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Until recently, geochronologist Li Xian-Hua’s research focused on molten rocks on Earth. But when a Chinese spacecraft delivered the country’s first rocks from the Moon in December 2020, Li pivoted to study them. “I’m a new person working on extra-terrestrial rocks,” says Li, who is based at the Institute of Geology and Geophysics (IGG) at the Chinese Academy of Sciences in Beijing. Li is one of many planetary scientists in China who have had the chance to study lunar rocks for the first time....

Sir Fred Hoyle, the late astrophysicist acclaimed for developing the theory of how stars forge hydrogen and helium into the heavier elements found throughout the universe, did not get the credit he deserved for a 1954 paper that outlined the idea, because he failed to spell out a key equation, a former colleague says. Hoyle, who died in 2001 at the age of 86, was something of a tragic figure in science....

The Arctic is a harsh place, with subzero temperatures and rapidly changing weather conditions. Those circumstances can make it difficult for researchers to conduct controlled experiments, said Roland von Glasow, an atmospheric chemist and professor at the University of East Anglia, who studies the chemical reactions between Arctic sea ice and the atmosphere. The scientist has a solution to this. He plans to build an 8-meter-cubed model Arctic Ocean at his university, where he can study how sea ice reacts with the atmosphere from the comfort of his laboratory....

Editor’s note: These verses were composed after John Updike had read the September 1967 issue of Scientific American, which was devoted to materials. They appeared in his book Midpoint and Other Poems, and are reproduced with the generous permission of Alfred A. Knopf, Inc. We are posting it to mark Updike’s death today at the age of 76. All things are Atoms: Earth and Water, Air And Fire, all, Democritus foretold....

Originally posted on the Nature news blog. A paper that once promised to help unravel a medical mystery — why some children developed narcolepsy after receiving an influenza vaccine — has been retracted. Narcolepsy is a disorder that causes extreme sleepiness, sometimes inducing uncontrollable ‘sleep attacks’ that can strike at any time of day. In 2010, a puzzling cluster of sudden-onset narcolepsy cases was reported in Europe among children vaccinated with GlaxoSmithKline’s Pandemrix flu vaccine against the H1N1 ‘swine flu’ that had caused a pandemic in 2009....

AH, THE VIRTUES OF LYING. The second issue of Scientific American Mind for 2005 explored the evolutionary benefits of fibbing–a kind of social glue that helps us get along with our fellow members of the human race–as explained by David Livingstone Smith in “Natural-Born Liars.” Naturally, the editors were all very interested to receive reader feedback on Smith’s article and the others in the issue. Yeah, that’s right. We got bags of beautifully handwritten notes, many of them rose-scented, congratulating us on the finest issue ever produced....

With the return of the brilliant planet Venus to our evening sky, I’m reminded of an amusing anecdote related by a good friend of mine, George Lovi, a well-known astronomy lecturer and author who passed away in 1993. One night, while running a public night at the Brooklyn College Observatory in New York, the telescope was pointed right at Venus, which was displaying a delicate crescent shape at the time. Yet, one student gazing through the telescope eyepiece stubbornly insisted that he was really looking at the moon....

My father was just 32 years old when he was diagnosed with acute leukemia. Weeks later he was in the hospital, informed that he would not be leaving. Miraculously the leukemia went into remission, and he lived another five years. Even as a child, though, I could clearly see that the man who returned from the hospital was not the same one who had left home. Before, he had been concerned mostly with work and material success; now he embraced religion and family....

The Federal Communications Commission (FCC) approved its Net neutrality policy by a vote of three to two on Thursday. This unsurprising outcome follows years of contentious debate over the best way to ensure that Internet service providers (ISPs) treat all online data and services equally, without favoring one type of content over another. Rhetoric on both sides had been remarkably similar in recent months as the vote approached but was punctuated by mutual mistrust....

If you speak multiple languages, you might have multiple personalities. Reporting October 15 in Personality and Social Psychology Bulletin, psychologists at Hong Kong Polytechnic University found that native Chinese students who were fluent in English appeared more assertive, extraverted and open to new experiences—personality traits often associated with Westerners—when conversing with an interviewer in English as opposed to Cantonese. The interviewer’s ethnicity mattered, too. In either language, observers rated students as more extraverted, assertive, helpful and open to new experiences when speaking to a Caucasian interviewer as compared with when they talked to a Chinese interviewer....

