Science & technology

Crystal balls
A Google AI has discovered 2.2m materials unknown to science
Zillions of possible crystals exist. AI can help catalogue them

Dimming the sun
Solar geoengineering is becoming a respectable idea
One way to fix an accidentally altered climate is to alter it again deliberately

Explaining the wave function
A new way to predict ship-killing rogue waves
And a way to figure out how, exactly, AI works its magic

Big rockets and big rivers
SpaceX tests Starship, and prepares to face down Amazon
Elon Musk’s Starlink business could soon be competing with Jeff Bezos’s Kuiper

The wisdom of youth
Could newborn neurons reverse Alzheimer’s?
Some scientists think so. Others doubt the cells even exist

Giving science a shot in the arm
New ways to pay for research could boost scientific progress
A new field hopes to apply science’s methods to science itself

Rip van Winkle, the microbe
Was an ancient bacterium awakened by an industrial accident?
What lies beneath a Louisiana lake

The wind in their sails
How two teams plan to smash the world sailing-speed record
Neither craft looks much like a sailing boat

The war underground
Israel hopes technology will help it fight in Hamas’s tunnels
The “Gaza Metro” presents a big headache for the IDF

Gut feelings
Microbiome treatments are taking off
Faecal transplants are just the start of a new sort of medicine

Be rich in good deeds
A new gonorrhoea drug was developed by a non-profit foundation
Antibiotics are not commercially attractive to pharmaceutical firms

Ground truths
Could AI help find valuable mineral deposits?
Computers have keener eyes than geologists