54191885
submission
gbrumfiel writes:
For the past two decades, about 10 percent of all the electricity consumed in the United States has come from Russian nuclear warheads. Under a program called Megatons to Megawatts, Russian highly-enriched uranium was pulled from old bombs and made into fuel for nuclear reactors. NPR News reports that today, the program concludes, when the last shipment arrives at a storage US storage facility. In all nearly 500 tons of uranium was recycled, enough for roughly 20,000 warheads.
51405851
submission
gbrumfiel writes:
With just hours to go before a government shutdown, Congress has finally found something it can agree on. Unfortunately, that something isn't a budget: it's helium. the US holds vast helium reserves which it sells to scientists and private industry. According to NPR, a new law was needed to allow the helium to continue to flow. Congress passed it late last week, but only after a year-long lobbying effort and intense debate (and in the end, Senator Ted Cruz opposed the measure). Can a new bipartisanship rise out of this cooperation? Or will hot air prevail on Capitol Hill? *Insert your helium joke here*
48774219
submission
gbrumfiel writes:
Researchers in France have discovered a the worlds largest virus and given it a terrifying name: Pandoravirus. NPR reports it doesn't pose a threat to people, but its genetic code could hint at an unusual origin. The team believes that the virus may carry the genes from a long-dead branch of the tree of life, one that possibly even started on Mars or somewhere else. Other scientists are skeptical, but everyone agrees that the new giant virus is pretty cool.
46738297
submission
gbrumfiel writes:
Last week, Google and NASA announced a partnership to buy a new quantum computer from Canadian firm D-Wave Systems. But NPR news reports that many scientists are still questioning whether new machine really is quantum. Long-time critic and computer scientist Scott Aaronson has a long post detailing the current state of affairs. At issue is whether the 512 quantum bits at the processor's core are "entangled" together. Measuring that entanglement directly destroys it, so D-Wave has had a hard time convincing skeptics. As with all things quantum mechanical, the devil is in the details.
Still it may not matter: D-Wave's machine appears to be far faster at solving certain kinds of problems, regardless of how it works.
46288017
submission
gbrumfiel writes:
North Korea has not been shy in announcing plans to destroy the United States, but questions remain over whether it has the nukes or the missiles to do so. Now NPR reports on open-source intelligence showing that one of the North's most "advanced" weapons might actually be a decoy. Six KN-08 missiles were paraded last year, but each showed differences in the way they were assembled. Is it all a bluff? Or are the missiles part of a real program?
45302087
submission
gbrumfiel writes:
A strange green meteorite found in Morocco caused a stir in the press earlier this month, when scientists reported that it might be the first chunk of Mercury ever found here on earth. But scientists who've been puzzling over the stone since then say the accumulating evidence may point in a different direction. The 4.56-billion-year-old rock might have come from the asteroid belt located between Mars and Jupiter. If true, then it would provide clues about the origin of the solar system as a whole instead of the origin of the innermost planet.
42222901
submission
innocent_white_lamb writes:
A researcher says that some letters are over valued and some are under-valued in Scrabble, due to recent changes to the lists of allowable words. Z and X are now much easier to play and should be worth less, while U, M and G should be worth more than they are now. Joshua Lewis wrote a program to re-calculate the value of each letter to better reflect the current usage. The co-president of the North American Scrabble Players Association says that he often hears criticism of Scrabble's scoring system, but any change would bring about "catastrophic outrage". A spokesman for Mattel says that they have no plans to change the game.
