen come from humanities professors when there are ideas from the sciences that they see as encroaching on their territories,” Pinker told the Chronicle of Higher Education in 2019. “That’s when you get rage and withering condescension.” It’s not hard to find.

. . . And Daniel Smail, a Harvard history professor, wrote a withering takedown of The Better Angels of Our Nature for an academic journal, dismissing Pinker’s optimism about civilization as naive. His verdict: “Better Angels is not a work of history. It is best understood as a work of moral and historical theology.”

Give me a break. Pinker’s assessment of civilization’s progress is absolutely convincing. Would you reather live now, or in 1400?  And although Pinker is optimistic in view of past progress, he constantly tempers his optimism by saying that we have no crystal ball that can tell us if, for example, there will be a nuclear war.

Now here’s an absolutely stupid accusation:

. . . . Still, the right had a field day. Neo-Nazi website the Daily Stormer ran a headline that read, in part: “Harvard Jew Professor Admits the Alt-Right Is Right About Everything.” The left hammered Pinker for giving ammunition to extremists, regardless of his intent.

And this is the pattern: Bad actors and dark thinkers have appropriated Pinker’s research and writing for their own ends—and Pinker has done little to stop them.

I’m crying crocodile tears over that.  Who among us can prevent the “bad actors and dark thinkers” from appropriating our ideas? If Pinker went after everybody who did, or who criticized him (he does from time to time engage in rebutting criticism), he’d have no time for his own work.  Oh, and there’s Pinker’s involvement in the Epstein case–which he now regrets:

Then, of course, there is Jeffrey Epstein.

Epstein collected heavyweight intellectuals, and in terms of funding and gifts seemed to have a particular affinity for Harvard. Pinker attended a few gatherings where he was present, but claims he never liked Epstein.

In 2008, Pinker’s friend and Harvard colleague Alan Dershowitz defended Epstein, who had been charged with soliciting prostitution from a minor. Dershowitz had consulted Pinker for help interpreting the wording of a statute concerning the use of the mail to solicit minors to engage in prostitution or sexual activity. For that crime, Epstein pleaded guilty and served 13 months in prison.

Pinker says he doesn’t blame Dershowitz for defending Epstein, nor does he believe he did anything wrong by helping interpret the law. “I believe in the Sixth Amendment’s guarantee of legal representation of the accused,” Pinker says. “If I had known then what I know now about the extent of Epstein’s crimes, and that it would be used in his defense, I might have second thoughts.”

How many times have you heard this?  In fact, I wouldn’t even apologize were I Pinker. After all, I was on O. J. Simpson’s defense team, arguably doing something even worse than Pinker: giving help to someone who likely committed two murders (note that I didn’t testify or take money). Even rich or famous people deserve a fair trial.  And yet author Robert Huber insinuates that the guilt-by-association trope does erode Pinker’s reputation, using this weaselly trio of sentences, unworthy of a serious journalist:

. . . Pinker dismisses criticism of his connections as guilt by association—whether it’s Murray or Epstein, he insists that proximity isn’t endorsement. But the pattern is visible: years of polite yeses, a willingness to lend his credibility to people and platforms that most academics would avoid. At some point, the accumulation starts to speak for itself.

A digression: Cowboy boots:

In his office, Pinker, on sabbatical, is informal, wearing a sweater and jeans, and the cowboy boots he’s known for that give him another inch.

Yeah, but he got the idea from me (I don’t wear them because I’m short, though I am.)

The Big Question: Can Pinkah save Hahvahd? Another quote.

But writing op-eds is one thing. Could Pinker actually change anything?

In 2023, Pinker and five copresidents, along with dozens of other Harvard faculty, formed the Council on Academic Freedom at Harvard, made up now of some 200 members, which regularly challenges university policies and pushes for change.

Whether and how much this Council changes Harvard is not up to Pinker, but to the President, the deans, and the faculty. At least he’s trying to do something according to his principles. And, to be fair to Huber, the article does note that some progress has already been made, like the Council having an unprecedented meeting with the Harvard Corporation, which really runs Harvard.   Pinker is “cautiously optimistic” that the Council will effect salubrious change. In the end, however, Huber’s title question isn’t close to being answered, mainly because it’s early days yet:

As always, Pinker is convinced he’s pursuing the truth as he finds it. His method has made him a star. It’s also left a trail of complications—the associations, the bad actors who cite his work, the questions about what doors he’s opened and for whom.

Whether that makes him the right person to lead Harvard out of its current troubles is a question the university will have to answer for itself. Pinker, for his part, shows no signs of slowing down. He carries on as if he is certain his work and beliefs deserve whatever airing he decides to give them.

So, that’s the Big Conclusion.  Clearly the University, not the author has to answer it. So why was this article written in the first place?

