...Research published in the journal Nature Astronomy shows how WOH G64, a giant binary star system in the Large Magellanic Cloud, has recently undergone a striking transformation...

...researchers say they've examined more than 30 years of brightness measurements and found that the star, long classified as a cold, red supergiant, has become markedly hotter – by over 1,000°C – and now appears yellow rather than red...

...Instead of the traditional steel porcupine, Ukraine has developed an inverted form—it shoots quills not at its enemies but at its allies, injecting them with a protective layer of technology. Not many have noticed, however, that this ensures Ukraine receives not just protection from the allies to whom it now becomes more valuable, but also offers Ukraine a level of control unlike that of many other countries. Due to the nature of the arms business, Ukraine will have a say on who will or will not be allowed to use its technology...

...Ukraine is, in effect, building its own version of ITAR. The same architecture that keeps its technology out of Russian hands also gives Kyiv a say in who gets to defend themselves with it. Every cooperation agreement embeds Ukrainian technology into another country’s defence architecture, and every embedded system requires a Ukrainian licence to transfer further. The United States spent decades getting to that position. Ukraine is acquiring significant leverage over international arms markets in a few short years...

...While an obvious take-away from the arms deals Kyiv is currently signing is that it has emerged as a global security provider, the real outcome is the permission architecture Ukraine is embedding into the global arms industry as we speak, and the power that architecture affords on the global scene. Ukraine is increasingly holding the strings to a global defence network that will operate without Washington’s permission.

Quantum technologies, including quantum computers, rely on materials that display unusual quantum effects under specific conditions. Researchers have found that these properties can also be engineered by adjusting a material’s structure. For example, stacking and slightly twisting layers of graphene creates a moiré pattern that can transform the material into a superconductor.

As scientists build increasingly intricate layered systems, they reach structures such as quasicrystals and super-moiré materials. The challenge is predicting which designs will be useful. Modeling these materials requires calculating vast amounts of data. In the case of quasicrystals, this can involve more than a quadrillion numbers, far exceeding the limits of even the most powerful supercomputers.

Researchers at Aalto University’s Department of Applied Physics have introduced a quantum-inspired algorithm that can handle these massive, non-periodic systems with remarkable speed. According to Assistant Professor Jose Lado, this work also highlights a growing feedback loop in quantum technology...

The US Department of the Interior (DOI) has reached agreements with Bluepoint Wind and Golden State Wind developers to voluntarily terminate their offshore wind leases in exchange for a total of USD 885 million (around EUR 756 million) that they paid in lease fees, which the US will return to the developers to invest in fossil energy projects.

Last May, NATO invited 10 Ukrainians to act as an opposing force during Hedgehog 2025, one of NATO’s largest exercises in the Baltics. The Ukrainians successfully simulated the destruction of 17 armored vehicles and conducted 30 strikes in half a day, effectively neutralizing two NATO battalions before dinner...

...As soldiers rotate off position, they provide feedback to engineers who immediately modify designs. This cycle cannot be replicated by NATO’s centralized procurement...

...Nearly a decade after Delta won a NATO hackathon, America’s equivalent — Combined Joint All-Domain Command and Control — struggles to make meaningful progress because of top-down data integration strategies. Delta’s bottom-up origins enabled continuous battlefield refinement, extending decision windows and enabling software updates for commanders’ evolving needs.

These differences reveal tensions between peacetime and wartime innovation structures. NATO’s procurement system prevents waste, increases interoperability, and maintains civilian oversight, which are reasonable in peacetime but cause friction when rapid adaptation is existential. Ukraine bypasses traditional acquisition through compressed decision cycles and flattened hierarchies. Soldiers became drone engineers because there was no time for defense contracts. Procurement timelines measured in years are irrelevant when innovation timelines are measured in weeks...

...Whether through NATO membership, bilateral security guarantees, or another framework, it is strategically indefensible to treat Ukraine as peripheral rather than integral given Ukraine’s capabilities...

...Ukraine is the most combat-experienced, doctrinally up-to-date, and innovative partner in the Western world...

On April 17, engineers at NASA’s Jet Propulsion Laboratory (JPL) in Southern California sent commands to shut down an instrument aboard Voyager 1 called the Low-energy Charged Particles experiment, or LECP. The nuclear-powered spacecraft is running low on power, and turning off the LECP is considered the best way to keep humanity’s first interstellar explorer going.

...The instrument has provided critical data about the structure of the interstellar medium, detecting pressure fronts and regions of varying particle density in the space beyond our heliosphere. The twin Voyagers are the only spacecraft that are far enough from Earth to provide this information.

...“Voyager 1 still has two remaining operating science instruments — one that listens to plasma waves and one that measures magnetic fields. They are still working great, sending back data from a region of space no other human-made craft has ever explored...

Engineers are confident that shutting down the LECP will give Voyager 1 about a year of breathing room. They are using the time to finalize a more ambitious energy-saving fix for both Voyagers they call “the Big Bang,” which is designed to further extend Voyager operations. The idea is to swap out a group of powered devices all at once — hence the nickname — turning some things off and replacing them with lower-power alternatives to keep the spacecraft warm enough to continue gathering science data.

The U.S. restricted data transfers abroad. Cast as an assertion of sovereignty, the new posture signals weakness in great-power competition.

...When a great power restricts its data exports, the move suggests not only diminished control over platforms and infrastructure but also a lack of confidence in technological dominance and a posture defined by perceived strategic vulnerability...

