Today’s puzzle illuminates one of the smash hits of theoretical computer science, a mind-boggling result that left even experts in the field gobsmacked.We’ll get to that result (the PCP theorem) later. But first, to the challenge!It’s a word puzzle. Crossword-... More »
Reporter Lee Speigel devoted his career to unexplained phenomena and will be remembered for organizing the first meeting on UFOs at the United Nations. His friends, family and fans are launching his cremated ashes into space.Illustration: Chris McGonigal/HuffP... More »
Imagine finding that someone has taken a picture of you from the internet and superimposed it on a sexually explicit image available online. Or that a video appears showing you having sex with someone you have never met.Imagine worrying that your children, par... More »
Eclipses happen due to an amazing cosmic coincidence that means the moon appears as large as the sunChancey Bush/The Albuquerque Journal via AP
People travel thousands of miles to see eclipses. There is nothing quite like the darkness that descends and the exc... More »
In a total solar eclipse the moon blocks out the light from the sunScott sady/tahoelight.com/Alamy
A total solar eclipse is coming to North America. On 8 April, the moon will pass between Earth and the sun, aligning perfectly to block out the sun’s entire disc... More »
For decades, privacy experts have been wary of snooping from space. They feared satellites powerful enough to zoom in on individuals, capturing close-ups that might differentiate adults from children or suited sunbathers from those in a state of nature.Now, qu... More »
Blue Origin’s New Glenn rocket rolled to the launchpad for a series of tests in preparation for its flight debut later this year.There’s an easy knock against the space dreams of Jeff Bezos and his rocket company, Blue Origin: In its 24th year of existence, th... More »
Alyssa Shannon was on her morning commute from Oakland to Sacramento, where she worked as an advanced-practice nurse at the university hospital, when NASA called to tell her that she had been selected for a Mars mission. She screamed and pulled off the highway... More »
“First text, then images, now OpenAI has a model for generating videos,” screamed Mashable the other day. The makers of ChatGPT and Dall-E had just announced Sora, a text-to-video diffusion model. Cue excited commentary all over the web about what will doubtle... More »
More than 50 years after the last Apollo mission, an American spacecraft is back on the moon, marking first lunar landing by any private company and a step toward the hoped-for return of humans to the lunar surface.The uncrewed craft, nicknamed Odysseus or “Od... More »
There seems to be an insatiable public appetite for information about sex differences in the human brain, eagerly harnessed by the media in many forms. A paper out this week from a research group at Stanford University made headlines for its innovative contrib... More »
The Covid death toll in the US is likely at least 16% higher than the official tally, according to a new study, and researchers believe the cause of the undercounting goes beyond overloaded health systems to a lack of awareness of Covid and low levels of testi... More »