SA Forum is an invited essay from experts on topical issues in science and technology. This column was produced in collaboration with the World Economic Forum. Imagine you have a great-aunt, a vibrant woman in her 70s who refuses to be trapped in a rocking chair. In fact, she holds a full-time job and insists on walking there and back, a couple of miles each way. She says it keeps her young, but you can’t help worrying....

Whining jet engines pummel airline passengers with a mind-numbing 75 to 80 decibels of noise. Subways, trains and speeding cars also assail riders with a relentless howl. Putting on simple headphones and cranking up a compact-disc player to drown out the din just adds to the ear-pounding volume. Deep earplugs or earmuffs like those worn by factory workers typically reduce the racket by 15 to 25 decibels, but they are uncomfortable and do not allow wearers to hear the audio from an airplane movie, music channel or their own music player....

Motorists expect cars to go at least 300 miles between fill-ups. That’s not a concern for autos that burn gasoline or diesel, but for a future in which vehicles run on nonpolluting hydrogen, adequate driving range remains a real roadblock [see “On the Road to Fuel-Cell Cars,” by Steven Ashley; Scientific American, March]. Despite considerable effort, engineers have so far failed to find a way to cram enough hydrogen–the lowest-density substance in the universe–onboard cars....

Key concepts Food science Water Absorption Seeds Introduction Have you ever eaten black-eyed peas for New Year’s? They are a traditional dish eaten for good luck on the holiday—especially in the South. Despite their common name, black-eyed peas are technically a bean (in the legume family). Beans of various types are a major ingredient in dishes served all over the world. In their dried form, they can be stored for years and then soaked in water to restore their soft texture....

Property owners on the front lines of climate disasters often stay put for reasons that have little to do with risk but everything to do with quality of life, familial bonds and shared history, experts told a major adaptation conference being hosted this week by Columbia University. “People say, ‘The birds. We love the birds.’ They say they love the water, or that’s where their family is and where their history is,” Thaddeus Pawlowski, director of Columbia’s Center for Resilient Cities and Landscapes, told participants during a session probing why people choose to live in high-risk places....

Byline By Science Buddies Key concepts Magnetism Navigation Magnetic poles Physics Forces Introduction Have you ever used a compass to help you figure out what direction you should go? These can come in handy to help you navigate your way through a field or forest while camping, for example. Magnetic compasses work based on Earth’s magnetic field. In this science activity you’ll get to make your own magnetic compass. How well do you think it’ll work?...

Environmental sus­tain­ability is already very difficult to achieve with today’s 6.6 billion people and average econo­mic output of $8,000 per person. By 2050 the earth could be home to more than nine billion people with an average output of $20,000 or more. Many environmentalists take it for granted that richer countries will have to cut their consumption sharply to stave off ecological disaster. There is another approach. Global public policies and market institutions can promote new technologies that raise living standards yet reduce human impact on the environment....

The next National Climate Assessment is beginning to take shape at a time when President Trump warned world leaders to reject “alarmists” and as his conservative allies make plans to intervene in the report’s preparation to question the findings of mainstream scientists. The Fifth National Climate Assessment is scheduled for release in 2022, about halfway through Trump’s potential second term. Planning for the report is already underway, with requests to researchers to submit their work and a project leader expected to be chosen within a few months, according to Donald Wuebbles, a climate scientist at the University of Illinois who oversaw the last assessment....

There are many uncertainties with respect to global climate change, but there is one thing about which I have no doubts: we will not solve climate change by running out of fossil fuels. Understanding this leads to three posible pathways we can follow to lower greenhouse gas concentrations, and explains why I’ve chosen to focus my research on carbon capture and storage. We can: continue to burn fossil fuels with little or no restrictions....

The heap of dead bees was supposed to become food for a newly captured praying mantis. John Hafernik, a biology professor at San Francisco State University, had collected the belly-up bees (Apis mellifera) from the ground underneath lights around the university campus. “But being an absent-minded professor,” he noted in a prepared statement, “I left them in a vial on my desk and forgot about them.” He soon got a shock....