...the EU’s approach to protecting individuals’ privacy was never just an expression of sovereignty. Protecting Europeans’ privacy by reining in data exports became necessary because of Europe’s infrastructural dependence, geopolitical frailty, and military irrelevance...

The United States did not feel the need to emulate Europe. For decades, the free flow of data served U.S. interests perfectly well. It allowed Google, Meta, Amazon, and Microsoft to scale globally and crush local competitors...the U.S. championed free data flows because it was winning.

...the policy shift crystallizes the U.S.’s anxieties about its position in global competition.

Launched internationally in 2017, TikTok became the most downloaded app in the world by 2020...and the U.S. found itself on the receiving end of potential mass surveillance.

...TikTok’s success shattered conventional assumptions about U.S. technological supremacy. U.S. consumers voluntarily chose a Chinese-owned app over homegrown alternatives...

Regulatory actions reveal more about a country’s self-assessment than speeches or polls. They show what governments are willing to spend political capital on, what economic costs they are prepared to absorb, and what trade-offs they consider acceptable. The TikTok legislation—passed with overwhelming bipartisan support in a Congress that struggles to agree on almost anything else—alone reveals the depth of concern.

Countries also send messages through regulation, whether they intend to or not. When the United States builds data walls, it signals to allies and adversaries alike that it no longer feels confident enough to rely on the openness it once championed.

Europe turned to data export controls because it lacked technological power. Now the U.S. has joined the defensive club. Beijing will notice.

...Redwood believes that by 2030, end-of-life batteries could supply more than 50 percent of the entire energy storage market. Instead of grinding up used batteries to reclaim the critical materials inside, put them to work storing electricity. There have been many experiments done that re-purpose used EV batteries which no longer can supply enough power to meet the need for rapid acceleration in an EV but still have up to 80 percent of their original energy storage capacity available...

...Traditional energy storage systems are high density and require heavy-duty cooling. To avoid this, Redwood’s team opted for an open-air, low-density system mounted on above-ground cable trays.

Spreading packs out in the open air helps avoid the need for active refrigeration, and stripping away moving parts like fans and filters minimizes potential reliability failures. Keeping the wiring above ground and limiting the size of each modular component minimizes the need for large equipment. As Sun explained, the result is a storage system that is faster to build, easier to inspect after storms, and cheaper to keep running over time...

...The reason physicists have been skeptical about wormholes comes down to a problem with energy. To hold the throat of a wormhole open, you would need something called exotic matter. In physics, ordinary matter (stars, gas, you, your coffee) always has a positive energy density which corresponds to positive mass. Exotic matter would have negative energy density, essentially “negative mass.” We have never observed anything like that in nature. Most wormhole solutions that physicists have found over the decades require this exotic matter to exist, which is why wormholes have stayed firmly in the category of “mathematically possible but physically unlikely.” Today’s paper offers a way around this problem.

Instead of trying to prop open a wormhole with exotic matter, the authors add two extra physical fields to Einstein’s equations alongside gravity. The first is an electromagnetic field, the same electric and magnetic fields you encounter in introductory physics. This wormhole carries both electric and magnetic charge. The second is something called a dilaton...

Why should we care about the dilaton? Because it is not something the authors invented for convenience. It shows up naturally in several theories that physicists take seriously as candidates for deeper laws of nature. Superstring theory, which attempts to unify all fundamental forces, predicts a dilaton. So does Kaluza-Klein theory, which tries to explain electromagnetism as a consequence of a hidden extra dimension of space. And Brans-Dicke theory includes one too. If any of these theories are correct, the dilaton exists, and the kind of wormhole described in this paper becomes a natural prediction of Einstein’s equations...

...“This is an important step toward highly efficient and flexible hydrogen energy for a fossil-free energy system,” explains Professor Daniel Banuti, Director of the Institute of Thermal Energy Technology and Safety (ITES).

One of the key advantages of this design is that it eliminates the need to compress air before ignition. “A conventional gas turbine, such as those used in power plants or under aircraft wings, consumes about 50 percent of its power to compress air to the high pressure needed for efficient combustion—power that is then unavailable for electricity generation,” Banuti explains...

...this system creates the required pressure through detonation waves inside the combustion chamber...

...Integrating a turbine with the combustion chamber to produce electricity introduces additional complexity. “This is extremely difficult because the very fast and intense combustion processes in the chamber make stable energy transfer to the turbine challenging. We are the first to successfully operate such a turbine and generate electricity in the process,” says Banuti...

...Previously, a creative design engineer would develop a 3D model of a new car concept. This model would be sent to aerodynamics specialists, who would run physics simulations to determine the coefficient of drag of the proposed car—an important metric for energy efficiency of the vehicle. This simulation phase would take about two weeks, and the aerodynamics engineer would then report the drag coefficient back to the creative designer, possibly with suggested modifications.

Now, GM has trained an in-house large physics model on those simulation results. The AI takes in a 3D car model and outputs a coefficient of drag in a matter of minutes. “We have experts in the aerodynamics and the creative studio now who can sit together and iterate instantly to make decisions [about] our future products,” says Rene Strauss, director of virtual integration engineering at GM...

“What we’re seeing is that actually, these tools are empowering the engineers to be much more efficient,” Tschammer says. “Before, these engineers would spend a lot of time on low added value tasks, whereas now these manual tasks from the past can be automated using these AI models, and the engineers can focus on taking the design decisions at the end of the day. We still need engineers more than ever.”