These Wind Patterns Explain Why California's Wildfires Are So Bad

The Camp Fire, Hill Fire and Woolsey Fire share an origin in the jet stream, which has produced extreme winds that are spreading the flames and hampering firefighting efforts.

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How an Anonymous 4chan Post Helped Solve a 25-Year-Old Math Puzzle

A debate over the most efficient way to watch a cult classic TV series' episodes, in every possible order, lies at the heart of this mathematical breakthrough.

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Camp Fire: The Terrifying Science Behind California’s Massive Blaze

Lots of wind along with very dry vegetation turned the Northern California wildfire into a high-speed menace that tore through Paradise and Butte County.

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Stay Inside, Californians: Wildfire Smoke Is a Big Health Risk

Here's how smoke travels to your lungs and enters your bloodstream—and how you can protect yourself.

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Was a Star Wars Escape Pod Really Just a KFC Bucket?

We can use video analysis to test whether an escape pod carrying R2-D2 and C-3PO in the first Star Wars movie was modeled using a KFC bucket, as one theory claims.

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Don’t Want to Fall for Fake News? Don’t Be Lazy

An MIT professor argues that misinformation boils down to one simple thing: mental laziness, exacerbated by social media.

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Bees Are Dying Off. Tiny QR Code Backpacks May Help Save Them

A novel system monitors the dynamics of colonies exposed to imidacloprid, a neurotoxin that belongs to the infamous neonicotinoid group of pesticides.

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Aristotle Was Wrong—Very Wrong—But People Still Love Him

Centuries-old ideas about force and motion have an intuitive appeal that is enduring but oh-so-incorrect, as these simple experiments show.

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The House Science Committee May Soon Become... Pro-Science

“Hopefully we will no longer see the science committee used as a messaging tool for the fossil fuel industry,” says Rep. Bill Foster, a science committee member.

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Midterm Election Voters Shot Down a Carbon Tax, But It'll Rise Again

Washington voters will likely shoot down a ballot initiative that would tax carbon emissions, but carbon pricing is still likely to reach the US.

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Midterm Election Voters Still Shrug Over Climate Change

Major environmental ballot measures passed in Florida and Nevada, but not in Washington and Arizona.

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New Satellites Will Use Radio Waves to Spy on Ships and Planes

This month, HawkEye360 will send up satellites that monitor the radio transmissions of ships, planes and other things on Earth, allowing them to be tracked by their communications.

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Midterms 2018: Weed Wins on Election Day

A win for marijuana in Michigan, Utah, and Missouri may foreshadow a win for cannabis nationwide.

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The Key to a Long Life Has Little to Do With ‘Good Genes’

Alphabet's longevity lab Calico trawled through Ancestry's massive genealogy database to study human longevity—and found that DNA matters less than people have long believed.

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You Can Make Your Own Scale With a Rubber Band and a Ruler

Take some simple measurements, add a dash of algebra, and you basically have a way to measure an unknown mass.

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The Entourage Effect: How THC and Other Weed Compounds Mix

Some call it the entourage effect: THC achieves its full effects only when it rolls with a crew of other compounds.

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Silicon Valley's Breakthrough Prizes Have Money, but They Need Diversity Too

The tech-funded science awards are attempting to bring glory to basic research, but so far they have done little to challenge the status quo.

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Bitcoin Will Burn the Planet Down. The Question: How Fast?

A new paper concludes that it takes more than four times as much energy to mine $1 of bitcoin as mining $1 of copper.

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How Antivax PACs Helped Shape Midterm Ballots

With political action committees, the modern antivaccine movement is taking its fight for medical freedoms to the campaign trail. And that has public health experts worried.

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Astronomers Creep Up to the Edge of the Milky Way’s Black Hole

Hot spots have been discovered orbiting just outside the supermassive black hole at the galaxy’s center. Their motions have given us the closest look at that violent environment.

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