Jesse Singal wrote this piece about the Boston Magazine article. It’s paywalled, but read what you can by clicking below:

A couple of quotes:

Boston magazine just published an article about Steven Pinker headlined “Can Steven Pinker Save Harvard?” Subheadline: “But the celebrity professor’s own record raises a question: Is he the right guy for the job?”

First of all, I don’t get that “but.” It’s not referencing anything! It’s like the original headline was going to be something like “Steven Pinker Wants to Save Harvard,” and then someone changed the headline without changing the subheadline.

Setting aside my overreaction to a minor copy-editing error, this conceit is also a bit much — it’s very magazine-y. No one, including Steven Pinker, thinks Steven Pinker is (single-handedly) going to “save Harvard.” The article is really about a few different things, most of them summed up in the very first paragraph: “His critics call him a cover for racists,” writes author Robert Huber. “He’s been accused of providing intellectual ammunition to the alt-right, and of dismissing inconvenient evidence when it doesn’t fit his theories.”

. . . I find it surprising, in 2026, that adherents of the more sweeping anti-Pinker view have done so poor a job of addressing counterarguments to their position (I’m going to table the narrower and more standard academic debate over whether he has gotten this or that wrong in his books; obviously, it’s legitimate to closely read and critically respond to the work of as influential a figure as Pinker). Their myopia on this matter can, I think, be explained by their own form of blank slatism. They believe that people are more or less blank slates, with regard to political opinions, until they decide which scientific beliefs to adopt. Similarly, political ideologies are only adopted because they are seen as having scientific legitimacy.

So, the argument goes: Without figures like Pinker, who are at best useful idiots and at worst quiet but intentional enablers, the alt-right would have far less intellectual fuel and wouldn’t have gained the power it has gained. Or if they aren’t arguing this, I don’t understand how they could possibly have remained so mad at Pinker for so many years.

In the end, or so I think, a lot of opposition to Pinker, whatever form it takes, derives from people who buy into blank-slateism.  Of course very few people are pure blank-slaters, but there are degrees, and in general “progressives” tend to be on the side of seeing differences between people as due very largely to environmental influences.  This derives from a Marxist view of people as generally malleable, so that any genetic effect on differences should be ignored, minimized, or even demonized.

Pinker has spent much of his career emphasizing that a lot of what makes people different is due to their harboring different genes—genes that of course interact with different environments (language is a good example).  And so he’s demonized.

We’re one comet down, and one to go for spring season 2026. We recently wrote about prospects for sungrazer C/2026 A1 MAPS and comet C/2025 R3 Pan-STARRS in April 2026. While the bad news is, Comet A1 MAPS disintegrated like so many sungrazers before it during its blistering close perihelion passage on April 4th, comet R3 Pan-STARRS put on an amazing dawn showing for early rising astrophotographers.

Living long-term on the Moon means surviving the devastating toll that deep space takes on a human body. Astronauts in low gravity environments suffer muscle and bone loss, vision-altering fluid shifts, and heavy radiation exposure - all of which are incredibly hazardous to our biology. So, to help future lunar explorers survive, a new crew just arrived at the International Space Station (ISS). That might not sound surprising, except this crew is composed of worms.

A new quantum sensing approach could dramatically improve how scientists measure low-frequency electric fields, a task that has long been limited by bulky setups and blurry resolution. Instead of relying on traditional vapor-cell methods, researchers developed a system using chains of highly sensitive Rydberg atoms that respond collectively to electric fields. As the field shifts, it subtly changes how these atoms interact, allowing both the strength and direction of the field to be decoded with remarkable precision.

Mars is well known as a static, frozen desert. We tend to think of the only thing changing on the surface of the Red Planet is due to the occasional dust storm. But if you look closely - and are willing to wait decades - you’ll see the planet is very much alive - at least in the environmental sense. The European Space Agency just released some spectacular new images from the High Resolution Stereo Camera (HRSC) on its Mars Express Orbiter, one of which shows a surprisingly “fast” geological change happening in Utopia Planitia. A dark, ominous-looking blanket of volcanic ash is actively creeping across the bright red sands - and it's moving (relatively) fast.

Changing your opinion can be difficult, and it’s sometimes even seen as a flaw. But research shows being open-minded has a host of benefits. Columnist David Robson finds there are a few simple ways to encourage yourself to withstand the discomfort that gets in the way of mental flexibility

Cyclic cosmology, or the big bounce, is the idea that the universe will eventually crunch back together and then go through another big bang. Columnist Leah Crane finds that, appropriately, it’s coming back

It turns out Jay Bhattacharya's talk, "The End of Free Speech is the End of Science" was really a preview of coming attractions, a mission statement for his leadership.

The post An Eponym for Scientific Censorship in America: Bhattacharyaism first appeared on Science-Based Medicine.

Before Brad Bradington can sprint down the red carpet, we need to understand the crowd. Specifically, we need to understand why a crowd of atoms and molecules slows down light — and why that creates a loophole that changes everything.