Sarah Zhang
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Secret Molecular Barcodes Could Be Used To Fight Counterfeits
French scientists have created the first synthetic polymers that can store information as bits of 0s and 1s. You might think of it as a highly simplified version of DNA, another molecule that is very, very good at storing information. These new polymers could one day replace DNA in the burgeoning field of molecular barcoding.
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The Secret 1949 Radiation Experiment That Contaminated Washington
The physicists who invented the nuclear bomb worked out of Los Alamos in New Mexico, but the people who did the dirty work of making the bombs were in Hanford, Washington. Throughout the Cold War, Hanford churned out plutonium for our nuclear arsenal. It was also, conveniently, a place to experiment with radiation.
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Sunlight And Graphene Could One Day Power A Spaceship
Graphene, already a plenty weird wondermaterial, has an unexpected new property that could one day play a role in space exploration: When hit with light, it propels forward. Huh!
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Saving The Last Of The World’s Glaciers By Sending Them To Antarctica
Glaciology is in the middle of a slow-moving crisis. As the climate warms, glaciers are shrinking and then disappearing. So scientists have come up with a plan to put ice cores from melting glaciers in the most permanent cold storage possible on Earth — in Antarctica.